Will people accept them? (i.e., these songs) As a timorous wench from a centaur (or a centurion) Already they flee, howling in terror * * * * * Will they be touched with the verisimilitude? Their virgin stupidity is untemptable. He adds, I beg you, my friendly critics, Do not set about to procure me an audience. Again he instructs his poems, when they meet the public, Salute them with your thumbs to your noses. It is very curious, after such passages, to find him pleading, in another poem, May my poems be printed this week? The naivete of this last question brings up insistently a perplexing problem. If the poet despises his readers, why does he write? He may perhaps evade this question by protesting, with Tennyson, I pipe but as the linnets do, And sing because I must. But why does he publish? If he were strictly logical, surely he would do as the artist in Browning's _Pictor Ignotus,_ who so shrank from having his pictures come into contact with fools, that he painted upon hidden, moldering walls, thus renouncing all possibility of fame. But one doubts whether such renunciation has been made often, especially in the field of poetry. Rossetti buried his poems, of course, but their resurrection was not postponed till the Last Judgment. Other writers have coyly waved fame away, but have gracefully yielded to their friends' importunities, and have given their works to the world. When one reads such expressions as Byron's; Fame is the thirst of youth,--but I am not So young as to regard men's frown or smile As loss or guerdon of a glorious lot, [Footnote: _Childe Harold._] one wonders. Perhaps the highest genius takes absolutely no account of fame, as the sun-god asserts in Watts-Dunton's poem, _Apollo in Paris:_ I love the song-born poet, for that he Loves only song--seeks for love's sake alone Shy Poesie, whose dearest bowers, unknown To feudaries of fame, are known to thee. [Footnote: See also Coventry Patmore, from _The Angel in the House,_ "I will not Hearken Blame or Praise"; Francis Carlin, _The Home Song_ (1918).] But other poets, with the utmost inconsistency, have admitted that they find the thought of fame very sweet. [Footnote: See Edward Young, _Love of Fame;_ John Clare, _Song's Eternity, Idle Fame, To John Milton;_ Bulwer Lytton, _The Desire of Fame;_ James Gates Percival, _Sonnet 379;_ Josephine Peston Peabody, _Marlowe._] Keats dwells upon the thought of it. [Footnote: See the _Epistle to My Brother George._] Browning shows both of his poet heroes concerned over the question. In _Pauline_ the speaker confesses, I ne'er sing But as one entering bright halls, where all Will rise and shout for him. In _Sordello,_ again, Browning analyzes the desire for fame: