Poems / 3 The writings of James Russell Lowell. 9
Lowell, James Russell, 1819-1891
ftitoerjsfitie <£trition THE WRITINGS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL IN TEN VOLUMES VOLUME IX. * POEMS in. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY (€{je ilibersibe press, CamliriOge M DCCCXCII Copyright, 1848, 1857, 1866, 186S, 1876, 1890, By JAMES BUSSELL LOWELL. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Company. CONTENTS - 4 - PAGE A FABLE FOR CRITICS . 1 THE UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT ... 96 FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM . . .126 AN ORIENTAL APOLOGUE . 137 UNDER THE WILLOWS, AND OTHER POEMS To Charles Eliot Norton . 149 Under the Willows . 150 Dara . 163 The First Snow-Fall . 166 The Singing Leaves . 168 Seaweed . 172 The Finding of the Lyre . 173 New Year’s Eve, 1850 174 For an Autograph . 175 Al Fresco . 176 Masaccio . . 179 Without and Within . 181 Godminster Chimes . 182 The Parting of the Ways . 184 Aladdin . 188 An Invitation . 189 The Nomades . 194 Self-Study .  Palinode . . 213 After the Burial . 214 The Dead House . 216 A Mood . 218 The Voyage to Vinland . 220 Mahmood the Image-Breaker . 231  Jehosha Said . 244 All-Saints . 245 A Winter-Evening Hymn to my Fere . . . 246 Fancy’s Casuistry . 253 To  Dream-Fantasy . 266 A Familiar Epistle to a Friend .... 272 An Ember Picture . 278 To H. W. L . 2S1 The Nightingale in the Study .... 282 In the Twilight . 285 The Foot-Path . 287 Reader ! walk up at once (it will soon be too late), and buy at a perfectly ruinous rate A FABLE FOR CRITICS: OR, BETTER, (I LIRE, AS A THING THAT THE READER'S FIRST FANCY MAY STRIKE, AN OLD-FASHIONED TITLE-PAGE, SUCH AS PRESENTS A TABULAR VIEW OF THE VOLUME'S CONTENTS), A GLANCE AT A FEW OF OUR LITERARY PROGENIES (MRS. MALAPROP’S WORD) FROM THE TUB OF DIOGENES; A VOCAL AND MUSICAL MEDLEY, THAT IS, A SERIES OF JOKES 3U3e 0 OTonOerful &ut?, WHO ACCOMPANIES HIMSELF WITH A RUB-A-DUB-DUB, FULL OF SPIRIT AND GRACE, ON THE TOP OF THE TUB. Set forth in October, the 31st day, In the year ’48, G. P. Putnam, Broadway. CHARLES F. BRIGGS (Cbis Volume a AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. PREFATORY NOTE This jeu d’ esprit was extemporized, I may fairly say, so rapidly was it written, purely for my own amusement and with no thought of publication. I sent daily instal¬ ments of it to a friend in New York, the late Charles F. Briggs. He urged me to let it be printed, and I at last consented to its anonymous publication. The secret was kept till after several persons had laid claim to its author* ship. 85 It being the commonest mode of procedure, I pre¬ mise a few candid remarks To the Reader: — This trifle, begun to please only myself and my own private fancy, was laid on the shelf. But some friends, who had seen it, induced me, by dint of saying they liked it, to put it in print. That is, having come to that very conclusion, I asked their advice when ’t would make no confusion. Tor though (in the gentlest of ways) they had hinted it was scarce worth the while, I should doubtless have printed it. I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender thing, rhyme-y winged, with a sting in its tail. But, by addings and alterings not previously planned, digressions chance-hatched, like birds’ eggs in the sand, and dawdlings to suit every whimsey’s de¬ mand (always freeing the bird which I held in my hand, for the two perched, perhaps out of reach, in the tree), — it grew by degrees to the size which you see. I was like the old woman that carried the calf, and my neighbors, like hers, no doubt, wonder and laugh ; and when, my strained arms with their grown burthen full, I call it my Fable, they call it a bull. Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that goes) in a style that is neither good verse nor bad 6 A FABLE FOR CRITICS prose, and being a person whom nobody knows, some people will say I am rather more free with my readers than it is becoming to be, that I seem to expect them to wait on my leisure in following wherever I wander at pleasure, that, in short, I take more than a young author’s lawful ease, and laugh in a queer way so like Mephistopheles, that the Public will doubt, as they grope through my rhythm, if in truth I am making fun of them or with them. So the excellent Public is hereby assured that the sale of my book is already secured. For there is not a poet throughout the whole land but will purchase a copy or two out of hand, in the fond expectation of being amused in it, by seeing his betters cut up and abused in it. Now, I find, by a pretty exact calculation, there are something like ten thousand bards in the nation, of that special variety whom the Review and Magazine critics call lofty and true , and about thirty thousand (this tribe is increasing) of the kinds who are termed full of promise and pleasing. The