annot glimpse with the utmost effort. He may disclaim all credit for
his performance, in the words of a nineteenth-century verse-writer:

This is the end of the book
Written by God.
I am the earth he took,
I am the rod,
The iron and wood which he struck
With his sounding rod.
[Footnote: L. E. Mitchell, _Written at the End of a Book._]

a statement that provokes wonder as to God's sensations at having such
amateurish works come out under his name. But this sort of humility is
really a protean manifestation of egotism, as is clear in the religious
states that bear resemblance to the poet's. This the Methodist
"experience meeting" abundantly illustrates, where endless loquacity is
considered justifiable, because the glory of one's experience is due,
not to one's self, but to the Almighty.

The minor American poets in the middle of the last century are often
found exhorting one another to humility, quite after the prayer-meeting
tradition. Bitter is their denunciation of the poet's arrogance:

A man that's proud--vile groveller in the dust,
Dependent on the mercy of his God
For every breath.
[Footnote: B. Saunders, _To Chatterton._]

Again they declare that the poet should be

Self-reading, not self-loving, they are twain,
[Footnote: Henry Timrod, _A Vision of Poesy._]

telling him,

Think not of thine own self,
[Footnote: Richard Gilder, _To the Poet._]

adding,

Always, O bard, humility is power.
[Footnote: Henry Timrod, _Poet If on a Lasting Fame._]

One is reminded of Mrs. Heep's repeated adjuration, "Be 'umble, Ury,"
and the likeness is not lessened when we find them ingratiatingly
sidling themselves into public favor. We hear them timidly inquiring of
their inspiration,

Shall not the violet bloom?
[Footnote: Mrs. Evans, _Apologetic._]

and pleading with their critics,

Lightly, kindly deal,
My buds were culled amid bright dews
In morn of earliest youth.
[Footnote: Lydia M. Reno, _Preface to Early Buds._]

At times they resort to the mixed metaphor to express their innocuous
unimportance, declaring,

A feeble hand essays
To swell the tide of song,
[Footnote: C. H. Faimer, _Invocation._]

and send out their ideas with fond insistence upon their diminutiveness:

Go, little book, and with thy little thoughts,
Win in each heart and memory a home.
[Footnote: C. Augustus Price, _Dedication._]

But among writers whose names are recognizable without an