Byronic influence had time to reach America, Longfellow took up the
cudgels against the evil poet. [Footnote: See his treatment of Aretino,
in _Michael Angelo_.] Protest against the group of decadents who
flourished in the 1890's even yet rocks the poetic waves slightly,
though these men did not succeed in making the world take them as
seriously as it did Byron. The cue of most present-day writers is to
dismiss the professedly wicked poet lightly, as an aspirant to the
laurel who is unworthy of serious consideration. A contemporary poet
reflects of such would-be riders of Pegasus:

There will be fools that in the name of art
Will wallow in the mire, crying, "I fall,
I fall from heaven!" fools that have only heard
From earth, the murmur of those golden hooves
Far, far above them.
[Footnote: Alfred Noyes, _At the Sign of the Golden Shoe_. See also
Richard Le Gallienne, _The Decadent to his Soul_, _Proem to the
Reader in English Poems_; Joyce Kilmer, _A Ballad of New Sins_.]

Poets who indignantly repudiate any and all charges against their moral
natures have not been unanimous in following the same line of defense.
In many cases their argument is empirical, and their procedure is
ideally simple. If a verse-writer of the present time is convicted of
wrong living, his title of poet is automatically taken away from him; if
a singer of the past is secure in his laurels, it is understood that all
scandals regarding him are merely malicious fictions. In the eighteenth
century this mode of passing judgment was most naively manifest in
verse. Vile versifiers were invariably accused of having vile personal
lives, whereas the poet who basked in the light of fame was conceded,
without investigation, to "exult in virtue's pure ethereal flame." In