ng. There
is an inconsistency in the poet's attitude,--the same inconsistency that
lurks in the most poetical of philosophies. Like Plato, the poet sees
this world as the veritable body of his love, Beauty,--and yet it is to
him a muddy vesture of decay, and he is ever panting for escape from it
as from a prison house.

One might think that the poet has less cause for rebellion against the
flesh than have other men, inasmuch as the bonds that enthrall feebler
spirits seem to have no power upon him. A blind Homer, a mad Tasso, a
derelict Villon, an invalid Pope, most wonderful of all--a woman Sappho,
suggest that the differences in earthly tabernacles upon which most of
us lay stress are negligible to the poet, whose burning genius can
consume all fetters of heredity, sex, health, environment and material
endowment. Yet in his soberest moments the poet is wont to confess that
there are varying degrees in the handicap which genius suffers in the
mid-earth life; in fact ever since the romantic movement roused in him
an intense curiosity as to his own nature, he has reflected a good deal
on the question of what earthly conditions will least cabin and confine
his spirit.

Apparently the problem of heredity is too involved to stir him to
attempted solution. If to make a gentleman one must begin with his
grandfather, surely to make a poet one must begin with the race, and in
poems even of such bulk as the _Prelude_ one does not find a complete
analysis of the singer's forbears. In only one case do we delve far into
a poet's heredity. He who will, may perchance hear Sordello's story
told, even from his remote ancestry, but to the untutored reader the
only clear point regarding heredity is the fusion in Sordello of the
restless energy and acumen of his father, Taurello, with the refinement
and sensibility of his mother, Retrude. This is a promising combination,
but would it necessarily flower in genius? One doubts it. In _Aurora
Leigh_ one might speculate similarly about the spiritual aestheticism
of Aurora's Italian mother balanced by the intellectual repose of her
English father. Doubtless the Brownings were not working blindly in
giving their poets this heredity, yet in both characters we must assume,
if we are to be scientific, that there is a happy combination of
qualities derived from more remote ancestors.

The immemorial tradition which Swinburne followed in giving his mythical
poet the sun as father and the sea as mo