w, J. G. Holland and James Whitcombe Riley
have been warmly commended by some of their brothers [Footnote: See O.
W. Holmes, _To Longfellow_; P. H. Hayne, _To Henry W. Longfellow_; T. B.
Read, _A Leaf from the Past_; E. C. Stedman, _J. G. H._; P. L. Dunbar,
_James Whitcombe Riley_; J. W. Riley, _Rhymes of Ironquill_.] for their
promiscuous friendliness, but on the whole there is a tendency on the
part of the public to sniff at these poets, as well as at those who
commend them, because they make themselves so common. One may deride the
public's inconsistency, yet, after all, we have not to read many pages
of the "homely" poets before their professed ability to get down to the
level of the "common man" begins to remind one of pre-campaign speeches.

There seems to be nothing for the poet to do, then, but to accept the
hostility of the world philosophically. There are a few notable examples
of the poet even welcoming the solitude that society forces upon him,
because it affords additional opportunity for self-communion. Everyone
is familiar with Wordsworth's insistence that uncompanionableness is
essential to the poet. In the _Prelude_ he relates how, from early
childhood,

I was taught to feel, perhaps too much,
The self-sufficing power of solitude.

Elsewhere he disposes of the forms of social intercourse:

These all wear out of me, like Forms, with chalk
Painted on rich men's floors, for one feast night.
[Footnote: _Personal Talk_.]

So he describes the poet's character:

He is retired as noontide dew
Or fountain in a noonday grove.
[Footnote: _The Poet's Epitaph_.]

In American verse Wordsworth's mood is, of course, reflected in Bryant,
and it appears in the poetry of most of Bryant's contemporaries.
Longfellow caused the poet to boast that he "had no friends, and needed
none." [Footnote: _Michael Angelo_.] Emerson expressed the same mood
frankly. He takes civil leave of mankind:

Think me not unkind and rude
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood,
To fetch his word to men.
[Footnote: _The Apology_.]

He points out the idiosyncrasy of the poet:

Men consort in camp and town,
But the poet dwells alone.
[Footnote: _Saadi_.]

Thus he works up to his climactic statement regarding the amplitude of
the poet's personality:

I have no brothers and no peers
And the dearest interferes;
When I would spend a lonely day,
Sun and moon are in my way.
[Fo