Coventry Patmore has said) he left a woman
not because, he was tired of her arms, but
because he^was tired of her soul. When he
found Mary Shelley wanting, he seems to have
fallen into the mistake of Wordsworth, who
complained in a charming piece of unreason-
ableness that his wife's love, which had been
a fountain, was now only a well :

Such change, and at the very door
Of my fond heart, hath made me poor.
Wordsworth probably learned, what Shelley
was incapable of learning, that love can never
permanently be a fountain. A Catholic poet,
in an article which you almost fear to breathe
upon lest you should flutter some of the frail



22


SHELLEY




pastel-like bloom, has said the thing: "Love
itself has tidal moments, lapses and flows due
to the metrical rule of the interior heart.""
Elementary reason should proclaim this true.
Love is an affection, its display an emotion :
love is the air, its display is the wind. An
affection may be constant ; an emotion can no
more be constant than the wind can constantly
blow. All, therefore, that a man can reason-
ably ask of his wife is that her love should be
indeed a well. A well; but a Bethesda-well,
into which from time to time the angel of
tenderness descends to trouble the waters for
the healing of the beloved. Such a love
Shelley's second wife appears unquestionably
to have given him. Nay, she was content
that he should veer while she remained true ;
she companioned him intellectually, shared
his views, entered into his aspirations, and
yet — yet, even at the date of Epipsychidion,
the foolish child, her husband, assigned her


I The Rhythm of Life. By Alice Meynell.
