"Rosalind and Helen" was begun at Marlow, and thrown aside--till I
found it; and, at my request, it was completed. Shelley had no care
for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind,
and develop some high or abstruse truth. When he does touch on human
life and the human heart, no pictures can be more faithful, more
delicate, more subtle, or more pathetic. He never mentioned Love but
he shed a grace borrowed from his own nature, that scarcely any other
poet has bestowed on that passion. When he spoke of it as the law of
life, which inasmuch as we rebel against we err and injure ourselves
and others, he promulgated that which he considered an irrefragable
truth. In his eyes it was the essence of our being, and all woe and
pain arose from the war made against it by selfishness, or
insensibility, or mistake. By reverting in his mind to this first
principle, he discovered the source of many emotions, and could
disclose the secrets of all hearts, and his delineations of passion
and emotion touch the finest chords of our nature.
"Rosalind and Helen" was finished during the summer of 1818, while we
were at the Baths of Lucca.
