And toads seen crawling on his hand, And clinging bats, but dimly scanned, Full in his face their wings expand. A paleness took the poet's cheek; "Must I drink here?" He seemed to seek The lady's will with utterance meek: "Ay, ay," she said, "it so must be:" (And this time she spoke cheerfully) Behooves thee know world's cruelty. The modern poet is able to bring forward many historical names by which to substantiate the charges of cruelty which he makes against society. From classic Greece he names Aeschylus [Footnote: R. C. Robbins, _Poems of Personality_ (1909); Cale Young Rice, _Aeschylus._] and Euripides. [Footnote: Bulwer Lytton, _Euripides;_ Browning, _Balaustion's Adventure;_ Richard Burton, _The First Prize._] From Latin writers our poets have chosen as favorite martyr Lucan, "by his death approved." [Footnote: _Adonais._ See also Robert Bridges, _Nero._] Of the great renaissance poets, Shakespeare alone has usually been considered exempt from the general persecution, though Richard Garnett humorously represents even him as suffering triple punishment,--flogging, imprisonment and exile,--for his offense against Sir Thomas Lucy, aggravated by poetical temperament. [Footnote: See _Wm. Shakespeare, Pedagogue and Poacher_, a drama (1904).] Of all renaissance poets Dante [Footnote: See G. L. Raymond, _Dante_; Sarah King Wiley, _Dante and Beatrice_; Rossetti, _Dante at Verona_; Oscar Wilde, _Ravenna_.] and Tasso [Footnote: Byron, _The Lament of Tasso_; Shelley, _Song for Tasso_; James Thomson, B. V., _Tasso to Leonora_.] have received most attention on account of their wrongs. [Footnote: The sufferings of several French poets are commented upon in English verse. Swinburne's poetry on Victor Hugo, Bulwer Lytton's _Andre Chenier_, and Alfred Lang's _Gerard de Nerval_ come to mind.] Naturally the adversities which touch our writers most nearly are those of the modern English poets. It is the poets of the romantic movement who are thought of as suffering greatest injustice. Chatterton's extreme youth probably has helped to incense many against the cruelty that caused his death. [Footnote: See Shelley, _Adonais_; Coleridge, _Monody on the Death of Chatterton_; Keats, _Sonnet on Chatterton_; James Montgomery, _Stanzas on Chatterton_; Rossetti, _Sonnet to Chatterton_; Edward Dowden, _Prologue to Maurice Gerothwohl's Version of Vigny's Chatterton_; W. A. Percy, _To Chatterton_.] Southey is singled out by Landor for especial commiseration; _Who Smites the Wounded_ is an indignant uncovering of the world's cruelty in exaggerating Southey's faults. Landor insinuates that this persecution is extended to all geniuses: Alas! what snows are shed Upon thy laurelled head, Hurtled by many cares and many wrongs! Malignity lets none Approach the Delphic throne; A hundred lane-fed curs bark down Fame's hundred tongues. [Footnote: _To Southey_, _1833_.]