But in the end, and after much struggling, Aurora wins for her poetry even Romney's reluctant admiration. Mrs. Browning's implication seems to be that the intensely "personal and passionate" nature of woman is an advantage to her, if once she can lift herself from its thraldom, because it saves her from the danger of dry generalization which assails verse of more masculine temper. [Footnote: For treatment of the question of the poet's sex in American verse by women, see Emma Lazarus, _Echoes_; Olive Dargan, _Ye Who are to Sing_.] Of only less vital concern to poets than the question of the poet's physical constitution is the problem of his environment. Where will the chains of mortality least hamper his aspiring spirit? In answer, one is haunted by the line, I too was born in Arcadia. Still, this is not the answer that poets would make in all periods. In the eighteenth century, for example, though a stereotyped conception of the shepherd poet ruled,--as witness the verses of Hughes, [Footnote: See _Corydon_.] Collins, [Footnote: See _Selim, or the Shepherd's Moral_.] and Thomson,[Footnote: See _Pastoral on the Death of Daemon_.]--it is obvious that these gentlemen were in no literal sense expressing their views on the poet's habitat. It was hardly necessary for Thomas Hood to parody their efforts in his eclogues giving a broadly realistic turn to shepherds assuming the singing robes. [Footnote: See _Huggins and Duggins_, and _The Forlorn Shepherd's Complaint_.] Wherever a personal element enters, as in John Hughes' _Letter to a Friend in the Country_, and Sidney Dyer's _A Country Walk_, it is apparent that the poet is not indigenous to the soil. He is the city gentleman, come out to enjoy a holiday. With the growth of a romantic conception of nature, the relation of the poet to nature becomes, of course, more intimate. But Cowper and Thomson keep themselves out of their nature poetry to such an extent that it is hard to tell what their ideal position would be, and not till the publication of Beattie's _The Minstrel_ do we find a poem in which the poet is nurtured under the influence of a natural scenery. At the very climax of the romantic period the poet is not always bred in the country. We find Byron revealing himself as one who seeks nature only occasionally, as a mistress in whose novelty resides a good deal of her charm. Shelley, too, portrays a poet reared in civilization, but escaping to nature. [Footnote: See _Epipsychidion_, and _Alastor_.] Still, it is obvious that ever since the time of Burns and Wordsworth, the idea of a poet nurtured from infancy in nature's bosom has been extremely popular.