If, as Peck supposes, “some students of … [Shelley's] poetry” will be surprised “to learn that the theme implied in the title of Alastor was in Shelley's mind as early as 1811,” these students will probably be still more surprised to learn that Shelley had already developed the Alastor idea in a manner strikingly similar to that of the poem, in St. Irvyne, written probably as early as April, 1810 and published in December, 1810. Alastor was written in September, 1815, and published in February, 1816.

The facts presented by Mr. William Templeman in his article Thoreau, Moralist of the Picturesque are undoubtedly correct: many of his deductions from these facts, however, appear to me to be inconclusive. The reason these deductions are inconclusive is, I think, due to a failure on his part to define the terms, or when once defined, to adhere to his definitions. In the development of his material he wavers between two definitions of “picturesque,” although he makes it clear at the outset which definition he has decided upon. The “picturesque,” states Mr. Templeman in the opening paragraph of his article, “may be defined as that particular kind of beauty, especially landscape beauty, which would look well in a picture.” No one would quarrel with this definition. But when he adds that the definition “would be clearer if the type of picture were specified,” Mr. Templeman lays himself open to the charge of not understanding Gilpin's term “picturesque beauty,” a term rightly thought by Gilpin to be a phrase “little understood.” It is quite clear that Gilpin meant any scene “forming, or fitted to form, a picture,” and not the more restricted meaning of the term: “possessing quaint, rugged, or homely charm, or unique or vivid suggestiveness, as distinguished from beauty or sublimity.”