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24 INTEODUCTOEY ESSAY.
effectually, by those early authentic notices of
Shelley's career and the corroborative accompaniment
of his letters, in which not only
the main tenor and principal result of his
Hfe, but the purity and beauty of many
of the processes which had conduced to
them, were made apparent enough for the
general reader's purpose,—whoever Hghtly
condemned Shelley first, on the evidence of
reviews and gossip, as lightly acquitting him
now, on that of memoirs and correspondence.
Still, it is advisable to lose no opportunity of
strengthening and completing the chain of
biographical testimony; much more, of course,
for the sake of the poet's original lovers,
whose volunteered sacrifice of particular
principle in favour of absorbing sympathy we
might desire to dispense with, than for the
sake of his foolish haters, who have long
since diverted upon other objects their
obtuseness or malignancy. A full life of