Medwin's Biography and Mrs. Shelley's Memorials are
worthless, because they attempt to idealise and deify the poet; and
then there is _The Real Shelley_, which is like a tedious legal
cross-examination of a highly imaginative and sensitive creature by a
shrewd and boisterous barrister.
It would be very difficult to compose a formal biography of Shelley,
because he was such a vague, imaginative, inconsistent creature. The
documentary evidence is often wholly contradictory, for the simple
reason that Shelley had no conception of accuracy. He did not, I am
sure, deliberately invent what was not true; but he had a very lively
imagination, and was capable of amplifying the smallest hints into
elaborate theories; his memory was very faulty, and he could construct
a whole series of mental pictures which were wholly inconsistent with
facts. It seems clear, too, that he was much under the influence of
opium at various times, and that his dreams and fancies, when he was
thus affected, presented themselves to him as objective facts. But, for
all that, it is not at all difficult to form a very real impression of
the man. He was one of those strange, unbalanced creatures that never
reach maturity; he was a child all his short life; he had the
generosity, the affection, the impulsiveness of a child, and he had,
too, the timidity, the waywardness, the excitability of a child.
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