more amiable and exquisite than he had yet
known."

"In this acquaintance the attraction was mutual"--and presently it grew
to be very mutual indeed, between Shelley and Cornelia Turner, when they
got to studying the Italian poets together. Shelley, "responding like
a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of sentiment," had
his chance here. It took only four days for Cornelia's attractions to
begin to dim Harriet's. Shelley arrived on the 27th of July; on the 31st
he wrote a sonnet to Harriet in which "one detects already the little
rift in the lover's lute which had seemed to be healed or never to
have gaped at all when the later and happier sonnet to Ianthe was
written"--in September, we remember:

Exhibit D

"EVENING. TO HARRIET

"O thou bright Sun! Beneath the dark blue line
Of western distance that sublime descendest,
And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams decline,
Thy million hues to every vapor lendest,
And over cobweb, lawn, and grove, and stream
Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light,
Till calm Earth, with the parting splendor bright,
Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream;
What gazer now with astronomic eye
Could coldly count the spots within thy sphere?
Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly
The thoughts of all that makes his passion dear,
And turning senseless from thy warm caress
Pick flaws in our close-woven happiness."

I cannot find the "rift"; still it may be there. What the poem seems to
say is, that a person would be coldly ungrateful who could consent
to count and consider little spots and flaws in such a warm, great,
satisfying sun as Harriet is. It is a "little rift which had seemed
to be healed, or never to have gaped at all." That is, "one detects" a
little rift which perhaps had never existed. How does one do that? How
does one see the invisible? It is the fabulist's secret; he knows how to
detect what does not exist, he knows how to see what is not seeable; it
is his gift, and he works it many a time to poor dead Harriet Shelley's
deep damage.

"As yet, however, if there was a speck upon Shelley's happiness it was
no more than a speck"--meaning the one which one detects where "it may
never have gaped at all"--"nor had Harriet cause for discontent."

Shelley's Latin instructions to his wife had ceased. "From a teac