We must be careful not to condone his faults in
the light of his poetical genius; but for all that, if Shelley had
never written a line of his exquisite poetry, I cannot help feeling
that if one had known him, one would have felt the same eager regard
for him. One cannot draw near to a personality by a process of logic.
But one fact emerges. There is little doubt that one of the most
oppressive, injurious, detestable forces in the world is the force of
conventionality, that instinct which makes men judge a character and an
action, not by its beauty or by its merits, but by comparing it with
the standard of how the normal man would regard it. This vast and
intolerable medium of dulness, which penetrates our lives like a thick,
dark mist, allowing us only to see the object in range of our immediate
vision, hostile to all originality, crushingly respectable, that
dictates our hours, our occupations, our amusements, our emotions, our
religion, is the most ruthless and tyrannical thing in the world.
Against this Shelley fought with all his might; his error was to hate
it so intensely as to fail to see the few grains of gold, the few
principles of kindness, of honesty, of consideration, of soberness,
that it contains. He paid dearly for his error, in the consciousness of
the contempt and infamy which were heaped upon his quivering spirit.
But he did undoubtedly love truth, beauty, and purity.
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