relationships are by the poet turned upon one object. Apropos of the
world's indifference to him, Shelley takes comfort in the assurance of
such communion, saying to Mary,

If men must rise and stamp with fury blind
On his pure name who loves them--thou and I,
Sweet friend! can look from our tranquillity
Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night,--
Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by,
That burn from year to year with inextinguished light.
[Footnote: Introduction to _The Revolt of Islam_.]

But though passion is so often the source of his inspiration, the poet's
love affairs are seldom allowed to flourish. The only alleviation of his
loneliness must be, then, in the friendship of unusually gifted and
discerning men, usually of his own calling. Doubtless the ideal of most
nineteenth century writers would be such a jolly fraternity of poets as
Herrick has made immortal by his _Lines to Ben Jonson_.[Footnote:
The tradition of the lonely poet was in existence even at this time,
however. See Ben Jonson, _Essay on Donne_.] A good deal of nineteenth
century verse shows the author enviously dwelling upon the ideal
comradeship of Elizabethan poets.[Footnote: Keats' _Lines on the
Mermaid Tavern_, Browning's _At the Mermaid_, Watts-Dunton's _Christmas
at the Mermaid_, E. A. Robinson's _Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from
Stratford_, Josephine Preston Peabody's _Marlowe_, and Alfred Noyes'
_Tales of the Mermaid Inn_ all present fondly imagined accounts of the
gay intimacy of the master dramatists. Keats, who was so generous in
acknowledging his indebtedness to contemporary artists, tells, in his
epistles, of the envy he feels for men who created under these ideal
conditions of comradeship.] But multiple friendships did not flourish