While our poets thus assert, occasionally, that the unblushing nudity of their pride is a conscious departure from convention, they would not have us believe that they are fundamentally different from older singers. One seldom finds an actual poet, of whatever period, depicted in the verse of the last century, whose pride is not insisted upon. The favorite poet-heroes, Aeschylus, Michael Angelo, Tasso, Dante, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Chatterton, Keats, Byron, are all characterized as proud. The last-named has been especially kept in the foreground by following verse-writers, as a precedent for their arrogance. Shelley's characterization of Byron in _Julian and Maddalo_, The sense that he was greater than his kind Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind By gazing on its own exceeding light, has been followed by many expressions of the same thought, at first wholly sympathetic, lately, it must be confessed, somewhat ironical. Consciousness of partnership with God in composition naturally lifts the poet, in his own estimation, at least, to a super-human level. The myth of Apollo disguised as a shepherd strikes him as being a happy expression of his divinity. [Footnote: See James Russell Lowell, _The Shepherd of King Admetus._] Thus Emerson calls singers Blessed gods in servile masks. [Footnote: _Saadi._] The hero of John Davidson's _Ballad in Blank Verse on the Making of a Poet_ soars to a monotheistic conception of his powers, asserting Henceforth I shall be God, for consciousness Is God. I suffer. I am God. Another poet-hero is characterized: He would reach the source of light, And share, enthroned, the Almighty's might. [Footnote: Harvey Rice, _The Visionary_ (1864). In recent years a few poets have modestly disclaimed equality with God. See William Rose Benet, _Imagination,_ and Joyce Kilmer, _Trees._ The kinship of poets and the Almighty is the theme of _The Lonely Poet_ (1919), by John Hall Wheelock.] On the other hand, recent poets' hatred of orthodox religion has led them to idealize the Evil One, and regard him as no unworthy rival as regards pride. One of Browning's poets is "prouder than the devil." [Footnote: _Waring._] Chatterton, according to Rossetti, was "kin to Milton through his Satan's pride." [Footnote: Sonnet, _To Chatterton._] Of another poet-hero one of his friends declares, You would be arrogant, boy, you know, in hell, And keep the lowest circle to yourself. [Footnote: Josephine Preston Peabody, _Marlowe_ (1911).] There is bathos, after these claims, in the concern some poets show over the question of priority between themselves and kings. Yet one writer takes the trouble to declare, Artists truly great Are on a par with kings, nor would exchange Their fate for that of any potentate. [Footnote: Longfellow, _Michael Angelo_.] Stephen Phillips is unique in his disposition to ridicule such an attitude; in his drama on Nero, he causes this poet, self-styled, to say,