When the poet of more firmly grounded conviction attempts to show reason for his confidence in the poet's virtue, he may advance such an argument for the association of righteousness and genius as has been offered by Carlyle in his essay, The Hero as Poet. This is the theory that, far from being an example of nervous degeneration, as his enemies assert, the poet is a superman, possessing will and moral insight in as preëminent a degree as he possesses sensibility. This view, that poetry is merely a by-product of a great nature, gains plausibility from certain famous artists of history, whose versatility appears to have been unlimited. Longfellow has seized upon this conception of the poet in his drama, Michael Angelo, as has G. L. Raymond in his drama, Dante. In the latter poem the argument for the poet's moral supremacy is baldly set forth.
Artistic sensibility, Dante says, far from excusing moral laxity, binds one to stricter standards of right living. So when Cavalcanti argues in favor of free love,
Your humming birds may sip the sweet they need
From every flower, and why not humming poets?
Raymond makes Dante reply,
The poets are not lesser men, but greater,
And so should find unworthy of themselves
A word, a deed, that makes them seem less worthy.
Owing to the growth of specialization in modern life, this argument, despite Carlyle, has not attained much popularity. Even in idealized fictions of the poet, it is not often maintained that he is equally proficient in every line of activity. Only one actual poet within our period, William Morris, can be taken as representative of such a type, and he does not afford a strong argument for the poet's distinctive virtue, inasmuch as tradition does not represent him as numbering remarkable saintliness among his numerous gifts.
There is a decided inconsistency, moreover, in claiming unusual strength of will as one of the poet's attributes. The muscular morality resulting from training one's will develops in proportion to one's ability to overthrow one's own unruly impulses. It is almost universally maintained by poets, on the contrary, that their gift depends upon their yielding themselves utterly to every fugitive impulse and emotion. Little modern verse vaunts the poet's stern self-control. George Meredith may cry,
I take the hap
Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails
Propels, but I am helmsman.
[Footnote: Modern Love.]
Henley may thank the gods for his unconquerable soul. On the whole, however, a fatalistic temper is much easier to trace in modern poetry than is this one.
Hardly more popular than the superman theory is another argument for the poet's virtue that appears sporadically in verse. It has occurred to a few poets that their virtue is accounted for by the high subject-matter of their work, which exercises an unconscious influence upon their lives. Thus in the eighteenth century Young finds it natural that in Addison, the author of Cato,