One must be allowed to assist himself with conjectures like these when
trying to find his way through a literary swamp which has so many
misleading finger-boards up as this book is furnished with.

We have now arrived at a part of the swamp where the difficulties and
perplexities are going to be greater than any we have yet met with--
where, indeed, the finger-boards are multitudinous, and the most of them
pointing diligently in the wrong direction. We are to be told by the
biography why Shelley deserted his wife and child and took up with
Cornelia Turner and Italian. It was not on account of Cornelia's sighs
and sentimentalities and tea and manna and late hours and soft and sweet
and industrious enticements; no, it was because "his happiness in his
home had been wounded and bruised almost to death."

It had been wounded and bruised almost to death in this way:

1st. Harriet persuaded him to set up a carriage.

2d. After the intrusion of the baby, Harriet stopped reading aloud and
studying.

3d. Harriet's walks with Hogg "commonly conducted us to some fashionable
bonnet-shop."

4th. Harriet hired a wet-nurse.

5th. When an operation was being performed upon the baby, "Harriet stood
by, narrowly observing all that was done, but, to the astonishment of the
operator, betraying not the smallest sign of emotion."