Let but the verse befit a hero's fame;
Immortal be the verse, forgot the author's name.
[Footnote: _Introduction to Don Roderick._]

Mrs. Browning, to be sure, also tries to prick the bubble of the poet's
conceit, assuring him:

Ye are not great because creation drew
Large revelations round your earliest sense,
Nor bright because God's glory shines for you.
[Footnote: _Mountaineer and Poet_.]

But in her other poetry, notably in _Aurora Leigh_ and _A Vision of
Poets,_ she amply avows her sense of the preeminence of the singer, as
well as of his song.

While it is easy to shake our heads over the self-importance of the
nineteenth century, and to contrast it with the unconscious lyrical
spontaneity of half-mythical singers in the beginning of the world, it
is probable that some degree of egotism is essential to a poet.
Remembering his statement that his name was written in water, we are
likely to think of Keats as the humblest of geniuses, yet he wrote to a
friend, "You will observe at the end of this, 'How a solitary life
engenders pride and egotism!' True--I know it does: but this pride and
egotism will enable me to write finer things than anything else could,
so I will indulge it." [Footnote: Letter to John Taylor, August 23,
1819.] No matter how modest one may be about his work after it is
completed, a sense of its worth must be with one at the time of
composition, else he will not go to the trouble of recording and