A LIST OF BOOKS - JScholarship

INTEODUCTOEY ESSAY. 25
Shelley should be written at once, while the
materials for it continue in reach ; not to
minister to the curiosity of the pubhc, but to
obliterate the last stain of that false hfe
which was forced on the pubhc's attention
before it had any curiosity on the matter,—a
biography, composed in harmony with the
present general disposition to have faith in
him, yet not shrinking from a candid statement
of all ambiguous passages, through a
reasonable confidence that the most doubtful
of them
will be found consistent with a
behef in the eventual perfection of his character,
according to the poor hmits of our
humanity.
Nor vrill men persist in confounding,
any more
than God confounds,
with genuine infidehty and an atheism of the
heart, those passionate, impatient struggles
of a boy towards distant truth and love,
made in the dark, and ended by one sweep
of the natural seas before the full moral