and that the
overkeenness of the poet's senses in one particular direction throws his
nature out of balance, so that he lacks the poise to withstand
temptation.

Fortunately, it is a comparatively small number of poets that surrenders
to the enemy by conceding either the poet's deliberate indulgence in
sin, or his pitiable moral frailty. If one were tempted to believe that
this defensive portrayal of the sinful poet is in any sense a major
conception in English poetry, the volley of repudiative verse greeting
every outcropping of the degenerate's self-exposure would offer a
sufficient disproof. In the romantic movement, for instance, one finds
only Byron (among persons of importance) to uphold the theory of the
perverted artist, whereas a chorus of contradiction greets each
expression of his theories.

In the van of the recoil against Byronic morals one finds Crabbe,
[Footnote: See _Edmund Shore_, _Villars_.] Praed [Footnote: See _The
Talented Man_, _To Helen with Crabbe's Poetry_.] and Landor. [Footnote:
See _Few Poets Beckon_, _Apology for Gebir_.] Later, when the wave of
Byronic influence had time to reach America, Longfellow took up the
cudgels against the evil poet. [Footnote: See his treatment of Aretino,
in _Michael Angelo_.] Protest against the group of decadents who
flourished in the 1890's even yet rocks the poetic waves slightly,
though these men did not succeed in making the world take them as
seriously as it did Byron. The cue of most present-day writers is to
dismiss the professedly wicked poet lightly, as an aspirant to the
laurel who is unworthy of serious consideration. A contemporary poet
reflects of such would-be riders of Pegasus:

There will be fools that in the name of art
Will wallow in the mire, crying, "I fall,
I fall from heaven!" fools that have only heard
From earth, the murmur of those golden hooves
Far, far above them.
[Footnote: Alfred Noyes, _At the Sign of the Golden Shoe_. See also
Richard Le Gallienne, _The Decadent to his Soul_, _Proem to the
Reader in English Poems_; Joyce Kilmer, _A Ballad of New Sins_.]

Poets who indignantly repudiate any and all charges against their moral
natures have not been unanimous in following the same line of defense.
In many cases their argument is empirical, and their procedure is
ideally simple. If a verse-writer of the present time is convicted of
wrong living, his title of poet is automatically taken away from him; if
a singer of th