retaliation in jeers.--The poet's wounded vanity.--His morbid
self-consciousness.--His self-imposed solitude.--Enhancement of his
egotism by solitude.

II. THE MORTAL COIL

View that genius results from a happy combination of physical
conditions.--The poet's reluctance to embrace such a theory.--His
heredity.--Rank.--Patricians vs. children of the soil.--His
body.--Poetic beauty.--Features expressing alert and delicate
senses.--Contrary conception of poet rapt away from sense.--
Blindness.--Physique.--Health.--Hypersensibility of invalids.--
Escape from fleshly bondage afforded by perfect health.--The poet's
sex.--Limitations of the woman poet.--Her claims.--The poet's
habitat.--Vogue of romantic solitude.--Savage environment.--Its
advantages.--Growing popularity of the city poet.--The wanderer.--
The financial status of the poet.--Poverty as sharpener of
sensibility.--The poet's age.--Vogue of the young poet.--Purity of
youthful emotions.--Early death.--Claims of the aged poet.--
Contemplation after active life.

III. THE POET AS LOVER

The classic conception.--Love as a disturbing factor in
composition.--The romantic conception.--Love the source of
inspiration.--Fusion of intense passion with repose essential to
poetry.--Poetic love and Platonic love synonymous.--Sensual love not
suggestive.--The poet's ascent to ideal love.--Analogy with ascent
described in Plato's _Symposium_.--Discontent with ephemeralness of
passion.--Poetry a means of rendering passion eternal.--Insatiability of