ontemporaries?

Whatever its justification, the excuse for the poets flaunting an
addiction to immorality lies in the obnoxiousness of the philistine
element among their enemies. When mass feeling, mass-morality, becomes
too oppressive, poets are wont to escape from its trammelling
conventions at any cost. Rather than consent to lay their emotions under
the rubber-stamp of expediency, they are likely to aver, with the
sophists of old, that morality is for slaves, whereas the rulers among
men, the poets, recognize no law but natural law.

Swinburne affords an excellent example of this type of reaction. Looking
back tolerantly upon his early prayers to the pagan ideal to

Come down and redeem us from virtue,

upon his youthful zest in leaving

The lilies and languors of virtue
For the roses and raptures of vice,

he tried to dissect his motives. "I had," he said, "a touch of Byronic
ambition to be thought an eminent and terrible enemy to the decorous
life and respectable fashion of the world, and, as in Byron's case,
there was mingled with a sincere scorn and horror of hypocrisy a boyish
and voluble affectation of audacity and excess." [Footnote: E. Gosse,
_Life of Swinburne,_ p. 309.]

So far, so good. There is little cause for disagreement among poets,
however respectable or the reverse their own lives may be, in the
contention that the first step toward sincerity of artistic expression
must be the casting off of external restraints. Even the most
conservative of them is not likely to be seriously concerned if, for the
time being, he finds among the younger generation a certain exaggeration
of the pose of unrestraint. The respectability of Oliver Wendell Holmes
did not prevent his complacent musing over Tom Moore:

If on his cheek unholy blood
Burned for one youthful hour,
'Twas but the flushing of the bud
That bloomed a milk-white flower.
[Footnote: _After a Lecture on Moore_.]

One may lay it down as an axiom among poets that their ethical natures
must develop spontaneously, or not at all. An attempt to force one's
moral instincts will inevitably cramp and thwart one's art. It is
unparalleled to find so great a poet as Coleridge plaintively asserting,
"I have endeavored to feel what I ought to feel," [Footnote: Letter to
the Reverend George Coleridge, March 21, 1794.] and his brothers have
recoiled from his words. His declaration was, of course, not equivalent
to saying, "I have endeavored t