d
giving it immortality. Oscar Wilde's characterization of Keats as "the
youngest of the martyrs" [Footnote: _At the Grave of Keats._]
brings the tradition down almost to the present in British verse, but
for the most part its popularity is now limited to American rhymes. One
is rather indignant, after reading Keats' own manly words about hostile
criticism, to find a nondescript verse-writer putting the puerile
self-characterization into his mouth:

I, the Boy-poet, whom with curse
They hounded on to death's untimely doom.
[Footnote: T. L. Harris, _Lyrics of the Golden Age_ (1856).]

In even less significant verse the most maudlin sympathy with Keats is
expressed. One is tempted to feel that Keats suffered less from his
enemies than from his admirers, of the type which Browning characterized
as "the foolish crowd of rushers-in upon genius ... never content till
they cut their initials on the cheek of the Medicean Venus to prove they
worship her." [Footnote: Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, November 17,
1845.]

With the possible exception of Chatterton, the poet whose wrongs have
raised the most indignant storm of protest is Shelley. Several poets, as
the young Browning, Francis Thompson, James Thomson, B. V., and Mr.
Woodberry, have made a chivalrous championing of Shelley almost part of
their poetical platform. No doubt the facts of Shelley's life warrant
such sympathy. Then too, Shelley's sense of injustice, unlike Byron's,
is not such as to seem weak to us, though it is so freely expressed in
his verse. In addition one is likely to feel particular sympathy for
Shelley because the recoil of the public from him cannot be laid to his
scorn. His enthusiasms were always for the happiness of the entire human
race, as well as for himself. Everything in his unfortunate life vouches
for the sincerity of his statement, in the _Hymn to Intellectual
Beauty_:

Never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery.

Accordingly Shelley's injuries seem to have affected him as a sudden
hurt does a child, with a sense of incomprehensibility, and later poets
have rallied to his defense as if he were actually a child.[Footnote:
See E. C. Stedman, _Ariel_; James Thomson, B. V., _Shelley_; Alfred
Austin, _Shelley's Death_; Stephen Vincent Benet, _The General Public_.]

The vicariousness of the nineteenth century poet in bewailing the hurts
of his brethren is likely to have pro