son.  But, if a pretty verse-maker is privileged to be an undutiful son, what becomes of all our old notions?  I think once more of the great Sir Walter, and I remember his unquestioning obedience to his parents.  Then we may also remember Gibbon, who was quite as able and useful a man as Shelley.  The historian loved a young French lady, but his father refused consent to their marriage, and Gibbon quietly obeyed and accepted his hard fate.  The passion sanctified his whole life, and, as he says, made him more dear to himself; he settled his colossal work, and remained unmarried for life.  He may have been foolish:  but I prefer his behaviour to that of a man who treats his father with contumely and ingratitude even while he is living upon him.  We hear much of Shelley’s unselfishness, but it does not appear that he ever denied himself the indulgence of a whim.  The “Ode to the West Wind,” the “Ode Written in Dejection near Naples,” and “The Skylark” are unsurpassed and unsurpassable; but I can hardly pardon a man for cruelty and turpitude merely because he produces a few masterpieces of art.

A confident and serene critic attacks Mr. Arnold very severely because the latter writer thinks that poets should be amenable to fair and honest social laws.  If I understand the critic aright, we must all be so thankful for beautiful literary works that we must be ready to let the producers of such works play any pranks they please under high heaven.  They are the children of genius, and we are to spoil them; “Childe Harold” and “Manfred” are such wondrous productions that we need never think of the author’s orgies at Venice and the Abbey; “Epipsychidion” is lovely, so we should not think of poor Harriet Westbrook casting herself into the Serpentine.  This is marvellous doctrine, and one hardly knows whither it might lead us if we carried it into thorough practice.  Suppose that, in addition to indulging the spoiled children of genius, we were to approve all the proceedings of the clever children in any household.  I fancy that the dwellers therein would have an unpleasant time.  Noble charity towards human weakness is one thing; but blind adulation of clever and immoral men is another.  We have great need to pity the poor souls who are the prey of their passions, but we need not worship them.  A large and lofty charity will forgive the shortcomings of Robert Burns; we may even love that wild and misguided but essentially noble man.  That is well; yet we must not put Burns forward and offer our adulation in such a way as to set him up for a model to young men.  A man may read—­

The pale moon is setting beyont the white wave,
And Time is setting with me, oh!

The pathos will wring his heart; but he should not ask any youth to imitate the conduct of the great poet.  Carlyle said very profoundly that new morality must be made before we can judge Mirabeau; but Carlyle never put his hero’s excesses in the foreground of his history, nor did he try to apologize for them; he only said, “Here is a man whose stormy passions overcame him and drove him down the steep to ruin!  Think of him at his best, pardon him, and imitate, in your weak human fashion, the infinite Divine Mercy.”  That is good; and it is certainly very different from the behaviour of writers who ask us to regard their heroes’ evil-doing as not only pardonable, but as being almost admirable.