The biography observes that portions of this letter “read like the tired moaning of a wounded creature.” Guesses at the nature of the wound are permissible; we will hazard one.
Read by the light of Shelley's previous history, his letter seems to be the cry of a tortured conscience. Until this time it was a conscience that had never felt a pang or known a smirch. It was the conscience of one who, until this time, had never done a dishonorable thing, or an ungenerous, or cruel, or treacherous thing, but was now doing all of these, and was keenly aware of it. Up to this time Shelley had been master of his nature, and it was a nature which was as beautiful and as nearly perfect as any merely human nature may be. But he was drunk now, with a debasing passion, and was not himself. There is nothing in his previous history that is in character with the Shelley of this letter. He had done boyish things, foolish things, even crazy things, but never a thing to be ashamed of. He had done things which one might laugh at, but the privilege of laughing was limited always to the thing itself; you could not laugh at the motive back of it--that was high, that was noble. His most fantastic and quixotic acts had a purpose back of them which made them fine, often great, and made the rising laugh seem profanation and quenched it; quenched it, and changed the impulse to homage.
Up to this time he had been loyalty itself, where his obligations lay--treachery was new to him; he had never done an ignoble thing--baseness was new to him; he had never done an unkind thing--that also was new to him.
This was the author of that letter, this was the man who had deserted his young wife and was lamenting, because he must leave another woman's house which had become a “home” to him, and go away. Is he lamenting mainly because he must go back to his wife and child? No, the lament is mainly for what he is to leave behind him. The physical comforts of the house? No, in his life he had never attached importance to such things. Then the thing which he grieves to leave is narrowed down to a person--to the person whose “dewy looks” had sunk into his breast, and whose seducing words had “stirred poison there.”