The poet's overweening self-esteem may well be the hothouse atmosphere
in which alone his genius can thrive, but from another point of view it
seems a subtle poison gas, engendering all the ills that differentiate
him from other men. Its first effect is likely to be the reflection that
his genius is judged by a public that is vastly inferior to him. This
galling thought usually drives him into an attitude of indifference or
of openly expressed contempt for his audience. The mood is apparent at
the very beginning of the romantic period. The germ of such a feeling is
to be found even in so modest a poet as Cowper, who maintains that his
brother poets, rather than the unliterary public, should pass upon his
worth.[Footnote: See _To Darwin_.] But the average poet of the last
century and a half goes a step beyond this attitude, and appears to feel
that there is something contemptible about popularity. Literary
arrogance seems far from characteristic of Burns, yet he tells us how,
in a mood of discouragement,

I backward mused on wasted time,
How I had spent my youthful prime,
And done naething
But stringin' blithers up in rhyme
For fools to sing.
[Footnote: _The Vision._]

Of course it is not till we come to Byron that we meet the most
thoroughgoing expression of this contempt for the public. The sentiment
in _Childe Harold_ is one that Byron never tires of harping on:
I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee.