Insistence upon the childlike nature of the poet is a characteristic nineteenth century obsession. Such temperamentally diverse poets as Mrs. Browning, [Footnote: See _A Vision of Poets_.] Swinburne [Footnote: See _A New Year's Ode_.] and Francis Thompson [Footnote: See _Sister Songs_.] agree in stressing this aspect of the poet's virtue. Perhaps it has been overdone, and the resulting picture of the singer as "an ineffectual angel, beating his bright wings in the void," is not so noble a conception as was Milton's sterner one, but it lends to the poet-hero a pathos that has had much to do with popularizing the type in literature, causing the reader to exclaim, with Shelley, The curse of Cain Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest. Of course the vogue of such a conception owes most to Shelley. All the poets appearing in Shelley's verse, the heroes of _Rosalind and Helen, The Revolt of Islam, Adonais, Epipsychidion_ and _Prince Athanase_, share the disposition of the last-named one: Naught of ill his heart could understand, But pity and wild sorrow for the same. It is obvious that all these singers are only veiled expositions of Shelley's own character, as he understood it, and all enthusiastic readers of Shelley's poetry have pictured an ideal poet who is reminiscent of Shelley. Even a poet so different from him, in many respects, as Browning, could not escape from the impress of Shelley's character upon his ideal. Browning seems to have recognized fleeting glimpses of Shelley in _Sordello_, and to have acknowledged them in his apostrophe to Shelley at the beginning of that poem. Browning's revulsion of feeling, after he discovered Shelley's abandonment of Harriet, did not prevent him from holding to his early ideal of Shelley as the typical poet. A poem by James Thomson, B.V., is characteristic of later poets' notion of Shelley. The scene of the poem is laid in heaven. Shelley, as the most compassionate of the angels, is chosen to go to the earth, to right its evils. He comes to this world and lives with "the saint's white purity," being A voice of right amidst a world's foul wrong, * * * * * With heavenly inspiration, too divine For souls besotted with earth's sensual wine. [Footnote: _Shelley_.] Consequently he is misunderstood and persecuted, and returns to heaven heart-broken by the apparent failure of his mission.