Note 78 — Chapter II · THE CONFLUENCE
Reading edition
“The vices that call for the scourge of satire, are those which pervade the whole frame of society, and which, under some specious pretense of private duty, or the sanction of custom and precedent, are almost permitted to assume the semblance of virtue.” Melincourt, 160. (And here it is the pretense that makes it vulnerable.)
In the Introduction, Maid Marian is described to Shelley as a “comic romance of the twelfth century, which I shall make the vehicle of much oblique satire on all the oppressions that are done under the sun.”
He became, however, so carried away with the romance that he lost sight of the satire, except for brief glimpses.
In the Preface to Headlong Hall (1837 edition) he rounds up the current follies, under the name Pretense:
“Perfectibilians, deteriorationists, statu-quo-ites, phrenologists, transcendentalists, political economists, theorists in all sciences, projectors in all arts, morbid visionaries, romantic enthusiasts, lovers of music, lovers of the picturesque, and lovers of good dinners, march, and will march forever, pari passu, with the march of mechanics which some facetiously call the march of intellect. * * * The array of false pretensions, moral, political, and literary, is as imposing as ever; * * * and political mountebanks continue, and will continue, to puff nostrums and practice legerdemain under the eyes of the multitude; following * * * a course as tortuous as that of a river, but in a reverse process: beginning by being dark and deep, and ending by being transparent.” 46–7.
His motto for Crochet Castle is:
“De monde est plein de fous, et qui n’en veut pas voir, Doit se tenir tout seul, et casser son miroir.”