Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1884 — The Rubbish of Great Writers. [ARTICLE]

The Rubbish of Great Writers.

An imaginative writer is almost certain to produce much that is worthless or much that is extravagant in the early stage of liis career. He tries his hand at many things, and perhaps fails more frequently than he succeeds; he is apt to rush eagerly into print, and to mistake ambition for achievement. This was pre-eminently the case with Shelley. No poet of our century has composed verses more exquisitely musical; not one, perhaps, in his finest work has written with more consummate art. As a boy, however, Shelley had the misfortune to produce some tales scarcely more coherent than the ravings of a madman; and because he wrote “St. Irvyne” and “Zastrozzi,” before he was 17, these rhapsodical romances are destined, we suppose, to occupy a place in every complete edition of his works.— Spectator.