And thus it has come about,
that genius, with its native instincts of reason, truth, and common
sense, is doomed to pay the penalty of its preeminence and its
divergencies, and suffer at the hands of friends and enemies alike,
from the show of those false appearances, insincerities,
equivocations, which are its natural and proper antipathies.
Since the foregoing observations were written, the writer has seen a
certain corroboration of them in the interesting "Memorials of
Shelley," recently edited by Lady Shelley, and published by Ticknor
and Fields. For, in the preface of this book, she takes occasion to
speak of the misstatements of all those who have hitherto written on
the subject of the poet, instancing the fallacies of Captain Medwin's
book, and also, in an especial manner, though vaguely enough, the
incorrectness, amounting to caricature, put forth by a later
biographer, one of Shelley's oldest friends,--by which she evidently
means to indicate Mr. Hogg. At the same time, the nature of her
Ladyship's book is, involuntarily, an additional evidence of the
difficulty that seems fated to attend all attempts to set forth or
set right the character of Shelley.
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