t belongs to the mighty trunk and hard husk of nature and habit, but
is drawn up by irresistible levity to the regions of mere speculation
and fancy, to the sphere of air and fire, where his delighted spirit
floats in 'seas of pearl and clouds of amber.' There is no _caput
mortuum_ of worn-out, threadbare experience to serve as ballast to his
mind; it is all volatile intellectual salt of tartar, that refuses
to combine its evanescent, inflammable essence with anything solid or
anything lasting. Bubbles are to him the only realities:--touch them,
and they vanish. Curiosity is the only proper category of his mind,
and though a man in knowledge, he is a child in feeling. Hence he puts
everything into a metaphysical crucible to judge of it himself and
exhibit it to others as a subject of interesting experiment, without
first making it over to the ordeal of his common sense or trying it on
his heart. This faculty of speculating at random on all questions may
in its overgrown and uninformed state do much mischief without intending
it, like an overgrown child with the power of a man. Mr. Shelley has
been accused of vanity--I think he is chargeable with extreme levity;
but this levity is so great that I do not believe he is sensible of its
consequences. He strives to overturn all established creeds and systems;
but this is in him an effect of constitution. He runs before the most
extravagant opinions; but this is because he is held back by none of
the merely mechanical checks of sympathy and habit. He tampers with all
sorts of obnoxious subjects; but it is less because he is gratified
with the rankness of the taint than captivated with the intellectual
phosphoric light they emit. It would seem that he wished not so much
to convince or inform as to shock the public by the tenor of his
productions; but I suspect he is more intent upon startling himself with
his electrical experiments in morals and philosophy; and though they
may scorch other people, they are to him harmless amusements, the
coruscations of an Aurora Borealis, that 'play round the head, but do
not reach the heart.' Still I could wish that he would put a stop to
the incessant, alarming whirl of his voltaic battery. With his zeal, his
talent, and his fancy, he would do more good and less harm if he were
to give, up his wilder theories, and if he took less pleasure in feeling
his heart flutter in unison with the panic-struck apprehensions of his
readers. Persons of this