ly Bronte_.]

and there are several poets of whom a similar statement might be made.
But the Victorians were aware that only half of a poet's nature was
developed thus. Tennyson [Footnote: See _The Palace of Art_.] and
Mrs. Browning [Footnote: See _The Poet's Vow_; Letters to Robert
Browning, January 1, 1846, and March 20, 1845.] both sounded a warning
as to the dangers of complete isolation. And at present, though the
eremite poet is still with us, [Footnote: See Lascelles Ambercrombe,
_An Escape_; J. E. Flecker, _Dirge_; Madison Cawein, _Comrading_; Yeats,
_The Lake Isle of Innisfree_.] he does not have everything his own way.

For it has begun to occur to poets that it may not have been merely
anuntoward accident that several of their loftiest brethren were reared
in
London. In the romantic period even London-bred Keats said, as a matter
of course,

The coy muse, with me she would not live
In this dark city,
[Footnote: _Epistle to George Felton Mathew_. Wordsworth's sonnet,
"Earth has not anything to show more fair," seems to have been unique at
this time.]

and the American romanticist, Emerson, said of the poet,

In cities he was low and mean;
The mountain waters washed him clean.
[Footnote: _The Poet_.]

But Lowell protested against such a statement, avowing of the muse,

She can find a nobler theme for song
In the most loathsome man that blasts the sight
Than in the broad expanse of sea and shore.
[Footnote: _L'Envoi_.]

A number of the Victorians acknowledged that they lived from choice in
London. Christina Rossetti admitted frankly that she preferred London to
the country, and defended herself with Bacon's statement, "The souls of
the living are the beauty of the world." [Footnote: See E. L. Gary,
_The Rossettis_, p. 236.] Mrs. Browning made Aurora outgrow pastoral
verse, and not only reside in London, but find her inspiration there.
Francis Thompson and William Henley were not ashamed to admit that they
were inspired by London. James Thomson, B.V., belongs with them in this
regard, for though he depicted the horror of visions conjured up in the
city streets in a way unparalleled in English verse, [Footnote: See _The
City of Dreadful Night_.] this is not the same thing as the romantic
poet's repudiation of the city as an unimaginative environment.

Coming to more recent verse, we find Austin Dobson still feeling it an
anomaly that his muse should prefer the city to the country. [Foot