s the vision of a delirious and distempered dream, which
passes away at the cold clear light of morning. Its surpassing
excellence and exquisite perfections have no more reality than
the color of an autumnal sunset."

Then it did not refer to his wife. That is plain; otherwise he would
have said so. It is well that he explained that it has no meaning, for
if he had not done that, the previous soft references to Cornelia and
the way he has come to feel about her now would make us think she was
the person who had inspired it while teaching him how to read the warm
and ruddy Italian poets during a month.

The biography observes that portions of this letter "read like the tired
moaning of a wounded creature." Guesses at the nature of the wound are
permissible; we will hazard one.

Read by the light of Shelley's previous history, his letter seems to be
the cry of a tortured conscience. Until this time it was a conscience
that had never felt a pang or known a smirch. It was the conscience of
one who, until this time, had never done a dishonorable thing, or an
ungenerous, or cruel, or treacherous thing, but was now doing all of
these, and was keenly aware of it. Up to this time Shelley had been
master of his nature, and it was a nature which was as beautiful and as
nearly perfect as any merely human nature may be. But he was drunk now,
with a debasing passion, and was not himself. There is nothing in his
previous history that is in character with the Shelley of this letter.
He had done boyish things, foolish things, even crazy things, but never
a thing to be ashamed of. He had done things which one might laugh at,
but the privilege of laughing was limited always to the thing itself;
you could not laugh at the motive back of it--that was high, that was
noble. His most fantastic and quixotic acts had a purpose back of
them which made them fine, often great, and made the rising laugh seem
profanation and quenched it; quenched it, and changed the impulse to
homage.

Up to this time he had been loyalty itself, where his obligations
lay--treachery was new to him; he had never done an ignoble
thing--baseness was new to him; he had never done an unkind thing that
also was new to him.

This was the author of that letter, this was the man who had deserted
his young wife and was lamenting, because he must leave another woman's
house which had become a "home" to him, and go away. Is he lamenting
mainly