Ordinarily in the writings of the English Romantics, and particularly in the contemporaneous
poems of Byron (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III) and Percy Shelley ("Mont Blanc"),
a world of never-ending process is held up as far preferable to one of known or dogmatic
limitation—in the succinct formulation of Wordsworth, "The budding rose above the
rose full blown" (The Prelude, XI.121). Here Mary Shelley quietly signals the dangers
of engaging oneself totally in such a realm of "discovery and wonder."