The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-04-05
s A TRIBUTE. TO SHELLEY. ],

, when they are harsh and demonised with nreindice robbed him of the last cling inr rar of his reputation. Scandal-mon- rers were ever ready to drag him into the uuag mire of disrepute, each thinking himself a Zoilus dissecting the work or a Homer It vas . cut-and-slash game m which the contestants tried to see how much damage they could do. How close. poor souls, could they distinguish them selves and leave their names written In the sands of timer And how glorious if was for these moths to fiutter about the flame, in buzzing protest, and dying. were found there, where the fire of a genius had burnt itself out, cremated in false-earned glory! So it was with every mistake and foux pas that the hapless poet made. Men chronicled 1t, exagge- rated it, made a mountain out of a dunshill. And the crows Tapped their wings in exultation; they squawked 1t; they hissed 1t; they screened it, and his tory and tradition took up the cry. And we of today have thrust into our faces picture of Caliban fierceness, and that is the poor sin-curse Shelley!
 It is true that Shelley had his "intri- gues." So had the howlers in the throng. but, they were not subjected to the Par thian arrows of the throngs criticism. It Is also true that he broke faith with his first wife, and while his relatives and
 her relatives were trying to decide whether their Scotch wedding were
 binding, he slipped quietly. off to Europe
 with the ideal and idol of his life," Mary
 God Twin, whom he married two years
 later, after it being ascertained that liar
 riet had ended her life in the Serpentine
 River, I may add that his former wife, after her desertion. had lived openly with
 a certain Colonel in the army. and be- | N1 he
 mitted suicide. She left behind her two
 children, both of which Shelley was the
 father. Had she postponed her death
 she would have given birth to another child-and that was not Shelley's. On
 hearing this, Shelley was deeply moved. and he cried out, "Oh. Harriet! Harriet!'
 Though they had parted and she had
 died in shame, there was still a tender
 spot in his heart for her. In a letter to
 Southey. he vowed before God that he
 had not been the cause of her ruin. But
 in Mary the poet had at last found comforter, and his ideal, the sad death of Harriet was soon forgotten. The re- niainder of his life was spent in the
 shadow of his love. But still the Goodwin family averted it's face in anger and
 shame. Mary never received the pardon of her own people, and finally withdraw ing from the world, she devoted herself
  Listen to what she says in one of her many appeals for him: 70! that my be- loved Shelley should stand thus slander- 1 ed in your minds-he the gentlest and
 most humane of creatures" And so he
 was. But the world does not understand, | but Mary knows. and that is why she | made sacrifices on a stained altar of love. After all, she proved herself a strong-minded woman and his savior on cath. It was during this seclusion
 that Mary wrote that astonishing book, "Frankenstein." which went to prove that she was also a woman of great lit- erary talent, and the proper associate for her husband. It was she who after his death assumed the difficult task of arranging and gathering together his life work: It was a pleasure to be thus
 near him in death. His life was taken up with his memory. In seclusion, I quote what she writes in one of her prefaces to a collection of his poems: Hereafter men will lament that his transcendent powers of intellect were ex- tinguished before they had bestowed on them their choicest treasures. To his friends his loss is irremediable; the wise the brave. the gentle is gone foreverr
 -" Horatio ankford King