lauded if he behaves like a base fellow on finding that some unhappy
loving creature cannot talk in his particular fashion. We may all be
very low Philistines if we are not prepared to accept rhymers for
chartered villains; but some of us still have a glimmering of belief in
the old standards of nobility and constancy. Can any one fancy Walter
Scott cheating a miserable little girl of sixteen into marriage, and
then leaving her, only to many a female philosopher? How that noble soul
would have spurned the maundering sentimentalist who talked of truth and
beauty, and music and moonlight and feeling, and behaved as a mean and
bad man! Scott is more to my fancy than is Shelley.

Again, this poet, this exquisite weaver of verbal harmonies, is
represented to us by his worshippers as having a passion for truth;
whereas it happens that he was one of the most remarkable fibbers that
ever lived. He would come home with amazing tales about assassins who
had waylaid him, and try to give himself importance by such blustering
inventions. "Imagination!" says the enthusiast; but among commonplace
persons another word is used. "Your lordship knows what kleptomania is?"
said a counsel who was defending a thief. Justice Byles replied, "Oh,
yes! I come here to cure it." Some critical justice might say the same
of Shelley's imagination. We are also told that Shelley's excessive
nobility of nature prevented him from agreeing with his commonplace
father; and truly the poet was a bad and an ungrateful son. But, if a
pretty verse-maker is privileged to be an undutiful son, what becomes of
all our old notions? I think once more of the great Sir Walter, and I
remember his unquestioning obedience to his parents. Then we may also
remember Gibbon, who was quite as able and useful a man as Shelley. The
historian loved a young French lady, but his father refused consent to
their marriage, and Gibbon quietly obeyed and accepted his hard fate.
The passion sanctified his whole life, and, as he says, made him more
dear to himself; he settled his colossal work, and remained unmarried
for life. He may have been foolish: but I prefer his behaviour to that
of a man who treats his father with contumely and ingratitude even while
he is living upon him. We hear much of Shelley's unselfishness, but it
does not appear that he ever denied himself the indulgence of a whim.
The "Ode to the West Wind," the "Ode Written in Dejection near Naples,"
and "The Skylark" are