but carried away by intensity of desire. It may
seem a curious image, but one cannot help feeling
that if Shelley had been contemporary with and brought
into contact with Christ, he would have been an ardent
follower and disciple, and would have been regarded
with a deep tenderness and love; his sins would have
been swiftly forgiven. I do not wish to minimise
them; he behaved ungratefully, inconsiderately, wilfully.
His usage of his first wife is a deep blot on his character.
But in spite of his desertion of her, and his abduction
of Mary Godwin, his life was somehow an essentially
innocent one. It is possible to paint his career
in dark colours; it is impossible to say that his
example is an inspiring one; he is the kind of character
that society is almost bound to take precautions against;
he was indifferent to social morality, he was regardless
of truth, neglectful of commercial honesty; but for
all that one feels more hopeful about the race that
can produce a Shelley. We must be careful not
to condone his faults in the light of his poetical
genius; but for all that, if Shelley had never written
a line of his exquisite poetry, I cannot help feeling
that if one had known him, one would have felt the
same eager regard for him. One cannot draw near
to a personality by a process of logic. But one
fact emerges. There is little doubt that one of
the most oppressive, injurious, detestable forces
in the world is the force of conventionality, that
instinct which makes men judge a character and an
action, not by its beauty or by its merits, but by
comparing it with the standard of how the normal man
would regard it. This vast and intolerable medium
of dulness, which penetrates our lives like a thick,
dark mist, allowing us only to see the object in range
of our immediate vision, hostile to all originality,
crushingly respectable, that dictates our hours, our
occupations, our amusements, our emotions, our religion,
is the most ruthless and tyrannical thing in the world.
Against this Shelley fought with all his might; his
error was to hate it so intensely as to fail to see
the few grains of gold, the few principles of kindness,
of honesty, of consideration, of soberness, that it
contains. He paid dearly for his error, in the
consciousness of the contempt and infamy which were
heaped upon his quivering spirit. But he did
undoubtedly love truth, beauty, and purity. One
has to get on the right side of his sins and indulgences,
his grotesque political theories, his inconsistencies;
but when once one has apprehended the real character,
one is never in any doubt again.