ble and say the harsh
thing, but only insinuate it. Stern justice knows about the carriage and
the wet-nurse and the bonnet-shop and the other dark things that caused
this sad mischief, and may not, must not blink them; so it delivers
judgment where judgment belongs, but softens the blow by not seeming to
deliver judgment at all. To resume--the italics are mine:

"However the mischief may have been wrought--and at this day no
one can wish to heap blame on any buried head--'it is certain
that some cause or causes of deep division between Shelley and
his wife were in operation during the early part of the year
1814'."

This shows penetration. No deduction could be more accurate than this.
There were indeed some causes of deep division. But next comes another
disappointing sentence:

"To guess at the precise nature of these cafes, in the absence
of definite statement, were useless."

Why, he has already been guessing at them for several pages, and we have
been trying to outguess him, and now all of a sudden he is tired of it
and won't play any more. It is not quite fair to us. However, he will
get over this by-and-by, when Shelley commits his next indiscretion and
has to be guessed out of it at Harriet's expense.

"We may rest content with Shelley's own words"--in a Chancery paper
drawn up by him three years later. They were these: "Delicacy forbids me
to say more than that we were disunited by incurable dissensions."

As for me, I do not quite see why we should rest content with
anything of the sort. It is not a very definite statement. It does not
necessarily mean anything more than that he did not wish to go into the
tedious details of those family quarrels. Delicacy could quite properly
excuse him from saying, "I was in love with Cornelia all that time; my
wife kept crying and worrying about it and upbraiding me and begging
me to cut myself free from a connection which was wronging her and
disgracing us both; and I being stung by these reproaches retorted with
fierce and bitter speeches--for it is my nature to do that when I am
stirred, especially if the target of them is a person whom I had greatly
loved and respected before, as witness my various attitudes towards Miss
Hitchener, the Gisbornes, Harriet's sister, and others--and finally I
did not improve this state of things when I deserted my wife and spent a
whole month with the woman who ha