; _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 Benet, _A
Minor Poet_; Alec de Candole, _The Poets_.] and aver that he too is an
earnest and 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.

CHAPTER V

THE POET'S MORALITY

If 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"; [Footnote: By _Blackwoods_.]
Oscar Wilde was imprisoned; Swinburne was castigated as "an unclean
fiery imp from the pit." [Footnote: By _The Saturday Review_.] 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 verse-writers 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," [Footnote:
_Apology for Poetry_.] 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."
[Footnote: Book X, 606, Jowett translation.]

Though the accusers of the poet are agreed tha