Mrs. Browning [Footnote: See _The Poet's Vow_; Letters to Robert
Browning, January 1, 1846, and March 20, 1845.] both sounded a warning
as to the dangers of complete isolation. And at present, though the
eremite poet is still with us, [Footnote: See Lascelles Ambercrombe,
_An Escape_; J. E. Flecker, _Dirge_; Madison Cawein, _Comrading_; Yeats,
_The Lake Isle of Innisfree_.] he does not have everything his own way.

For it has begun to occur to poets that it may not have been merely
anuntoward accident that several of their loftiest brethren were reared
in
London. In the romantic period even London-bred Keats said, as a matter
of course,

The coy muse, with me she would not live
In this dark city,
[Footnote: _Epistle to George Felton Mathew_. Wordsworth's sonnet,
"Earth has not anything to show more fair," seems to have been unique at
this time.]

and the American romanticist, Emerson, said of the poet,

In cities he was low and mean;
The mountain waters washed him clean.
[Footnote: _The Poet_.]

But Lowell protested against such a statement, avowing of the muse,

She can find a nobler theme for song
In the most loathsome man that blasts the sight
Than in the broad expanse of sea and shore.