were, however, real, absorbed what professional literary enthusiasm he may have had to begin with. Wordsworth’s early simplicity _was_ affected: A simple child, dear brother Jim, That lightly draws its breath And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death? I met a little cottage Girl; She was eight years old, she said; Her hair was thick with many a curl That clustered round her head. Keats’ early richness _was_ affected: here is cream Deepening to richness from a snowy gleam; Sweeter than that nurse Amalthea skimmed For the boy Jupiter; and here, undimmed By any touch, a bunch of blooming plums Ready to melt between an infant’s gums, And here is manna pick’d from Syrian trees, In starlight, by the three Hesperides. Tennyson’s early cunning _was_ affected: The streams through many a lilied row Down-carolling to the crisped sea, Low tinkled with a bell-like flow Atween the blossoms ‘We are free’. Browning’s early ruggedness _was_ affected: And on that young round cheek of thine I make them recognise the tinge, As when of the costly scarlet wine They drip so much as will impinge And spread in a thinnest scale afloat One thick gold drop from the olive’s coat Over a silver plate whose sheen Still through the mixture shall be seen. The history of these affectations is the history of the various social requirements made of poetry by the middle position, by the intelligent plain man who is religiously devoted to the idea of human uplift; and of the conforming by poets themselves to popular notions held about the place of poetry in this uplift. Poetry is seen first of all as supplying an elegance and refinement which must of necessity be neglected in practical experience. Common affairs are not genteel; and so poetry has generally been expected to feed an upper class hunger in man for nobility: poetry is the high polish of civilization. The next general demand thus made on poetry is that it should be romantically imbued with progressiveness, that it should act as a superior touter for civilization. To this demand Tennyson devoted his maturity in the _Princess_ and other verse tracts. This particular, assigned function of poetry is only a development of the old idea of the poet as the regular tribal prophet; that Tennyson could foresee air warfare in ‘navies grappling in the central blue’ and the League of Nations in ‘The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World’ undoubtedly contributed to his success with the middle reader. Following this is the demand for poetry as a sign of intellectual advancement, as distinct from social or political advancement: poetry as deep and deeper thinking. Browning is an excellent example of the poet who appreciated the popular weakness for profundity. He fed this vanity successfully, without bringing it low; seeming to be profound without