Sentence: I could have helped him on in life

[Haihao]

Hi,

Could you help me out with the following passage?

[Alan]

Hi Haihao,

First congratulations on your perseverance with James Joyce! I would suggest (1) would explain the sentence but of course I don't know the context and so I can't know whether 'he' lived on or not.

Alan
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English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Here comes 2004...

[Haihao]

Hi Alan,

Thank you for your encouragement. Some commentary book on Ulysses says 'he', the son of the speaker (Mr Bloom), died about 10 days after his birth.

I am really enjoying, very hard though, my first reading of this wonderful book. Please help me out with my lack-of-confidence/ability in correct understanding Mr Joyce's words.

Thank you!

Haihao

[Mister Micawber]

.
The conditional 'could have helped', I think, makes your suggested sentences essentially synonymous:

I could have helped him get on/along in his life if he had lived.

No futher explanation than the verb tense is one way Joyce has of subtly building the story.
.
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Native English teacher at Mister Micawber's