Adventure;_ Richard Burton, _The First Prize._] From Latin writers our
poets have chosen as favorite martyr Lucan, "by his death approved."
[Footnote: _Adonais._ See also Robert Bridges, _Nero._] Of the great
renaissance poets, Shakespeare alone has usually been considered exempt
from the general persecution, though Richard Garnett humorously
represents even him as suffering triple punishment,--flogging,
imprisonment and exile,--for his offense against Sir Thomas Lucy,
aggravated by poetical temperament. [Footnote: See _Wm. Shakespeare,
Pedagogue and Poacher_, a drama (1904).] Of all renaissance poets Dante
[Footnote: See G. L. Raymond, _Dante_; Sarah King Wiley, _Dante and
Beatrice_; Rossetti, _Dante at Verona_; Oscar Wilde, _Ravenna_.] and
Tasso [Footnote: Byron, _The Lament of Tasso_; Shelley, _Song for
Tasso_; James Thomson, B. V., _Tasso to Leonora_.] have received most
attention on account of their wrongs. [Footnote: The sufferings of
several French poets are commented upon in English verse. Swinburne's
poetry on Victor Hugo, Bulwer Lytton's _Andre Chenier_, and Alfred
Lang's _Gerard de Nerval_ come to mind.]

Naturally the adversities which touch our writers most nearly are those
of the modern English poets. It is the poets of the romantic movement
who are thought of as suffering greatest injustice. Chatterton's extreme
youth probably has helped to incense many against the cruelty that
caused his death. [Footnote: See Shelley, _Adonais_; Coleridge, _Monody
on the Death of Chatterton_; Keats, _Sonnet on Chatterton_; James
Montgomery, _Stanzas on Chatterton_; Rossetti, _Sonnet to Chatterton_;
Edward Dowden, _Prologue to Maurice Gerothwohl's Version of Vigny's
Chatterton_; W. A. Percy, _To Chatterton_.] Southey is singled out by
Landor for especial commiseration; _Who Smites the Wounded_ is an
indignant uncovering of the world's cruelty in exaggerating Southey's
faults. Landor insinuates that this persecution is extended to all