The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1866-09-29
gMistellatteous.
shelley's Beauties and Defects.

Quite a number of New England Transcenden-
taists, says the Philadelphia Ledger, every year
90 to Europe, visit Rome, find the grave of Shell
ley and come or write home, holding up this
.wayward son of genius to the admiration of the
world, not only as poet of exquisite sensibility
which he was, but as one whose life and princi-
pies were worthy of sympathy and admiration,
which he was not. A recent writer speaks of
g the cruel injustice with which Shelly was hun
ted in the abused names Of morality and religion"
He is represented as one of the purest and most
virtuous beings who ever lived-a sort of perse-
cuted saint and martyr ofa new and higher kind
of religion. 1t is but proper that truer esti-
mate of him, both as poet and asa man, should
be formed by both friends and foes. There is
an exquisite beauty in this poetry, and q sort of
intellectual elevation and refinement that many
of those who have most severely judged him as a
man have been too slow to admit. To his real
elevation, loftiness and love of dreamy beauty
and goodness, so far as he knew anything about
them, adequate justice has not been done, per-
haps, by those who can see no goodness from
any but their own-stand-point. Perhaps no one
ever had purer love of abstract truth, so far as
be could see it.
a There is one road
To peace and that is truth, which follow We
Love sometimes leads astray to misery"
But love of truth, or what appears such to
the individual is not the only virtue, and may
where other qualities are wanting, be most dam
gerous 1t was so with Shelley. There was a
want of that reverence for those-older and wiser
than himself which made him practically and
theoretically set at defiance all the fundamental
principles of duty both to God and man, and in
manner most dangerous and pernicious. A
youth of seventeen, in his second term at Oxford,
q not distinguished as scholar" and with very
slight metaphysical reading, just beginning log
ic, publishes work to show g The Necessity of
Atheism - and when the authorities took no
notice of that, sent a circular to all the twenty
five heads of colleges requesting them to assent
to his argument Every college officer knows
that, with such want of due respect apparent su-
periority of instructors, natural and proper
reverence for the unseen was not to be expected.
With such an insane conceit it was best he should
be sent away and nothing shows more his ig-
norance of the principles by which all govern
ment must be conducted than his surprise that
body of distinguished cegyman, his instruc-
tors. should have felt shocked and insulted, and
expelled him.
No doubt he was generous, earnest, loving,
and so far unselfsh-not proud like Byron-but
this love was worse than his hate sometimes, for
it was accompanied with principles OF such gross
and universal licentionSness as to produce the
suicide of his abandoned first wife while he was
living with one who became his second. DR..
Here was one great defect in Shelley be loved
everybody and everything in a certain way, but
nobody and nothing exclusively, He hated
nothing, however evil. Of himself he writes
g Alas, good friend, what profit can you see in
hating such hateless thing as me There is no
sport in hate where all the rage is on one side.
His defects of character were two of the most COM
mon and most fatal to human happiness and vir-
tue that can possibly be conceived. He lacked
reverence and be lacked moral purity. He even
gloried in his shame, and was the deliberate enc
nv of the sanctity Of marriage; No doubt 1t
will be said these were the immaturties OF youth,
and had he lived longer he would become wiser.
He did outgrow his atheism, and he would per-
baps have seen the wisdom of that great funda-
mental law of all that is highest and hoest in
the ties of lfe--the law which Christianity ex-
presses as the great dictate of nature itselin re-
gard to marriage.
The suicide of beautiful girl, who had forsa-
ken all for him. ought to have enlightened him.
But he was creature of impulse, one who dehed
h;s own impulses and fell down and worshipped
them. and no wonder if he can find plenty who
svmpathize with him. There was no self denial
in him no real effort to conform the individual
life and action to universal standard OF duty out
of and beyond the individual self 1t is on these
accounts that the wisest and best consider the
dreamy imagination Of Shelley not wise in phi
losphy for men, aeF safe or pure IN virtue and
morals for their daughters, II he may and must
be read for his Beauties it should be at least with
clear understanding of his uttef defectlyenesS
as to points most essential to elevated manhood,
to real no bleness of character.