But though such forebode, not such shall be parents of it.
[Footnote: Appendix E.] Those who would reform the world must show that
they do not speak in the heat of wild impulse; their lives must be
unstained by passionate error; they must be severe lawgivers to
themselves. They must be religious students of the divine purpose with
regard to man, if they would not confound the fancies of a day with
the requisitions of eternal good. Their liberty must be the liberty of
law and knowledge. But as to the transgressions against custom which
have caused such outcry against those of noble intention, it may be
observed that the resolve of Eloisa to be only the mistress of
Abelard, was that of one who saw in practice around her the contract
of marriage made the seal of degradation. Shelley feared not to be
fettered, unless so to be was to be false. Wherever abuses are seen,
the timid will suffer; the bold will protest. But society has a right
to outlaw them till she has revised her law; and this she must be
taught to do, by one who speaks with authority, not in anger or haste.
If Godwin's choice of the calumniated authoress of the "Rights of
Woman," for his honored wife, be a sign of a new era, no less so is an
article to which I have alluded some pages back, published five or six
years ago in one of the English Reviews, where the writer, in doing
fall justice to Eloisa, shows his bitter regret that she lives not now
to love him, who might have known bettor how to prize her love than
did the egotistical Abelard.
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