SHELLEY PLAIN
SIR,—I should like to express my warm appreciation of Mr.- John Wain's interesting and generous review of my book, Flight of the Skylark.
May I be allowed to point out one small error ? Mr. Wain charges me with omitting to mention the undergraduate debate on Shelley and Byrop in 1829. An account of this does, however, appear in Chapter V, pp. 87-89. The fact that in the American- made index it figures—to our ears invertedly —as ' Cambridge-Oxford Union debate on Shelley' may be largely responsible for the difficulty in locating it. I agree entirely with Mr. Wain about the importance of the debate as a landmark in Shelley's progress, and I hoped to have made this clear.
Concerning Walter Bagehot, my contention was not that an economist must write badly on poetry, but that this particular economist' and literary amateur had made a poor job of interpreting Shelley. Granted that the traditional attitude to Bagehot is deferential, 1 still honestly doubt that Mr. Wain or any other alert present-day critic, on a fresh and unbiased reading, can find him at all persuasive.
Finally the case of Kingsley: his remark about Beatrice Cenci would earn far more credit for acuteness if he had not been in such a blustering high temper when he made it. If 1 have jeered at Shelley's detractors it
Is because most of them displayed more prejudice than balance, and less true argu- ment than asininity.—Yours faithfully,
SYLVA NORMAN 1146 Barrowgate Road, W.4
Previous page
