This
was a task of conciliation rather than destruction. And yet even this
conservative view of the Shelleys' exegesis cannot--and will not--
detract from the value of the above document. Surely, this curious
theory of the equal 'inspiration' of Polytheism and the Jewish or
Christian religions, whether it was invented or simply espoused by
Mrs. Shelley, evinces in her--for the time being at least--a very
considerable share of that adventurous if somewhat uncritical alacrity
of mind which carried the poet through so many religious and political
problems. It certainly vindicates her, more completely perhaps than
anything hitherto published, against the strictures of those who knew
her chiefly or exclusively in later years, and could speak of her as a
'most conventional slave', who 'even affected the pious dodge', and
'was not a suitable companion for the poet'. [Footnote: Trelawny's
letter, 3 April 1870; in Mr. H. Buxton Forman's edition, 1910, p.
229.] Mrs. Shelley--at twenty-three years of age--had not yet run the
full 'career of her humour'; and her enthusiasm for classical
mythology may well have, later on, gone the way of her admiration for
Spinoza, whom she read with Shelley that winter (1820-1), as Medwin
notes, [Footnote: I. e. ed. H. Buxton Forman, p. 253.
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