ABSTRACT
55It is not at all to be wondered at, that two suck spirits as Shelley and Mary Godwin, when they met, should become instantly attached. On his own doctrine of a state of pre-existence, we might say that the marriage had been determined long before, while yet the souls were waiting in the great antenatal antechamber! They met at last, like two drop of water—like two flames of fire—like two beautiful clouds which hare crossed the moon, the sky and all its stars, to hold their midnight assignation over a favourite and lonely river. Mary Godwin was an enthusiast from her childhood. She passed, by her own account, part of her youth at Broughty Ferry, in sweet and sinless reverie, among its cliffs. The place is, to us, familiar. It possesses some fine features—a bold promontory crowned with an ancient castle jutting far out the Tay, which here broadens into an arm of the ocean—a beach, in part smooth with sand, and in part paved with pebbles—cottages lying artlessly along the shore, dean, as if washed by the near sea—sandy hillocks rising behind—and westward, the river, like an inland lake,’ stretching around Dundee, with its fine harbour and its surmounting Law, which, in its turn, is surmounted by the far blue shapes of the gigantic Stuicknachroan and Benvoirlich. Did the bay of Spezis ever suggest to Mrs. Shelley’s mind the features of the Scottish scene? That scene, seen so often, seldom fails to bring before us her image—the child, and soon to be the bride, of genius. Was she ever, like Mirza, overheard in her soliloquies, and did she bear the shame, accordingly, in blushes which still rekindle at the recollection? Did the rude fishermen of the place deem her wondrous wise, or did they deem her mad, with her wandering eye, her rapt and gleaming countenance, her light step moving to the music of her maiden meditation? The smooth sand retains no trace of her young feet—to the present race she is altogether unknown; but we have more than once seen the man, and the lover of genius, turn round and look at the spot, with warmer interest, and with brightening eye, as we told them that she had been there.
