tion brings up insistently a perplexing
problem. If the poet despises his readers, why does he write? He may
perhaps evade this question by protesting, with Tennyson,

I pipe but as the linnets do,
And sing because I must.

But why does he publish? If he were strictly logical, surely he would do
as the artist in Browning's _Pictor Ignotus,_ who so shrank from
having his pictures come into contact with fools, that he painted upon
hidden, moldering walls, thus renouncing all possibility of fame. But
one doubts whether such renunciation has been made often, especially in
the field of poetry. Rossetti buried his poems, of course, but their
resurrection was not postponed till the Last Judgment. Other writers
have coyly waved fame away, but have gracefully yielded to their
friends' importunities, and have given their works to the world. When
one reads such expressions as Byron's;

Fame is the thirst of youth,--but I am not
So young as to regard men's frown or smile
As loss or guerdon of a glorious lot,
[Footnote: _Childe Harold._]

one wonders. Perhaps the highest genius takes absolutely no account of
fame, as the sun-god asserts in Watts-Dunton's poem, _Apollo in Paris:_

I love the song-born poet, for that he
Loves only song--seeks for love's sake alone
Shy Poesie, whose dearest bowers, unknown
To feudaries of fame, are known to thee.
[Footnote: See also Coventry Patmore, from _The Angel in the House,_ "I
will not Hearken Blame or Praise"; Francis Carlin, _The Home Song_
(1918).]

But other poets, with the utmost inconsistency, have admitted that they
find the thought of fame very sweet. [Footnote: See Edward Young, _Love
of Fame;_ John Clare, _Song's Eternity, Idle Fame, To John Milton;_
Bulwer Lytton, _The Desire of Fame;_ James Gates Percival, _Sonnet 379;_
Josephine Peston Peabody, _Marlowe._] Keats dwells upon the thought of
it. [Footnote: See the _Epistle to My Brother George._] Browning shows
both of his poet heroes concerned over the question. In _Pauline_ the
speaker confesses,

I ne'er sing
But as one entering bright halls, where all
Will rise and shout for him.

In _Sordello,_ again, Browning analyzes the desire for fame:

Souls like Sordello, on the contrary,
Coerced and put to shame, retaining will,
Care little, take mysterious comfort still,
But look forth tremblingly to ascertain
If others judge their claims not urged in vain,
And say for them their sti