because he must go back to his wife and child? No, the lament is
mainly for what he is to leave behind him. The physical comforts of the
house? No, in his life he had never attached importance to such
things. Then the thing which he grieves to leave is narrowed down to a
person--to the person whose "dewy looks" had sunk into his breast, and
whose seducing words had "stirred poison there."

He was ashamed of himself, his conscience was upbraiding him. He was
the slave of a degrading love; he was drunk with his passion, the real
Shelley was in temporary eclipse. This is the verdict which his previous
history must certainly deliver upon this episode, I think.

One must be allowed to assist himself with conjectures like these
when trying to find his way through a literary swamp which has so many
misleading finger-boards up as this book is furnished with.

We have now arrived at a part of the swamp where the difficulties
and perplexities are going to be greater than any we have yet met
with--where, indeed, the finger-boards are multitudinous, and the most
of them pointing diligently in the wrong direction. We are to be told by
the biography why Shelley deserted his wife and child and took up with
Cornelia Turner and Italian. It was not on account of Cornelia's sighs
and sentimentalities and tea and manna and late hours and soft and sweet
and industrious enticements; no, it was because "his happiness in his
home had been wounded and bruised almost to death."

It had been wounded and bruised almost to death in this way:

1st. Harriet persuaded him to set up a carriage.

2d. After the intrusion of the baby, Harriet stopped reading aloud and
studying.

3d. Harriet's walks with Hogg "commonly conducted us to some fashionable
bonnet-shop."

4th. Harriet hired a wet-nurse.

5th. When an operation was being performed upon the baby, "Harriet stood
by, narrowly observing all that was done, but, to the astonishment of
the operator, betraying not the smallest sign of emotion."

6th. Eliza Westbrook, sister-in-law, was still of the household.

The evidence against Harriet Shelley is all in; there is no more. Upon
these six counts she stands indicted of the crime of driving her
husband into that sty at Bracknell; and this crime, by these helps, the
biographical prosecuting attorney has set himself the task of proving
upon her.

Does the biographer call himself the attorney for the prosecution?
No, only to himself, privately