the most interesting feature of this investigation. The man in whose
nature the poet's two apparently contradictory desires shall wholly
harmonize is the ideal whom practically all modern English poets are
attempting to present.

Minor poets have been considered, perhaps to an unwarranted degree. In
the Victorian period, for instance, there may seem something grotesque
in placing Tupper's judgments on verse beside Browning's. Yet, since it
is true that so slight a poet as William Lisles Bowles influenced
Coleridge, and that T. E. Chivers probably influenced Poe, it seems that
in a study of this sort minor writers have a place. In addition, where
the views of one minor verse-writer might be negligible, the views of a
large group are frequently highly significant, not only as testifying to
the vogue of ephemeral ideas, but as demonstrating that great and small
in the poetic world have the same general attitude toward their gift. It
is perhaps true that minor poets have been more loquacious on the
subject of their nature than have greater ones, but some attempt is here
made to hold them within bounds, so that they may not drown out the more
meaningful utterances of the master singers.

The last one hundred and fifty years have been chosen for discussion,
since the beginning of the romantic movement marked the rise of a
peculiarly self-conscious attitude in the poet, and brought his
personality into new prominence. Contemporary verse seems to fall within
the scope of these studies, inasmuch as the "renaissance of poetry" (as
enthusiasts like to term the new stirring of interest in verse) is
revealing young poets of the present day even more frank in
self-revealment than were poets of twenty years ago.

The excursion through modern English poetry involved in these studies