f His
Mother_, should disclaim the artificial aid of the muses, saying that
his own deep feeling was enough to inspire him. As the romantic movement
progressed, it would be easy to show that distaste for the eighteenth
century mannerism resulted in more and more flippant treatment of the
goddesses. Beattie refers to a contemporary's "reptile Muse, swollen
from the sty." [Footnote: See _On a Report of a Monument to a Late
Author_.] Burns alludes to his own Muse as a "tapitless ramfeezled
hizzie," [Footnote: See the _Epistle to Lapraik_.] and sets the
fashion for succeeding writers, who so multiply the original nine that
each poet has an individual muse, a sorry sort of guardian-angel, whom
he is fond of berating for her lack of ability. One never finds a writer
nowadays, with courage to refer to his muse otherwise than
apologetically. The usual tone is that of Andrew Lang, when he
confesses, apropos of the departure of his poetic gift:

'Twas not much at any time
She could hitch into a rhyme,
Never was the muse sublime
Who has fled.
[Footnote: _A Poet's Apology_.]

Yet one would be wrong in maintaining that the genuine poet of to-day
feels a slighter dependence upon a spirit of song than did the world's
earlier singers. There are, of course, certain poetasters now, as
always, whose verse is ground out as if by machinery, and who are as
little likely to call upon an outside power to aid them as is the horse
that treads the cider mill. But among true poets, if the spirit who
inspires poesy is a less definitely personified figure than of old, she
is no less a sincerely conceived one and reverently worshiped. One
doubts if there could be found a poet of merit who would disagree with
Shelley's description of poetry as "the inter-penetration of a diviner
nature through our own." [Footnote: _Defense of Poetry_.]

What is the poet's conception of such a divinity? It varies, of course.
There is the occasional belief, just mentioned, in the transmigration of
genius, but that goes back, in the end, to the belief that all genius is
a memory of pre-existence; that is, dropping (or varying) the myth, that
the soul of the poet is not chained to the physical world, but has the
power of discerning the things which abide. And this, again, links up
with what is perhaps the commonest form of invocation in modern poetry,
namely, prayer that God, the spirit of the universe, may inspire the
poet. For what does the poet mean when h