natures. Bulwer Lytton phrased the old-fashioned distinction between his hero and heroine, In each lay poesy-for woman's heart Whate'er affection to its banks hath brought.1 Yet the poetess has two of the strongest poets of the romantic period on her side. Wordsworth, in his many allusions to his sister Dorothy, appeared to feel her possibilities equal to his own, and in verses on an anthology, he offered praise of a more general nature to verse written by women.2 And beside the sober judgment of Wordsworth, one may place the unbounded enthusiasm of Shelley, who not only praises extravagantly the verse of an individual, Emilia Viviani, but who also offers us an imaginary poetess of supreme powers,-Cythna, in The Revolt of Islam. It is disappointing to the agitator to find the question dropping out of sight in later verse. In the Victorian period it comes most plainly to the surface in Browning, and while the exquisite praise of his 1 Milton. Lyric love, half angel and half bird, 'See To Lady Mary Lowther. See the introduction to Epipsychidion. reveals him a believer in at least sporadic female genius, his position on the question of championing the entire sex is at least equivocal. In The Two Poets of Croisic he deals with the eighteenth century in France, where the literary woman came so gloriously into her own. Browning represents a man writing under a feminine pseudonym and winning the admiration of the celebrities of the day— only to have his verse tossed aside as worthless as soon as his sex is revealed. Woman wins by her charm, seems to be the moral. A hopeful sign, however, is the fact that of late years one poet produced his best work under a feminine nom de plume, and found it no handicap in obtaining recognition.1 If indifference is the attitude of the male poet, not so of the woman writer. She insists that her work shall redound, not to her own glory, merely, but to that of her entire sex as well. For the most worthy presentation of her case, we must turn to Mrs. Browning, though the radical feminist is not likely to approve of her attitude. "My secret profession of faith," she admitted to Robert Browning, "is that there is a natural inferiority of mind in women of the intellect-not by any means of the moral nature—and that the history of Art and of genius testifies to this fact openly." 2 Still, despite this private surrender to the enemy, Mrs. Browning defends her sex well. 1William Sharp, "Fiona McLeod." 'Letter to Robert Browning, July 4, 1845. In a short narrative poem, Mother and Poet, Mrs. Browning claims for her heroine the sterner virtues that have been denied her by the average critic, who assigns woman to sentimental verse as her proper sphere. Of course her most serious consideration of the problem is to be found in Aurora Leigh. She feels that making her imaginary poet a woman is a departure from tradition, and she strives to justify it. Much of the debasing adulation and petty criticism heaped upon Aurora must have been taken from Mrs. Browning's own experience. Ignoring insignificant antagonism to her, Aurora is seriously concerned with the charges that the social worker, Romney Leigh, brings against her sex. Romney declares, Women as you are, Mere women, personal and passionate, Aurora is obliged to acknowledge to herself that Romney is right in charging women with inability to escape from personal considerations. She confesses, We women are too apt to look to one, Which proves a certain impotence in art. But in the end, and after much struggling, Aurora wins for her poetry even Romney's reluctant ad miration. Mrs. Browning's implication seems to be that the intensely "personal and passionate" nature of woman is an advantage to her, if once she can lift herself from its thraldom, because it saves her from the danger of dry generalization which assails verse of more masculine temper.1 Of only less vital concern to poets than the question of the poet's physical constitution is the problem of his environment. Where will the chains of mortality least hamper his aspiring spirit? In answer, one is haunted by the line, I too was born in Arcadia. 3 Still, this is not the answer that poets would make in all periods. In the eighteenth century, for example, though a stereotyped conception of the shepherd poet ruled,-as witness the verses of Hughes,2 Collins, and Thomson,-it is obvious that these gentlemen were in no literal sense expressing their views on the poet's habitat. It was hardly necessary for Thomas Hood to parody their efforts in his eclogues giving a broadly realistic turn to shepherds assuming the singing robes." Wherever a personal element enters, as in John Hughes' Letter to a Friend in the Country, and Sid 1 For treatment of the question of the poet's sex in American verse by women, see Emma Lazarus, Echoes; Olive Dargan, Ye Who are to Sing. 5 See Corydon. See Selim, or the Shepherd's Moral. 'See Pastoral on the Death of Dæmon. See Huggins and Duggins, and The Forlorn Shepherd's Complaint. ney Dyer's A Country Walk, it is apparent that the poet is not indigenous to the soil. He is the city gentleman, come out to enjoy a holiday. With the growth of a romantic conception of nature, the relation of the poet to nature becomes, of course, more intimate. But Cowper and Thomson keep themselves out of their nature poetry to such an extent that it is hard to tell what their ideal position would be, and not till the publication of Beattie's The Minstrel do we find a poem in which the poet is nurtured under the influence of a natural scenery. At the very climax of the romantic period the poet is not always bred in the country. We find Byron revealing himself as one who seeks nature only occasionally, as a mistress in whose novelty resides a good deal of her charm. Shelley, too, portrays a poet reared in civilization, but escaping to nature.1 Still, it is obvious that ever since the time of Burns and Wordsworth, the idea of a poet nurtured from infancy in nature's bosom has been extremely popular. There are degrees of naturalness in nature, however. How far from the hubbub of commercialism should the poet reside? Burns and Wordsworth were content with the farm country, but for poets whose theories were not so intimately joined with experience such an environment was too tame. Bowles would send his visionary boy into the wilderness.2 Coleridge and Southey went so far as See Epipsychidion, and Alastor. 1 2 See The Visionary Boy. |