I loved with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew no
bounds
This reticence is exactly what friendship is intended to transcend, if we
take Walton's notion of its value as a benchmark. He looks to an ideal
friend "to regulate [his] mind" (Letter
2.2). Even Victor, in the revised text, conceives the value of a
friend as being "to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures" (Letter 4.7). Victor's reserve, however,
negates this function of friendship, suggesting a limit to how far it is
able to surmount the barriers of what a later time might call ego-defences.
