many respects, George Meredith.

It would be interesting to make a list of the zoological metaphors by
which the Victorians expressed their contempt for the public. Landor
characterized their criticisms as "asses' kicks aimed at his head."
[Footnote: Edmund Gosse, _Life of Swinburne_, p. 103.] Browning
alternately represented his public cackling and barking at him.
[Footnote: See Thomas J. Wise, Letters, Second Series, Vol. 2, p. 52.]
George Meredith made a dichotomy of his readers into "summer flies" and
"swinish grunters." [Footnote: _My Theme_.] Tennyson, being no
naturalist, simply named the public the "many-headed beast." [Footnote:
_In Memoriam_.]

In America there has been less of this sort of thing openly expressed by
genuine poets. Emerson is fairly outspoken, telling us, in _The
Poet_, how the public gapes and jeers at a new vision. But one must
go to our border-line poets to find the feeling most candidly put into
words. Most of them spurn popularity, asserting that they are too
worthwhile to be appreciated. They may be even nauseated by the slight
success they manage to achieve, and exclaim,

Yet to know
That we create an Eden for base worms!

If the consciousness of recent writers is dominated by contempt for
mankind at large, such a mood is expressed with more caution than
formerly. Kipling takes men's stupidity philosophically. [Footnote: See
_The Story of Ung._] Edgar Lee Masters uses a fictional character
as a mask for his remarks on the subject. [Footnote: See _Having His
Way._] Other poets have expressed themselves with a degree of mildness.
[Footnote: See Watts-Dunton, _Apollo in Paris;_ James Stephens, _The
Market;_ Henry Newbolt, _An Essay in Criticism;_ William Rose Benet,
_People._] But of course Ezra Pound is not to be suppressed. He
inquires,

Will people accept them?
(i.e., these songs)
As a timorous wench from a centaur
(or a centurion)
Already they flee, howling in terror
* * * * *
Will they be touched with the verisimilitude?
Their virgin stupidity is untemptable.

He adds,

I beg you, my friendly critics,
Do not set about to procure me an audience.

Again he instructs his poems, when they meet the public,

Salute them with your thumbs to your noses.

It is very curious, after such passages, to find him pleading, in
another poem,

May my poems be printed this week?

The naivete of this last ques