etc.
Shelley moved to Bracknell, July 27th (this is still 1813) purposely to
be near this unwholesome prairie-dogs’ nest. The fabulist says: “It was
the entrance into a world more amiable and exquisite than he had yet
known.”
“In this acquaintance the attraction was mutual”–and presently it grew
to be very mutual indeed, between Shelley and Cornelia Turner, when they
got to studying the Italian poets together. Shelley, “responding like a
tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of sentiment,” had his
chance here. It took only four days for Cornelia’s attractions to begin
to dim Harriet’s. Shelley arrived on the 27th of July; on the 31st he
wrote a sonnet to Harriet in which “one detects already the little rift
in the lover’s lute which had seemed to be healed or never to have gaped
at all when the later and happier sonnet to Ianthe was written”–in
September, we remember:
Exhibit D
“EVENING. TO HARRIET
“O thou bright Sun! Beneath the dark blue line
Of western distance that sublime descendest,
And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams decline,
Thy million hues to every vapor lendest,
And over cobweb, lawn, and grove, and stream
Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light,
Till calm Earth, with the parting splendor bright,
Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream;
What gazer now with astronomic eye
Could coldly count the spots within thy sphere?
Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly
The thoughts of all that makes his passion dear,
And turning senseless from thy warm caress
Pick flaws in our close-woven happiness.”
I cannot find the “rift”; still it may be there. What the poem seems to
say is, that a person would be coldly ungrateful who could consent to
count and consider little spots and flaws in such a warm, great,
satisfying sun as Harriet is. It is a “little rift which had seemed to
be healed, or never to have gaped at all.” That is, “one detects” a
little rift which perhaps had never existed. How does one do that?
How does one see the invisible? It is the fabulist’s secret; he knows
how to detect what does not exist, he knows how to see what is not
seeable; it is his gift, and he works it many a time to poor dead Harriet
Shelley’s deep damage.
“As yet, however, if there was a speck upon Shelley’s happiness it was no
more than a speck”–meaning the one which one detects where “it may never
have gaped at all”–“nor had Harriet cause for discontent.”
Shelley’s Latin instructions to his wife had ceased. “From a teacher he
had now become a pupil.” Mrs. Boinville and her young married daughter
Cornelia were teaching him Italian poetry; a fact which warns one to
receive with some caution that other statement that Harriet had no
“cause for discontent.”
Shelley had stopped instructing Harriet in Latin, as before mentioned.
The biographer thinks that the busy life in London some time back, and
the intrusion of the baby, account for this. These were hindrances, but
were there no others? He is always overlooking a detail here and there
that might be valuable in helping us understand a situation. For
instance, when a man has been hard at work at the Italian poets with a
pretty woman, hour after hour, and responding like a tremulous instrument
to every breath of passion or of sentiment in the meantime, that man is
dog-tired when he gets home, and he can’t teach his wife Latin; it would
be unreasonable to expect it.
Up to this time we have submitted to having Mrs. Boinville pushed upon
us as ostensibly concerned in these Italian lessons, but the biographer
drops her now, of his own accord. Cornelia “perhaps” is sole teacher.
Hogg says she was a prey to a kind of sweet melancholy, arising from
causes purely imaginary; she required consolation, and found it in
Petrarch. He also says, “Bysshe entered at once fully into her views and
caught the soft infection, breathing the tenderest and sweetest
melancholy, as every true poet ought.”
Then the author of the book interlards a most stately and fine compliment
to Cornelia, furnished by a man of approved judgment who knew her well