"Of Coleridge I cannot speak but with reverence. His towering intellect! his gigantic power. . . . In reading his poetry I tremble -- like one who stands upon a volcano, conscious, from the very darkness bursting from the crater, of the fire and the light that are weltering below." ("Letter to B. --")
"As to Wordsworth, I have no faith in him. That he had, in youth, the
feelings of a poet I believe -- for there are glimpses of extreme delicacy
in his writings . . . but they have the appearance of a better day recollected;
and glimpses, at best, are little evidence of present poetic fire -- we
know that a few straggling flowers spring up daily in the crevices of the
glacier." ("Letter to B. --")