humble suppliant in the temple of beauty. For the clearer his glimpse of the transcendent vision has been, the more conscious he is of his blindness after the glory has passed, and the more unquenchable is his desire for a new and fuller revelation.

to Love in Dian's Lap, A Judgment in Heaven, Francis Thompson; Urania, Matthew Arnold; There Have Been Vast Displays of Critic Wit, Alexander Smith; Invita Minerva and L'Envoi to the Muse, J. R. Lowell; The Voiceless, O. W. Holmes; Fata Morgana, and Epimetheus, or the Poet's Afterthought, Longfellow; L'Envoi, Kipling; The Apology, and Gleam on Me, Fair Ideal, Lewis Morris; Dedication to Austin Dobson, E. Gosse; A Country Nosegay, and Gleaners of Fame, Alfred Austin; Another Tattered Rhymster in the Ring, G. K. Chesterton; To Any Poet, Alice Meynell; The Singer, and To a Lady on Chiding Me For Not Writing, Richard Realf; The Will and the Wing and Though Dowered with Instincts Keen and High, P. H. Haynes; Dull Words, Trumbull Stickney; The Inner Passion, Alfred Noyes; The Veiled Muse, William Winter; Sonnet, William Bennett; Tell Me, Max Ehrmann; The Singer's Plea, Edward Dowden; Genius, R. H. Horne; My Country, George Woodberry; Uncalled, Madison Cawein; Thomas Bailey Aldrich, At the Funeral of a Minor Poet; Robert Haven Schauffler, Overtones, The Silent Singers; Stephen Vincent Benét, A Minor Poet; Alec de Candole, The Poets.

IF

V

THE POET'S MORALITY

F English poets of the last century are more inclined to parade their moral virtue than are poets of other countries, this may be the result of a singular persistency on the part of England in searching out and punishing sins ascribed to poetic temperament. Byron was banished; Shelley was judged unfit to rear his own children; Keats was advertised as an example of "extreme moral depravity";1 Oscar Wilde was imprisoned; Swinburne was castigated as "an unclean fiery imp from the pit." 2 These are some of the most conspicuous examples of a refusal by the British public to countenance what it considers a code of morals peculiar to poets. It is hardly to be wondered at that versewriters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have not been inclined to quarrel with Sir Philip Sidney's statement that "England is the stepmother of poets," and that through their writings should run a vein of aggrieved protest against an unfair discrimination in dragging their failings ruthlessly out to the light.

It cannot, however, be maintained that England is unique in her prejudice against poetic morals. The charges against the artist have been long in existence, and have been formulated and reformulated in many countries. In fact Greece, rather than England, might with some justice be regarded as the parent of the poet's maligners, for Plato has been largely responsible for the hue and cry against the poet throughout the last two millennia. Various as are the counts against the poet's conduct, they may all be included under the declaration in the Republic, "Poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of withering and starving them; she lets them rule instead of ruling them." 1

Though the accusers of the poet are agreed that the predominance of passion in his nature is the cause of his depravity, still they are a heterogeneous company, suffering the most violent disagreement among themselves as to a valid reason for pronouncing his passionate impulses criminal. Their unfortunate victim is beset from so many directions that he is sorely put to it to defend himself against one band of assailants without exposing himself to attack from another quarter.

This hostile public may be roughly divided into three camps, made up, respectively, of philistines, philosophers, and puritans. Within recent years the distinct grievance of each group has been made articulate in a formal denunciation of the artist's morals.

There is, first, that notorious indictment, Degeneration, by Max Nordau. Nordau speaks eloquently for all who claim the name "average plain citizen," all who would hustle off to the gallows anyone found guilty of breaking the lockstep imposed upon men by convention. Secondly, there is a severe criticism of the poet from an ostensibly unbiased point of view, The Man of Genius, by Césare Lombroso. Herein are presented the arguments of the thinkers, who probe the poet's foibles with an impersonal and scientific curiosity. Last, there is the severe arraignment, What Is Art? by Tolstoi. In this book are crystallized the convictions of the ascetics, who recognize in beauty a false goddess, luring men from the stern pursuit of holiness.

How does it come about that, in affirming the perniciousness of the poet's passionate temperament, the man of the street, the philosopher, and the puritan are for the nonce in agreement? The man of the street is not averse to feeling, as a rule, even when it is carried to egregious lengths of sentimentality. A stroll through a village when all the victrolas are in operation would settle this point unequivocally for any doubter. It seems that the philistine's quarrel with the poet arises from the fact that, unlike the makers of phonograph records, the poet dares to follow feeling in defiance of public sentiment. Like the conservative that he is, the philistine gloats over the poet's lapses from virtue because, in setting aside mass-feeling as a gauge of right and wrong, and in setting up, instead, his own

individual feelings as a rule of conduct, the poet displays an arrogance that deserves a fall. The philosopher, like the philistine, may tolerate feeling within limits. His sole objection to the poet lies in the fact that, far from making emotion the handmaiden of the reason, as the philosopher would do, the poet exalts emotion to a seat above the reason, thus making feeling the supreme arbiter of conduct. The puritan, of course, gives vent to the most bitter hostility of all, for, unlike the philistine and the philosopher, he regards natural feeling as wholly corrupt. Therefore he condemns the poet's indulgence of his passionate nature with equal severity whether he is within or without the popular confines of proper conduct, or whether or not his conduct may be proved reasonable.

Much of the inconsistency in the poet's exhibitions of his moral character may be traced to the fact that he is addressing now one, now another, of his accusers. The sobriety of his arguments with the philosopher has sometimes been interpreted by the man of the street as cowardly side-stepping. On the other hand, the poet's bravado in defying the man of the street might be interpreted by the philosopher as an acknowledgment of imperviousness to

reason.

It seems as though the first impulse of the poet were to set his back against the wall and deal with all his antagonists at once, by challenging their right to pry into his private conduct. It is true that certain poets of the last century have believed