Public will see by a glance at this schedule, that they cannot ex¬ pect me to be over-sedulous about courting them, since it seems I have got enough fuel made sure of for boiling my pot. As for such of our poets as find not their names mentioned once in my pages, with praises or blames, let them send in their cards, without further DELAY, to my friend G. P. Putnam, Esquire, in Broadway, where a list will be kept with the strictest regard to the day and the hour of receiv- A FABLE FOR CRITICS 7 ing the card. Then, taking them up as I chance to have time (that is, if their names can he twisted in rhyme), I will honestly give each his proper po¬ sition, at the rate of one author to each new edition. Thus a PREMIUM is offered suffi¬ ciently high (as the magazines say when they tell their best lie) to induce bards to club their re¬ sources and buy the balance of every edition, until they have all of them fairly been run through the mill. One word to such readers (judicious and wise) as read books with something behind the mere eyes, of whom in the country, perhaps, there are two, in¬ cluding myself, gentle reader, and you. All the characters sketched in this slight jeu d' esprit , though, it may be, they seem, here and there, rather free, and drawn from a somewhat too cyni¬ cal standpoint, are meant to be faithful, for that is the grand point, and none but an owl would feel sore at a rub from a jester who tells you, without any subterfuge, that he sits in Diogenes’ tub. A PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION, though it well may be reckoned, of all composition, the species at once most delightful and healthy, is a thing which an author, unless he be wealthy and willing to pay for that kind of delight, is not, in all instances, called on to write, though there are, it is said, who, their spirits to cheer, slip in a new title-page three times a year, and in this way snuff up an imaginary savor of that sweetest of dishes, the popular favor, — much as if a starved painter should fall to and treat the Ugolino inside to a pic¬ ture of meat. You remember (if not, pray turn backward and look) that, in writing the preface which ushered my book, I treated you, excellent Public, not merely with a cool disregard, but downright cavalierly. Now I would not take back the least thing I then said, though I thereby could butter both sides of my bread, for I never could see that an author owed aught to the people he solaced, diverted, or taught ; and, as for mere fame, I have long ago learned that the persons by whom it is finally earned are those with whom your verdict weighed not a pin, unsus¬ tained by the higher court sitting within. But I wander from what I intended to say, — that you have, namely, shown such a liberal way of A FABLE FOR CRITICS 9 thinking, and so much aesthetic perception of anony¬ mous worth in the handsome reception you gave to my book, spite of some private piques (having bought the first thousand in barely two weeks), that I think, past a doubt, if you measured the phiz of yours most devotedly, Wonderful Quiz, you would find thai its vertical section was shorter, by an inch and two tenths, or ’twixt that and a quar¬ ter. You have watched a child playing — in those wondrous years when belief is not bound to the eyes and the ears, and the vision divine is so clear and unmarred, that each baker of pies in the dirt is a bard ? Give a knife and a shingle, he fits out a fleet, and, on that little mud-puddle over the street, his fancy, in purest good faith, will make sail round the globe with a puff of his breath for a gale, will visit, in barely ten minutes, all climes, and do the Columbus-feat hundreds of times. Or, suppose the young poet fresh stored with delights from that Bible of childhood, the Arabian Nights, he will turn to a crony and cry, “Jack, let’s play that I am a Genius ! ” Jacky straightway makes Aladdin’s lamp out of a stone, and, for hours, they enjoy each his own supernatural powers. This is all very pretty and pleasant, but then suppose our two urchins have grown into men, and both have turned authors, — one says to his brother, “ Let ’s play we ’re the American somethings or other, — say Homer or Sophocles, Goethe or Scott (only let them be big enough, no matter what). Come, you shall be Byron or Pope, which you choose : I ’ll be 10 A FABLE FOR CRITICS Coleridge, and both shall write mutual reviews.” So they both (as mere strangers) before many days send each other a cord of anonymous bays. Each, piling his epithets, smiles in his sleeve to see what his friend can be made to believe ; each, reading the other’s unbiased review, thinks — Here ’s pretty high praise, but no more than my due. Well, we laugh at them both, and yet make no great fuss when the same farce is acted to benefit us. Even I, who, if asked, scarce a month since, what Fudge meant, should have answered, the dear Public’s critical judgment, begin to think sharp - witted Horace spoke sooth when he said, that the Public sometimes hit the truth. In reading these lines, you perhaps have a vision of a person in pretty good health and condition ; and yet, since I put forth my primary edition, I have been crushed, scorched, withered, used up and put down (by Smith with the cordial assistance of Brown), in all, if you put any faith in my rhymes, to the number of ninety-five several times, and, while I am writing, — I tremble to think of it, for I may at this moment be just on the brink of it, — Molybdostom, angry at being omitted, has begun a critique, — am I not to be pitied ? 