A Fable for Critics
Fable for Critics, A,verse satire by Lowell, published anonymously in 1848. Its eccentric “slap-dash” rhythm has been characterized as a “genial anapestic gait,” and the rhymes are equally careless, but besides the humor there are shrewd critical estimates of such contemporary authors as Holmes (“His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satiric”); Emerson (“A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders”); Alcott (“…I believe no man ever talked better; Each sentence hangs perfectly poised to the letter”); Longfellow (“Why, he'll live till men weary of Collins and Gray”); Bryant (“A smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified”); Margaret Fuller (“She always keeps asking if I don't observe a Particular likeness 'twixt her and Minerva”); Irving (“To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele, Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill”); Whittier (“A fervor...
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