appeal to a
librarian's index, precisely this attitude is not met with. It would be
absurd, of course, to deny that one finds convincingly sincere
expressions of modesty among poets of genuine merit. Many of them have
taken pains to express themselves in their verse as humbled by the
genius above their grasp. [Footnote: See Emerson, _In a Dull Uncertain
Brain_; Whittier, _To my Namesake_; Sidney Lanier, _Ark of the Future_;
Oliver Wendell Holmes, _The Last Reader_; Bayard Taylor, _L'Envoi_;
Robert Louis Stevenson, _To Dr. Hake_; Francis Thompson, _To My
Godchild_.] But we must agree with their candid avowals that they belong
in the second rank. The greatest poets of the century are not in the
habit of belittling themselves. It is almost unparalleled to find so
sweeping a revolutionist of poetic traditions as Burns saying of
himself:

I am nae poet, in a sense,
But just a rhymer like, by chance,
And hae to learning nae pretense,
Yet what the matter?
Whene'er my muse does on me glance,
I jingle at her.
[Footnote: _Epistle to Lapraik._]

Most of the self-depreciatory writers, by their very abnegation of the
title, exalt the supreme poet. There are few indeed so unconcerned about
the dignity of the calling as is Sir Walter Scott, who assigns to the
minstrels of his tales a subordinate social position that would make the
average bard depicted in literature gnash his teeth for rage, and who
casually disposes of the poet's immortality:

Let but the verse befit a hero's fame;
Immortal be the verse, forgot the author's name.
[Footnote: _Introduction to Don Roderick._]

Mrs. Browning, to be sure, also tries to prick the bubble of the poet's
conceit, assuring him:

Ye are not great because creation drew
Large revelations round your earliest sense,
Nor bright because God's glory shines for you.
[Footnote: _Mountaineer and Poet_.]

But in her other poetry, notably in _Aurora Leigh_ and _A Vision of
Poets,_ she amply avows her sense of the preeminence of the singer, as
well as of his song.

While it is easy to shake our heads over the self-importance of the
nineteenth century, and to contrast it with the unconscious lyrical
spontaneity of half-mythical singers in the beginning of the world, it
is probable that some degree of egotism is essential to a poet.
Remembering his statement that his name was written in water, we are
likely to think of Keats as the humblest of geniuses, yet he wrote to a
fr