But his visit was cut short by the birth, on the very next day, of Mary's little girl, Clara. He found it expedient to depart for a time, but returned later in the month for a longer stay. This second visit more than confirmed his first impression, and he wrote to his daughter in warm, nay, enthusiastic praise of Shelley, against whom Isabel was, not unnaturally, much prejudiced, so much so, it seems, as to blind her even to the merits of his writings. After a warm panegyric of Shelley as A being of rare genius and talent, of truly republican frugality and plainness of manners, and of a soundness of principle and delicacy of moral tact that might put to shame (if shame they had) many of his detractors,--and withal so amiable that you have only to be half an hour in his company to convince you that there is not an atom of malevolence in his whole composition. Mr. Baxter proceeds-- Is there any wonder that I should become attached to such a man, holding out the hand of kindness and friendship towards me? Certainly not. Your praise of his book[25] put me in mind of what Pope says of Addison-- Damn with faint praise; assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, others teach to sneer. [You say] "some parts appear to be well written, but the arguments appear to me to be neither new nor very well managed." After Hume such a publication is quite puerile! As to the arguments not being new, it would be a wonder indeed if any new arguments could be adduced in a controversy which has been carried on almost since ever letters were known. As to their not being well managed, I should be happy if you would condescend on the particular instances of their being ill managed; it was the first of Shelley's works I had read. I read it with the notion that it _could_ only contain silly, crude, undigested and puerile remarks on a worn-out subject; and yet I was unable to discover any of that want of management which you complain of; but, God help me, I thought I saw in it everything that was opposite. As to its being puerile to write on such a subject after David Hume, I by no means think that he has exhausted the subject. I think rather that he has only proposed it--thrown it out, as it were, for a matter of discussion to others who might come after him, and write in a less bigoted, more liberal, and more enlightened age than the one he lived in. Think only how many great men's labours we should decree to be puerile if we were to hold everything puerile that has been written on this subject since the days of Hume! Indeed, my dear, the remark altogether savours more of the envy and illiberality of one jealous of his talents than the frankness and candour characteristic of my Isobel. Think, my dear, think for a moment what you would have said of this work had it come from Robert,[26] who is as old as Shelley was