All this is well—but what follows is not so. "It may be amusing"—says Miss Stickney, at page 189, "to see how a poet, and that of no mean order, can undesignedly murder his own offspring"—and she proceeds to extract, from Shelley, in illustration, some passages, of whose exquisite beauty she has evidently not the slightest comprehension. She commences with
| "Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory— Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken." |
"Sicken" is here italicized; and the author of the "Poetry of Life" thinks the word so undeniably offensive as to render a farther allusion to it unnecessary. A few lines below, she quotes, in the same tone of criticism, the terrific image in the Ode to Naples.
| "Naples!—thou heart of men, which ever pantest Naked, beneath the lidless eye of Heaven!" |
And again, on the next page, from the same author—
| "Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all We can desire, O Love!" |
Miss Stickney should immediately burn her copy of Shelley—it is to her capacities a sealed book.
MISS SEDGWICK'S SKETCHES.