1 Now I shall not crush them since, indeed, for that matter, no pressure I know of could render them flatter ; nor wither, nor scorch them, — no action of fire could make either them or their arti- 1 The ■wise Scandinavians probably called their bards by the queer-looking title of Scald, in a delicate way, as it were, just to hint to the world the hot water they always get into. A FABLE FOR CRITICS 11 cles drier ; nor waste time in putting them down — I am thinking not their own self-inflation will keep them from sinking ; for there ’s this contradiction about the whole bevy, — though without the least weight, they are awfully heavy. No, my dear hon¬ est bore, surdo fabulam narras, they are no more to me than a rat in the arras. I can walk with the Doctor, get facts from the Don, or draw out the Lambish quintessence of John, and feel nothing more than a half-comic sorrow, to think that they all will be lying to-morrow tossed carelessly up on the waste-paper shelves, and forgotten by all but their half-dozen selves. Once snug in my attic, my fire in a roar, I leave the whole pack of them out¬ side the door. With Hakluyt or Purchas I wander away to the black northern seas or barbaric Ca¬ thay ; get fou with O’Shanter, and sober me then with that builder of briek-kilnish dramas, rare Ben ; snuff Herbert, as holy as a flower on a grave ; with Fletcher wax tender, o’er Chapman grow brave ; with Marlowe or Kyd take a fine poet-rave; in Very, most Hebrew of Saxons, find peace ; with Lycidas welter on vext Irish seas ; with Webster grow wild, and climb earthward again, down by mystical Browne’s Jacob’s-ladder- like brain, to that spiritual Pepys (Cotton’s ver¬ sion) Montaigne ; find a new depth in Wordsworth, undreamed of before, that marvel, a poet divine who can bore. Or, out of my study, the scholar thrown off, Nature holds up her shield ’gainst the sneer and the scoff ; the landscape, forever con¬ soling and kind, pours her wine and her oil on 12 A FABLE FOR CRITICS the smarts of the mind. As I ran through the leaves of my poor little book, to take a fond author’s first tremulous look, it was quite an excitement to hunt the errata , sprawled in as birds’ tracks are in some kinds of strata (only these made things crookeder). Fancy an heir that a father had seen born well-featured and fair, turning suddenly wry-nosed, club-footed, squint - eyed, hair-lipped, wapper - jawed, carrot¬ haired, from a pride become an aversion, — my case was yet worse. A club-foot (by way of a change) in a verse, I might have forgiven, an o’s being wry, a limp in an e, or a cock in an i, — but to have the. sweet babe of my brain served in pi ! I am not queasy-stomached, but such a Thyestean banquet as that was quite out of the question. In the edition now issued no pains are neglected, and my verses, as orators say, stand corrected. Yet some blunders remain of the Public’s own make, which I wish to correct for my personal sake. A FABLE FOR CRITICS 13 For instance, a character drawn in pure fun and condensing the traits of a dozen in one, has been, as I hear, by some persons applied to a good friend of mine, whom to stab in the side, as we walked along chatting and joking together, would not be my way. I can hardly tell whether a question will ever arise in which he and I should by any strange fortune agree, but meanwhile my esteem for him grows as I know him, and, though not the best judge on earth of a poem, he knows what it is he is saying and why, and is honest and fearless, two good points which I have not found so rife I can easily smother my love for them, whether on my side or t’ other. For my other anonymi, you may be sure that I know what is meant by a caricature, and what by a portrait. There are those who think it is capital fun to be spattering their ink on quiet, unquarrel- some folk, but the minute the game changes sides and the others begin it, they see something savage and horrible in it. As for me I respect neither women nor men for their gender, nor own any sex in a pen. I choose just to hint to some causeless unfriends that, as far as I know, there are always two ends (and one of them heaviest, too) to a staff, and two parties also to every good laugh. A FABLE FOR CRITICS Phcebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree’s shade. Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made, For the god being one day too warm in his wooing, She took to the tree to escape his pursuing ; Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk, And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk ; And, though ’t was a step into which he had driven her, He somehow or other had never forgiven her ; Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic, Something bitter to chew when he ’d play the By- ronic, And I can’t count the obstinate nymphs that he brought over By a strange kind of smile he put on when he thought of her. “ My case is like Dido’s,” he sometimes remarked ; “ When I last saw my love, she was fairly em¬ barked In a laurel, as she thought — hut (ah, how Fate mocks !) She has found it by this time a very bad box ; ( Let hunters from me take this saw when they need it,— 16 A FABLE FOR CRITICS You ’re not always sure of your game when you ’ve treed it. Just conceive such a change taking place in one’s mistress ! What romance would he left ? — who can flatter or kiss trees ? And, for mercy’s sake, how could one keep up a dialogue With a dull wooden thing that will live and will die a log, — Not to say that the thought would forever intrude That you ’ve less chance to win her the more she is wood ? Ah ! it went to my heart, and the memory still grieves, To see those loved graces all taking their leaves ; Those charms beyond speech, so enchanting but now, As they left me forever, each making its bough ! If her tongue had a tang sometimes more than was right, Her new bark is worse than ten times her old bite.” Now, Daphne — before she was happily treei- fied — Over all other blossoms the lily had deified, And when she expected the god on a visit (’Twas before he had made his intentions explicit), Some buds she arranged with a vast deal of care, To look as if artlessly twined in her hair, Where they seemed, as he said, when he paid his addresses, A FABLE FOR CRITICS IT Like the clay breaking through the long night of her tresses ; So whenever he wished to be quite irresistible, Like a man with eight trumps in his hand at a whist-table (I feared me at first that the rhyme was untwista- ble, Though I might have lugged in an allusion to Cristabel), — He would take up a lily, and gloomily look in it, As I shall at the - , when they cut up my book in it. W ell, here, after all the bad rhyme I ’ve been spinning, I ’ve got back at last to my story’s beginning : Sitting there, as I say, in the shade of his mistress, As dull as a volume of old Chester mysteries, Or as those puzzling specimens which, in old histo¬ ries, We read of his verses — the Oracles, namely, — (I wonder the Greeks should have swallowed them tamely, . For one might bet safely whatever he has to risk, They were laid at his door by some ancient Miss Asterisk, And so dull that the men who retailed them out¬ doors Got the ill name of augurs, because they were bores, — ) First, he mused what the animal substance or herb is 18 A FABLE FOR CRITICS Would induce a mustache, for you know he ’s im- berbis ; Then he shuddered to think how his youthful posi¬ tion Was assailed by the age of his son the physician ; At some poems he glanced, had been sent to him lately, And the metre and sentiment puzzled him greatly ; “Mehercle! I’d make such proceeding feloni¬ ous, — Have they all of them slept in the cave of Tropho- nius ? Look well to your seat, ’t is like taking an airing On a corduroy road, and that out o£ repairing ; It leads one, ’t is true, through the primitive for¬ est, Grand natural features, but then one has no rest ; You just catch a glimpse of some ravishing dis¬ tance, When a jolt puts the whole of it out of existence, — Why not use their ears, if they happen to have any ? ” — Here the laurel-leaves murmured the name of poor Daphne. “Oh, weep with me, Daphne,” he sighed, “for you know it ’s A terrible thing to be pestered with poets ! But, alas, she is dumb, and the proverb holds good, She never will cry till she ’s out of the wood ! What would n’t I give if I never had known of her ? A FABLE FOR CRITICS 19 ’T were a kind of relief had I something to groan over : If I had but some letters of hers, now, to toss over, I might turn for the nonce a Byronic philosopher, And bewitch all the flats by bemoaning the loss of her. One needs something tangible, though, to begin on, — A loom, as it were, for the fancy to spin on ; What boots all your grist ? it can never be ground Till a breeze makes the arms of the windmill go round ; (Or, if ’t is a water-mill, alter the metaphor, And say it won’t stir, save the wheel be well wet afore, Or lug in some stuff about water ‘ so dreamily,’ — It is not a metaphor, though, ’t is a simile) ; A lily, perhaps, would set my mill a-going, For just at this season, I think, they are blowing. Here, somebody, fetch one ; not very far hence They ’re in bloom by the score, ’t is but climbing a fence ; ' There ’s a poet hard by, who does nothing but fill his Whole garden, from one end to t’ other, with lilies ; A very good plan, were it not for satiety, One longs for a weed here and there, for variety ; Though a weed is no more than a flower in dis¬ guise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.” 