tify Browning's choice of his
hero's rank. [Footnote: Other poems celebrating noble poets are _The
Troubadour_, Praed; _The King's Tragedy_, Rossetti; _David, Charles di
Trocca_, Cale Young Rice.]

None of these instances of aristocratic birth are of much importance,
and wherever there is a suggestion that the poet's birth represents a
tenet of the poem's maker, one finds, naturally, praise of the singer
who springs from the masses. The question of the singer's social origin
was awake in verse even before Burns. So typical an eighteenth century
poet as John Hughes, in lines _On a Print of Tom Burton, a Small Coal
Man_, moralizes on the phenomenon that genius may enter into the
breast of one quite beyond the social pale. Crabbe [Footnote: See _The
Patron_.] and Beattie,[Footnote: See _The Minstrel_.] also, seem
not to be departing from the Augustan tradition in treating the fortunes
of their peasant bards. But with Burns, of course, the question comes
into new prominence. Yet he spreads no propaganda. His statement is
merely personal:

Gie me ae spark of nature's fire!
That's a' the learning I desire.
Then, though I drudge through dub and mire
At plough or cart,
My muse, though homely in attire,
May touch the heart.
[Footnote: _Epistle to Lapraik_.]

It is not till later verse that poets springing from the soil are given
sweeping praise, because of the mysterious communion they enjoy with
"nature." [Footnote: For verse glorifying the peasant aspect of Burns
see Thomas Campbell, _Ode to Burns_; Whittier, _Burns_; Joaquim Miller,
_Burns and Byron_; William Bennett, _To the Memory of Burns_; A. B.
Street, _Robbie Burns_ (1867); O. W. Holmes, _The Burns Centennial_;
Richard Realf, _Burns_; Simon Kerl, _Burns_ (1868); Shelley Halleck,
_Burns_.] Obviously the doctrine is reinforced by Wordsworth, though few
of his farmer folk are geniuses, and the closest illustration of his
belief that the peasant, the child of nature, is the true poet, is found
in the character of the old pedlar, in the _Excursion_. The origin of
Keats might be assumed to have its share in molding poets' views on
caste, but only the most insensitive have dared to touch upon his
Cockney birth. In the realm of Best Sellers, however, the hero of May
Sinclair's novel, _The Divine Fire_, who is presumably modeled after
Keats, is a lower class Londoner, presented with the most unflinching
realism that the author can achieve. Consummate indeed is