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Rh ley, in melody and exuberance of fancy, was incalculably superior to Wordsworth? But mark their inferences.

Shelley.

Wordsworth.

If Wordsworth have superiority then, it consists in greater maturity and dignity of sentiment.

While reading Shelley, we must surrender ourselves without reserve to the magnetic power of genius; we must not expect to be satisfied, but rest content with being stimulated. We alone who can resign his soul in unquestioning simplicity to the descant of the nightingale or the absorption of the sea-side, may hope to receive from the mind of a Shelley the suggestions which, to those who know how to receive, he can so liberally impart.

I cannot leave Shelley without quoting two or three stanzas, in which he speaks of himself, and which are full of his peculiar beauties and peculiar faults.