The author's explanations in no degree diminish the difficulty of understanding the story. On the contrary, they rather increase the difficulty. Having done his duty in calling the author's attention to some of the story's most glaring absurdities, and having (as he imagined) no pecuniary interest to be cautious for in respect to a work that was to be published at the charges of the young gentleman who, sooner or later, would, of course, be able to pay a heavy bill, Mr. Stockdale sent to the printers the thing of lunacy, of which Mr. Garnett says: 'Worthless as _St. Irvyne_ is of itself, it becomes of high interest when regarded as the first feeble step of a mighty genius on the road to consummate excellence.' It was enough for the author of _Zastrozzi_, in the first stage of his fanatical abhorrence of lawful wedlock, to make the virtuous Verezzi speak slightingly of the nuptial rite as needless for the consecration of his spiritual union with the amiable Matilda di Laurentini. In _St. Irvyne_ this repugnance to the fetters put upon passion, that should be left in absolute freedom, is declared more precisely and emphatically. Whilst the exemplary Fitzeustace declares his contempt for the ceremony, Eloise makes it clear she would rather be his mistress than his wife. At the same time, the author in his own person declares that, when Virtue shall have triumphed over Prejudice, women, instead of being given and taken in Marriage, will be given and taken in Free Love. In this matter the Oxonian surpasses the Etonian, and is seen to have advanced a long step towards the conclusions that qualified him to proclaim the sanctity of Free Love in _Laon and Cythna_,--the poem in which he 'startled' (his own word) the men and women of England by insisting that in a perfect state of society a brother and sister would be able, with perfect propriety, to live together in Free Love, and beget children of one another.