PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY AND MARY GODWIN
A great deal has been said and written in favor of early marriage; and,in a general way, early marriage may be an admirable thing. Young menand young women who have no special gift of imagination, and who havepractically reached their full mental development at twenty-one ortwenty-two--or earlier, even in their teens--may marry safely; becausethey are already what they will be. They are not going to experienceany growth upward and outward. Passing years simply bring them moreclosely together, until they have settled down into a sort of domesticunity, by which they think alike, act alike, and even gradually come tolook alike.
But early wedlock spells tragedy to the man or the woman of genius. Intheir teens they have only begun to grow. What they will be ten yearshence, no one can prophesy. Therefore, to mate so early in life is toinsure almost certain storm and stress, and, in the end, domesticwreckage.
As a rule, it is the man, and not the woman, who makes the false step;because it is the man who elects to marry when he is still very young.If he choose some ill-fitting, commonplace, and unresponsive nature tomatch his own, it is he who is bound in the course of time to learn hisgreat mistake. When the splendid eagle shall have got his growth, andshall begin to soar up into the vault of heaven, the poor littlebarn-yard fowl that he once believed to be his equal seems very faraway in everything. He discovers that she is quite unable to follow himin his towering flights.
The story of Percy Bysshe Shelley is a singular one. The circumstancesof his early marriage were strange. The breaking of his marriage-bondwas also strange. Shelley himself was an extraordinary creature. He wasblamed a great deal in his lifetime for what he did, and since thensome have echoed the reproach. Yet it would seem as if, at the verybeginning of his life, he was put into a false position against hiswill. Because of this he was misunderstood until the end of his briefand brilliant and erratic career.