cribing to Taine's belief in the supreme importance of
environment as molder of genius that the question of the singer's proper
habitat is of comparative indifference to them, yet the dualism that we
have noted runs as true to form here as in more fundamental issues. When
one takes the suffrage of poets in general on the question of
environment, two voices are equally strong. Genius is fostered by
solitude, we hear; but again, genius is fostered by human companionship.
At first we may assume that this divergence of view characterizes
separate periods. Writers in the romantic period, we say, praised the
poet whose thought was turned inward by solitude; while writers in the
Victorian period praised the poet whose thought was turned upon the
spectacle of human passions. But on finding that this classification is
true only in the most general way, we go farther. Within the Victorian
period Browning, we say, is the advocate of the social poet, as Arnold
is the advocate of the solitary one. But still our classification is
inadequate. Is Browning the expositor of the gregarious poet? It is true
that he feels it necessary for the singer to "look upon men and their
cares and hopes and fears and joys." [Footnote: _Pauline_.] But he
makes Sordello flee like a hunted creature back to Goito and solitude in
quest of renewed inspiration. Is Arnold the expositor of the solitary
poet? True, he urges him to fly from "the strange disease of modern
life". [Footnote: _The Scholar Gypsy_.] Yet he preaches that the
duty of the poet is

to scan
Not his own course, but that of man.
[Footnote: _Resignation_.]

Within the romantic period the same phenomenon is evident. Does
Wordsworth paint the ideal poet dwelling apart from human distractions?
Yet he declares that his deepest insight is gained by listening to "the
still sad music of humanity". In Keats, Shelley, Byron, the same
antithesis of thought is not less evident.

We cannot justly conclude that a compromise between contradictions, an
avoidance of extremes, is what anyone of these poets stands for. It is
complete absorption in the drame of human life that makes one a poet,
they aver; but again, it is complete isolation that allows the inmost
poetry of one's nature to rise to consciousness. At the same time they
make it clear that the supreme poet needs the gifts of both
environments. To quote Walt Whitman,

What the full-grown poet came,
Out spake pleased Nature (the roun