is content to fancy, what, but for a most unfortunate sensibility, would court his actual enjoyment, without labour or research.
But when Mr. Shelley addresses himself directly to society, and deliberately proposes to loosen the key-stone of its arch, he ceases to be "madly wild," and becomes actually dangerous. His proposal to realize Mahomet's paradise on earth, is not merely an error. However disinterested the author of such a proposal might be, avails nothing. A child, with the most innocent intention in the world, might carry a torch amongst combustibles, and produce the most dreadful conflagration. He who should succeed in persuading society to cut the gordian knot of marriage, would do more towards the demoralization of his species, and the extinction of science, than all the tyrants, and all the hypocrites who ever lived. It is with these impressions, I propose to analyze his scheme of sexual intercourse.
In the poem itself, his ideas are not fully developed: though his conclusions are sufficiently palpable. The first passage to which it is necessary to refer, is in page forty-eight, of your edition, when speaking of the mischievous venality which the spirit of commerce, and the love of riches, has produced, he says:—
