In a narrative of self, what is the place of people, of others, of community? Quite plainly, this question poses the paradox of the lyric poet. Interlinking the social implications of poetry with theoretical models of eighteenth-century sympathy, primarily Adam Smiths sympathetic concord, lays the foundation for the latter half of the chapter: understanding “sympathetic collaboration” and its connections to Victorian liberalism, which I define as a communal fraternity of sympathetic experience that uses art as a means of expression and experimentation.