once more, the poet may seem to be
deliberately blinding himself to the facts. What of the father of
English song, who, in the _Canterbury Tales_, is described by the
burly host,

He in the waast is shape as wel as I;
This were a popet in an arm tenbrace
For any woman, smal and fair of face?
[Footnote: _Prologue to Sir Thopas_.]

Even here, however, one can trace the modern aesthetic aversion to fat.
Chaucer undoubtedly took sly pleasure in stressing his difference from
the current conception of the poet, which was typified so well by the
handsome young squire, who

Coude songes make, and wel endyte.
[Footnote: _Prologue_.]

Such, at least, is the interpretation of Percy Mackaye, who in his play,
_The Canterbury Pilgrims_, derives the heartiest enjoyment from
Chaucer's woe lest his avoirdupois may affect Madame Eglantine
unfavorably. The modern English poet who is oppressed by too, too solid
flesh is inclined to follow Chaucer's precedent and take it
philosophically. James Thomson allowed the stanza about himself,
interpolated by his friends into the _Castle of Indolence_, to
remain, though it begins with the line,

A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard beseems.

And in these days, the sentimental reader is shocked by Joyce Kilmer's
callous assertion, "I am fat and gross.... In my youth I was slightly
decorative. But now I drink beer instead of writing about absinthe."
[Footnote: Letter to Father Daly, November, 1914.]

Possibly it would not be unreasonable to take difference in weight as
another distinction between idealistic and sensuous poets. Of one recent
realistic poet it is recorded, "How a poet could _not_ be a glorious
eater, he said he could not see, for the poet was happier than other
men, by reason of his acuter senses." [Footnote: Richard Le Gallienne,
_Joyce Kilmer_.] As a rule, however, decadent and spiritual poets alike
shrink from the thought of grossness, in spite of the fact that Joyce
Kilmer was able to win his wager, "I will write a poem about a
delicatessen shop. It will be a high-brow poem. It will be liked."
[Footnote: Robert Cortez Holliday, _Memoir of Joyce Kilmer_, p. 62.] Of
course Keats accustomed the public to the idea that there are aesthetic
distinctions in the sense of taste, but throughout the last century the
idea of a poet enjoying solid food was an anomaly. Whitman's
proclamation of himself, "Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating and
drinking and breeding" [Footnot