(i) Shelley compared with some of his contemporaries: “As a poet,” says J. A. Symonds, “Shelley contributed a new quality to English literature— a quality of ideality, freedom, and audacity, which severe critics of other nations think we lack. Byron’s daring is a different region; his elemental worldliness and pungent satire do not liberate our energies or cheer us with a new hope and splendid vista. Wordsworth, the very antithesis to Shelley in his reverent accord with institutions, suits our meditative mood, sustains us with a sound philosophy and braces us by healthy contact with the Nature, he so dearly loved. But in Wordsworth there is none of Shelley’s magnetism. What remains of permanent value in Coleridge’s poetry— such works as Christabel, The Ancient Mariner or Kubla Khan– is a product of pure artistic fancy, tempered by the author’s mysticism Keats, true and sacred poet as he was, loved nature with a somewhat sensuous devotion; nor did he share the prophetic fire, which burnt in Shelley’s verse. In none of Shelley’s greatest contemporaries was the lyrical faculty so paramount, and when we consider his minor songs, his odes or his more complicated dramas, we acknowledge that he was the loftiest and most spontaneous singer of the language. In range of power, he was also Conspicuous above the rest. While his genius was so varied and its flight so unapproached in swiftness, it would be in vain to deny that Shelley as an artist had faults, from which the men, with whom I have compared him, were more free. The most important of these are haste, incoherence, verbal carelessness, incompleteness, a want of narrative force and a weak hold on objective realities.”
