afford no gauge of the ardors within his soul. Thus Wordsworth solemnly
assures us,

Had I been a writer of love poetry, it would have been natural to me to
write with a degree of warmth which could hardly have been approved by
my principles, and which might have been undesirable for the reader.
[Footnote: See Arthur Symons, _The Romantic Movement_, p. 92 (from
Myers, _Life of Wordsworth_).]

Such boasting is equally characteristic of our staid American poets, who
shrink from the imputation that their orderly lives are the result of
temperamental incapacity for unrestraint. [Footnote: Thus Whittier, in
_My Namesake_, says of himself,

Few guessed beneath his aspect grave
What passions strove in chains.

Also Bayard Taylor retorts to those who taunt him with lack of passion,

But you are blind, and to the blind
The touch of ice and fire is one.

The same defense is made by Richard W. Gilder in lines entitled _Our
Elder Poets_.] In differing mode, Swinburne's poetry is perhaps an
expression of the same attitude. The ultra-erotic verse of that poet
somehow suggests a wild hullabaloo raised to divert our attention from
the fact that he was constitutionally incapable of experiencing passion.

Early in the century, something approaching the Wordsworthian doctrine
of emotion recollected in tranquillity was in vogue, as regards capacity