The likeness of Sordello to Shelley [Footnote: Browning himself pointed
out a similarity between them, in the opening of Book I.] is marked in
the ravages of his genius upon his flesh, so that at the climax of the
poem he, though still a young man, is gray and haggard and fragile.

Though ill-health is a handicap to him, the poet's subjection to the
mutability that governs the mundane sphere is less important, some
persons would declare, in the matter of beauty and health than in the
matter of sex. Can a poetic spirit overcome the calamity of being cast
by Fate into the body of a woman?

As the battle of feminism dragged its bloody way through all fields of
endeavor in the last century, it of course has left its traces in the
realm of poetry. But here the casualties appear to be light,--in fact,
it is a disappointment to the suffragist to find most of the blows
struck by the female aspirant for glory, with but few efforts to parry
them on the part of the male contingent. Furthermore, in verse concerned
with specific woman poets, men have not failed to give them their due,
or more. From Miriam [Footnote: See Barry Cornwall, _Miriam_.] and
Sappho, [Footnote: Southey, _Sappho_; Freneau, _Monument of Phaon_;
Kingsley, _Sappho_, Swinburne, _On the Cliffs_, _Sapphics_, _Anactoria_;
Cale Young Rice, _Sappho's Death Song_; J. G. Percival, Sappho; Percy
Mackaye, _Sappho and Phaon_; W. A. Percy, _Sappho in Lenkos_.] to the
long list of nineteenth century female poets--Mrs. Browning, [Footnote:
Browning, _One Word More_, _Preface to The Ring and the Book_; James
Thomson, B. V., _E. B. B._; Sidney Dobell, _On the Death of Mrs.
Browning_.] Christina Rossetti, [Footnote: Swinburne, _Ballad of
Appeal to Christina Rossetti_, _New Year's Eve_, _Dedication to
Christina Rossetti_.] Emily Bronte, [Footnote: Stephen Phillips,