They have been anxious to soften his "faults"; and the consequence
is, that we miss the force of the boy's logic and the vigor of his
Catonian experiments.
Again, accident has made me aware of facts which give me to
understand, that, in passing through the usual curriculum of a college
life in all its paths, Shelley did not go scathless,--but that, in
the tampering with venal pleasures, his health was seriously, and not
transiently, injured. The effect was far greater on his mind than on
his body; and the intellectual being greater than the physical
power, the healthy reaction was greater. But that reaction was
also, especially in early youth, principally marked by horror and
antagonism. Conscientious, far beyond even the ordinary maximum
amongst ordinary men, he felt bound to denounce the mischief from
which he saw others suffer more severely than himself, since in them
there was no such reaction. I have no doubt that he himself would have
spoken even plainer language, though to me his language is perfectly
transparent, if he had not been restrained by a superstitious notion
of his own, that the true escape from the pestilent and abhorrent
brutalities which he detected around him in "real" life is found in
"the ideal" form of thought and language.
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