ar that he must reveal some
merit in verse-making itself. If he can make no more ambitious claims
for himself, he must, at the very least, show that Browning was not at
fault when he excused his occupation:

I said, to do little is bad; to do nothing is worse,
And wrote verse.
[Footnote: Ferishtah's Fancies.]

How can the poet satisfy the philistine world that his songs are worth
while? Need we ask? Business men will vouch for their utility, if he
will but conform to business men's ideas of art. Here is a typical
expression of their views, couched in verse for the singer's better
comprehension:

The days of long-haired poets now are o'er,
The short-haired poet seems to have the floor;
For now the world no more attends to rhymes
That do not catch the spirit of the times.
The short-haired poet has no muse or chief,
He sings of corn. He eulogizes beef.
[Footnote: "The Short-haired Poet," in _Common-Sense_, by E. F. Ware.]

But the poet utterly repudiates such a view of himself as this, for he
cannot draw his breath in the commercial world. [Footnote: Several poems
lately have voiced the poet's horror of materialism. See Josephine
Preston Peabody, _The Singing Man_; Richard Le Gallienne, _To R. W.
Emerson, Richard Watson Gilder_; Mary Robinson, _Art and Life_.] In vain
he assures his would-be friends that the intangibilities with which he
deals have a value of their own. Emerson says,

One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield
Which I gather in a song.
[Footnote: _Apology_]

But for this second crop the practical man says he can find absolutely
no market; hence overtures of friendliness between him and the poet end
with sneers and contempt on both sides. Doubtless the best way for the
poet to deal with the perennial complaints of the practical-minded, is
simply to state brazenly, as did Oscar Wilde, "All art is quite
useless." [Footnote: Preface to _Dorian Gray_.]

Is the poet justified, then, in stopping his ears to all censure, and
living unto himself? Not so; when the hub-bub of his sordid accusers
dies away, he is conscious of another summons, before a tribunal which
he cannot despise or ignore. For once more the poet's equivocal position
exposes him to attacks from all quarters. He stands midway between the
spiritual and the physical worlds, he reveals the ideal in the sensual.
Therefore, while the practical man complains that the p