The inheritance of a specific literary gift is almost never insisted
upon by poets, [Footnote: See, however, Anna Hempstead Branch, _Her
Words_.] though some of the verse addressed to the child, Hartley
Coleridge, possibly implies a belief in such heritage. The son of Robert
and Mrs. Browning seems, strangely enough, considering his chance of a
double inheritance of literary ability, not to have been the subject of
versified prophecies of this sort. One expression by a poet of belief in
heredity may, however, detain us. At the beginning of Viola Meynell's
career, it is interesting to notice that as a child she was the subject
of speculation as to her inheritance of her mother's genius. It was
Francis Thompson, of course, who, musing on Alice Meynell's poetry, said
to the little Viola,

If angels have hereditary wings,
If not by Salic law is handed down
The poet's laurel crown,
To thee, born in the purple of the throne,
The laurel must belong.
[Footnote: _Sister Songs_.]

But these lines must not be considered apart from the fanciful poem in
which they grow.

What have poets to say on the larger question of their social
inheritance? This is a subject on which, at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, at least, poets should have had ideas, and the
varying rank given to their lyrical heroes is not without significance.
The renaissance idea, that the nobleman is framed to enjoy, rather than
to create, beauty,--that he is the connoisseur rather than the
genius,--seems to have persisted in the eighteenth century, and at the