]
the reader does not always remain in a sympathetically prayerful mind.
Such reverence paid by the poet to his gift calls to mind the multiple
Miss Beauchamp, of psychologic fame, and her comment on the vagaries of
her various personalities, "But after all, they are all me!" Too often,
when the poet is kneeling in adoration of his Muse, the irreverent
reader is likely to suspect that he realizes, only too well, that it is
"all me."
However, if the Philistine reader sets up as a critic, he must make good
his charges. Have we any real grounds for declaring that the alleged
divinity who inspires the poet is merely his own intelligence, or lack
of it? Perhaps not. And yet the dabbler in psychology finds a good deal
to indicate the poet's impression that the "subconscious" is shaping his
verse. Shelley was especially fascinated by the mysterious regions of
his mind lying below the threshold of his ordinary thought. In fact,
some of his prose speculations are in remarkable sympathy with recent
scientific papers on the subject.
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