But among writers whose names are recognizable without an appeal to a
librarian's index, precisely this attitude is not met with. It would be
absurd, of course, to deny that one finds convincingly sincere
expressions of modesty among poets of genuine merit. Many of them have
taken pains to express themselves in their verse as humbled by the
genius above their grasp. [Footnote: See Emerson, _In a Dull Uncertain
Brain_; Whittier, _To my Namesake_; Sidney Lanier, _Ark of the Future_;
Oliver Wendell Holmes, _The Last Reader_; Bayard Taylor, _L'Envoi_;
Robert Louis Stevenson, _To Dr. Hake_; Francis Thompson, _To My
Godchild_.] But we must agree with their candid avowals that they belong
in the second rank. The greatest poets of the century are not in the
habit of belittling themselves. It is almost unparalleled to find so
sweeping a revolutionist of poetic traditions as Burns saying of
himself:

I am nae poet, in a sense,
But just a rhymer like, by chance,
And hae to learning nae pretense,
Yet what the matter?
Whene'er my muse does on me glance,
I jingle at her.
[Footnote: _Epistle to Lapraik._]

Most of the self-depreciatory writers, by their very abnegation of the
title, exalt the supreme poet. There are few indeed so unconcerned about
the dignity of the calling as is Sir Walter Scott, who assigns to the
minstrels of his tales a subordinate social position that would make the
average bard depicted in literature gnash his teeth for rage, and who
casually disposes of the poet's immortality: