d to the child, Hartley
Coleridge, possibly implies a belief in such heritage. The son of Robert
and Mrs. Browning seems, strangely enough, considering his chance of a
double inheritance of literary ability, not to have been the subject of
versified prophecies of this sort. One expression by a poet of belief in
heredity may, however, detain us. At the beginning of Viola Meynell's
career, it is interesting to notice that as a child she was the subject
of speculation as to her inheritance of her mother's genius. It was
Francis Thompson, of course, who, musing on Alice Meynell's poetry, said
to the little Viola,

If angels have hereditary wings,
If not by Salic law is handed down
The poet's laurel crown,
To thee, born in the purple of the throne,
The laurel must belong.
[Footnote: _Sister Songs_.]

But these lines must not be considered apart from the fanciful poem in
which they grow.

What have poets to say on the larger question of their social
inheritance? This is a subject on which, at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, at least, poets should have had ideas, and the
varying rank given to their lyrical heroes is not without significance.
The renaissance idea, that the nobleman is framed to enjoy, rather than
to create, beauty,--that he is the connoisseur rather than the
genius,--seems to have persisted in the eighteenth century, and at the
beginning of the romantic movement to have combined with the new
exaltation of the lower classes to work against the plausible view that
the poet is the exquisite flowering of the highest lineage.

Of course, it is not to be expected that there should be unanimity of
opinion among poets as to the ideal singer's rank. In several instances,
confidence in human egotism would enable the reader to make a shrewd
guess as to a poet's stand on the question of caste, without the trouble
of investigation. Gray, the gentleman, as a matter of course consigns
his "rustic Milton" to oblivion. Lord Byron follows the fortunes of
"Childe" Harold. Lord Tennyson usually deals with titled artists.
[Footnote: See _Lord Burleigh_, Eleanore in _A Becket_, and the Count in
_The Falcon_.] Greater significance attaches to the gentle birth of the
two prominent fictional poets of the century, Sordello and Aurora Leigh,
yet in both poems the plot interest is enough to account for it. In
Sordello's case, especially, Taurello's dramatic offer of political
leadership to his son suffices to jus