Would you have had Shelley stick to Harriet Westbrooke? and how shall one interpret his feelings for Amelia Viviani?  What would have happened if Keats had lived and married Fanny Brawne—­she who flirted with somebody else while he was sick and did not even know that he was a poet?  Yet she was an inspiration to Keats, as Mary Godwin (and Amelia Viviani) were to Shelley (1).  Ought Byron to have said ‘No’ to Claire or Lady Caroline Lamb or the Countess Guiccioli or any one of the many maids and matrons that besieged his heart?  Could anything have kept Rosina Wheeler and Bulwer Lytton side by side,—­Rosina Wheeler to whom, before marriage, Lytton could find write, “Oh, my dear Rose!  Where shall I find words to express my love for you?” and to whom, after marriage, he wrote, “Madam, The more I consider your conduct and your letter, the more unwarrantable they appear”?

God in heaven! what a pitiful game it all is!  And alas! as George Sand says, “All this, you see, is a game that we are playing, but our heart and life are the stakes, and that has an aspect which is not always pleasing.” (2)

(1) See the Dedication of “The Revolt of Islam” (and see the “Epipsychidion").

(2) Letter to Alfred de Musset.

* * *

Many a man’s heart has been treated as a football.  Yes; but many a woman’s heart has been treated as a shuttlecock.

* * *

Human beings there are—­both men and women—­out of whom, at a mere touch, virtue seems to go:  converse with them is stimulating; contact enthralling.  And yet,

Powerful as physical or as mental attraction may be, permanently to retain the attracted object requires a profounder force.  Perhaps, though,

Beauty and grace and brilliancy may attract; it is only something far more deep-seated that retains.  In other words,

Charm of body and mind may appeal to body and mind; only the heart appeals to the heart.  Those who know not this, and they are

Many, permit the heart to leak through the senses; with the result that, when demands are made upon the heart, that cistern is found to have run dry.  So,

To philanderers and to flirts, when a great and true love comes, they do not comprehend it, and they cannot appreciate it.  Wherefore,

Would-be lover, keep thy heart intact until it be required of thee.

* * *

You need not imagine that, because you have once been permitted to see some way down into a human heart, that you will necessarily ever again be so permitted.

* * *

Hard words break no bones.  But they often break hearts.

* * *

Drink is too often the refuge of the masculine, and a rich husband the refuge of the feminine, broken heart.

* * *

Extreme youth thinks the world is a toyshop—­where anything may be had for the asking; old age regards it as a museum—­where nothing may be touched.