deniable. In the eighteenth century Collins and Hughes wrote poems
wherein they elaborated Milton's argument for the unity of the good and
the beautiful.[Footnote: Collins, _Ode on the Poetical Character_;
John Hughes, _Ode on Divine Poetry_.] Among the romantic poets, the
Platonism of Coleridge,[Footnote: See his essay on Claudian, where he
says, "I am pleased to think that when a mere stripling I formed the
opinion that true taste was virtue, and that bad writing was bad
feeling."] Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats was unflinching in this
particular. The Brownings subscribed to the doctrine. Tennyson's
allegiance to scientific naturalism kept him in doubt for a time, but in
the end his faith in beauty triumphed, and he was ready to praise the
poet as inevitably possessing a nature exquisitely attuned to goodness.
One often runs across dogmatic expression of the doctrine in minor
poetry. W. A. Percy advises the poet,

O singing heart, think not of aught save song,
Beauty can do no wrong.
[Footnote: _Song_.]

Again one hears of the singer,

Pure must he be;
Oh, blessed are the pure; for they shall hear
Where others hear not; see where others see
With a dazed vision,
[Footnote: Henry Timrod, _A Vision of Poesy_.]

and again,

To write a poem, a man should be as pure
As frost-flowers.
[Footnote: T. L. Harris, _Lyrics of the Golden Age_.]

Only recently a writer has pictured the poet as one who

Lived beyond men, and so stood
Admitted to the brotherhood
Of beauty.
[Footnote: Madison Cawein, _The Dreamer of Dreams_.]

It is needless to run through the list of poet heroes. Practically all
of them look to a single standard to govern them aesthetically and
morally. They are the sort of men whom Watts-Dunton praises,

Whose poems are their lives, whose souls within Hold naught in dread
save Art's high conscience bar, Who know how beauty dies at touch of
sin. [Footnote: _The Silent Voices_.]

Such is the poet's case for himself. But no matter how eloquently he
presents his case, his quarrel with his three enemies remains almost as
bitter as before, and he is obliged to pay some attention to their
individual charges.

The poet's quarrel with the philistine, in particular, is far from
settled. The more lyrical the poet becomes regarding the unity of the
good and the beautiful, the more skeptical becomes the plain man. What
is this about the irresistible charm of virtue? Virtue has posse