Seer-like, inscrutable, revealing deeps
Where-in a mighty spirit wakes or sleeps.
[Footnote: C. L. Hildreth, _At the Mermaid_ (1889).]

The most unflattering portrait is no bar to poets' confidence in their
brother's beauty, yet they are happiest when fashioning a frame for
geniuses of whom we have no authentic description. "The love-dream of
his unrecorded face," [Footnote: Rossetti, _Sonnet on Chatterton_.]
has led to many an idealized portrait of such a long-dead singer.
Marlowe has been the favorite figure of this sort with which the fancies
of our poets have played. From the glory and power of his dramas their
imaginations inevitably turn to

The gloriole of his flame-coloured hair,
The lean, athletic body, deftly planned
To carry that swift soul of fire and air;
The long, thin flanks, the broad breast, and the grand
Heroic shoulders!
[Footnote: Alfred Noyes, _At the Sign of the Golden Shoe_.]

It is no wonder that in the last century there has grown up so firm a
belief in the poet's beauty, one reflects, remembering the seraphic face
of Shelley, the Greek sensuousness of Keats' profile, the romantic fire
of Byron's expression. [Footnote: Browning in his youth must have
encouraged the tradition. See Macready's Diary, in which he describes
Browning as looking "more like a youthful poet than any man I ever
saw."] Yet it is a belief that must have been sorely tried since the
invention of the camera has brought the verse-writer's countenance, in
all its literalness, before the general public. Was it only an accident
that the popularity of current poetry died just as cameras came into