The ill-treatment of Burns has had its measure of denunciation. The centenary of his birth brought forth a good deal of such verse. Of course Byron's sufferings have had their share of attention, though, remembering his enormous popularity, the better poets have left to the more gullible rhymsters the echo of his tirades against persecution, [Footnote: See T. H. Chivers, _Lord Byron's Dying Words to Ada_, and _Byron_ (1853); Charles Soran, _Byron_ (1842); E. F. Hoffman, _Byron_ (1849).] and have conceived of the public as beaten at its own game by him. Thus Shelley exults in the thought, The Pythian of the age one arrow drew And smiled. The spoilers tempt no second blow, They fawn on the proud feet that laid them low. [Footnote: _Adonais._] The wrongs of Keats, also, are not so much stressed in genuine poetry as formerly, and the fiction that his death was due to the hostility of his critics is dying out, though Shelley's _Adonais_ will go far toward giving it immortality. Oscar Wilde's characterization of Keats as "the youngest of the martyrs" [Footnote: _At the Grave of Keats._] brings the tradition down almost to the present in British verse, but for the most part its popularity is now limited to American rhymes. One is rather indignant, after reading Keats' own manly words about hostile criticism, to find a nondescript verse-writer putting the puerile self-characterization into his mouth: I, the Boy-poet, whom with curse They hounded on to death's untimely doom. [Footnote: T. L. Harris, _Lyrics of the Golden Age_ (1856).] In even less significant verse the most maudlin sympathy with Keats is expressed. One is tempted to feel that Keats suffered less from his enemies than from his admirers, of the type which Browning characterized as "the foolish crowd of rushers-in upon genius ... never content till they cut their initials on the cheek of the Medicean Venus to prove they worship her." [Footnote: Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, November 17, 1845.] With the possible exception of Chatterton, the poet whose wrongs have raised the most indignant storm of protest is Shelley. Several poets, as the young Browning, Francis Thompson, James Thomson, B. V., and Mr. Woodberry, have made a chivalrous championing of Shelley almost part of their poetical platform. No doubt the facts of Shelley's life warrant such sympathy. Then too, Shelley's sense of injustice, unlike Byron's, is not such as to seem weak to us, though it is so freely expressed in his verse. In addition one is likely to feel particular sympathy for Shelley because the recoil of the public from him cannot be laid to his scorn. His enthusiasms were always for the happiness of the entire human race, as well as for himself. Everything in his unfortunate life vouches for the sincerity of his statement, in the _Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_: Never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery.