It is said that she took to drinking as her desolated life tapered into eternity,--drinking, in fact, so deeply that the once bright and lovely girl became a sot and drunkard. It may be so. Foolish people, and by no means altogether foolish people, when they sink into sorrow, are apt to drink for the sake of drowning care, and Heaven knows that poor Harriett (only twenty-one years old) had care enough to excuse her for trying to drown it--even in so futile and disgusting a manner. If Harriett drowned her pain of body and mind with wine and brandy, Shelley drowned his pain of body and mind with laudanum. Of late years it has been the fashion of the Shelleyan enthusiasts to refer to Harriett’s depravation, as though it gave a certain colouring of justification to the poet’s withdrawal from her. My view of the matter is, that Shelley alone is to be blamed for the offences, committed by Harriett either _during_ their association, or after their separation; and that human compassion for the poor girl’s errors should be larger and warmer in proportion to their number and magnitude. Let the reader who hesitates to take this view of Mrs. Shelley’s case ask himself these questions,--Who caught Harriett as a child on the door-step of her schoolroom? Who illuminated her when she was just sixteen years old out of the Christian religion? Who taught her that the matrimonial rite was a piece of antiquated mummery? Who taught her that the promises made at marriage were not obligatory? Who taught her to think conjugal constancy a vitiating sentiment, and chastity a monkish superstition? Who encouraged her in the habit of talking of suicide as the death that would probably close her career at an early date? Who, by talking of suicide as the possible termination of his own days in this world, at least, confirmed her in the habit of looking to suicide as a convenient and innocent way of escaping from this life’s wretchedness? All these questions must be answered by one name.