He is not That despicable thing, a hypocrite. [Footnote: _Michael Angelo_.] Most of the faults charged to them, poets aver, exist solely in the evil minds of their critics. Coleridge goes so far as to expurgate the poetry of William Blake, "not for the want of innocence in the poem, but from the too probable want of it in the readers." [Footnote: Letter to Charles Augustus Tulk, Highgate, Thursday Evening, 1818, p. 684, Vol. II, _Letters_, ed. E. Hartley Coleridge.] The nakedness of any frailties which poets may possess, makes it the more contemptible, they feel, for the public to wrap itself in the cloak of hypocrisy before casting stones. The modern poet's weakness for autobiographical revelation leaves no secret corners in his nature in which surreptitious vices may lurk. One might generalize what Keats says of Burns, "We can see horribly clear in the work of such a man his whole life, as if we were God's spies." [Footnote: Sidney Colvin, _John Keats_, p. 285.] The Rousseau-like nudity of the poet's soul is sometimes put forward as a plea that the public should close its eyes to possible shortcomings. Yet, as a matter of fact, it is precisely in the lack of privacy characterizing the poet's life that his enemies find their justification for concerning themselves with his morality. Since by flaunting his personality in his verse he propagates his faults among his admirers, the public is surely justified in pointing out and denouncing his failings. Poets cannot logically deny this. To do so, they would have to confess that their inspirations are wholly unaffected by their personalities. But this is, naturally, a very unpopular line of defense. That unhappy worshiper of puritan morals and of the muses, J. G. Holland, does make such a contention, averring, God finds his mighty way Into his verse. The dimmest window panes Let in the morning light, and in that light Our faces shine with kindled sense of God And his unwearied goodness, but the glass Gets little good of it; nay, it retains Its chill and grime beyond the power of light To warm or whiten ... ... The psalmist's soul Was not a fitting place for psalms like his To dwell in overlong, while wanting words. [Footnote: _Kathrina._] But the egotism of the average poet precludes this explanation. No more deadly insult could be offered him than forgiveness of his sins on the ground of their unimportance. Far from holding that his personality does not affect his verse, he would have us believe that the sole worth of his poetry lies in its reflection of his unique qualities of soul. Elizabeth Barrett, not Holland, exhibits the typical poetic attitude when she asks Robert Browning, "Is it true, as others say, that the productions of an artist do not partake of his real nature,--that in the minor sense, man is not made in the image of God? It is _not_ true, to my mind." [Footnote: Letter to Robert Browning, February 3, 1845.]