--the poem in which Shelley beseeches
her to "bid the remorseless feeling flee" and "pity" if she "cannot
love." We have just that as "evidence," and out of its meagre materials
the biographer builds a cobhouse of conjectures as big as the Coliseum;
conjectures which convince him, the prosecuting attorney, but ought to
fall far short of convincing any fair-minded jury.

Shelley's love-poems may be very good evidence, but we know well that
they are "good for this day and train only." We are able to believe that
they spoke the truth for that one day, but we know by experience
that they could not be depended on to speak it the next. The very
supplication for a rewarming of Harriet's chilled love was followed so
suddenly by the poet's plunge into an adoring passion for Mary Godwin
that if it had been a check it would have lost its value before a lazy
person could have gotten to the bank with it.

Hardness, stubbornness, pride, vindictiveness--these may sometimes
reside in a young wife and mother of nineteen, but they are not charged
against Harriet Shelley outside of that poem, and one has no right
to insert them into her character on such shadowy "evidence" as that.
Peacock knew Harriet well, and she has a flexible and persuadable look,
as painted by him:

"Her manners were good, and her whole aspect and demeanor such
manifest emanations of pure and truthful nature that to be once
in her company was to know her thoroughly. She was fond of her
husband, and accommodated herself in every way to his tastes.
If they mixed in society, she adorned it; if they lived in
retirement, she was satisfied; if they travelled, she enjoyed
the change of scene."

"Perhaps" she had never desired that the breach should be irreparable
and complete. The truth is, we do not even know that there was any
breach at all at this time. We know that the husband and wife went
before the altar and took a new oath on the 24th of March to love and
cherish each other until death--and this may be regarded as a sort of
reconciliation itself, and a wiping out of the old grudges. Then Harriet
went away, and the sister-in-law removed herself from her society. That
was in April. Shelley wrote his "appeal" in May, but the corresponding
went right along afterwards. We have a right to doubt that the subject
of it was a "reconciliation," or that Harriet had any suspicion that she
needed to be r