20 A FABLE FOR CRITICS Now there happened to be among Phoebus’s fol¬ lowers, A gentleman, one of the omnivorous swallowers, Who bolt every book that eomes out of the press, Without the least question of larger or less, Whose stomachs are strong at the expense of their head, — For reading new books is like eating new bread, One can bear it at first, but by gradual steps he Is brought to death’s door of a mental dyspepsy. On a previous stage of existence, our Hero Had ridden outside, with the glass below zero; He had been, ’t is a fact you may safely rely on, Of a very old stock a most eminent scion, — A stock all fresh quacks their fierce boluses ply on, Who stretch the new boots Earth ’s unwilling to try on, Whom humbugs of all shapes and sorts keep their eye on Whose hair ’s in the mortar of every new Zion, Who, when whistles are dear, go directly and buy one, Who think slavery a crime that we must not say fie on, Who hunt, if they e’er hunt at all, with the lion (Though they hunt lions also, whenever they spy one), Who contrive to make every good fortune a wry one, And at last choose the hard bed of honor to die on, Whose pedigree, traced to earth’s earliest years, Is longer than anything else but their ears ; — A FABLE FOR CRITICS 21 In short, he was sent into life with the wrong key, He unlocked the door, and stept forth a poor donkey. Though kicked and abused by his bipedal betters Yet he filled no mean place in the kingdom of letters ; Far happier than many a literary hack, He bore only paper-mill rags on his back (For it makes a vast difference which side the mill One expends on the paper his labor and skill) ; So, when his soul waited a new transmigration, And Destiny balanced ’twixt this and that station, Not having much time to expend upon bothers, Remembering he ’d had some connection with au¬ thors, And considering his four legs had grown para- lytic, — She set him on two, and he came forth a critic. Through his babyhood no kind of pleasure he took In any amusement but tearing a book ; For him there was no intermediate stage From babyhood up to straight-laced middle age ; There were years when he did n’t wear coat-tails behind, But a boy he could never be rightly defined ; Like the Irish Good Folk, though in length scarce a span, From the womb he came gravely, a little old man ; While other boys’ trousers demanded the toil Of the motherly fingers on all kinds of soil, 22 A FABLE FOR CRITICS Red, yellow, brown, black, clayey, gravelly, loamy, He sat in the corner and read Viri Romse. He never was known to unbend or to revel once In base, marbles, hockey, or kick up the devil once ; He was just one of those who excite the benevo¬ lence Of your old prigs who sound the soul’s depths with a ledger, And are on the lookout for some young men to “ edger- cate,” as they call it, who won’t be too costly, And who ’ll afterward take to the ministry mostly ; Who always wear spectacles, always look bilious, Always keep on good terms with each mater-fa - milias Throughout the whole parish, and manage to rear Ten boys like themselves, on four hundred a year : Who, fulfilling in turn the same fearful conditions, Either preach through their noses, or go upon mis¬ sions. In this way our Hero got safely to college, Where he bolted alike both his commons and knowledge ; A reading-machine, always wound up and going, He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing, Appeared in a gown, with black waistcoat of satin, To spout such a Gothic oration in Latin That Tully could never have made out a word in it (Though himself was the model the author pre¬ ferred in it), A FABLE FOR CRITICS 23 And grasping the parchment which gave him in fee All the mystic an d-so-f orths contained in A. B., He was launched (life is always compared to a sea) With just enough learning, and skill for the using it, To prove he ’d a brain, by forever confusing it. So worthy St. Benedict, piously burning With the holiest zeal against secular learning, JYesciensque scienter , as writers express it, Indoctusque sapienter a Roma recessit. ’T would be endless to tell }mu the things that he knew, Each a separate fact, undeniably true, But with him or each other they ’d nothing to do ; No power of combining, arranging, discerning, Digested the masses he learned into learning ; There was one thing in life he had practical know¬ ledge for (And this, you will think, he need scarce go to college for), — Not a deed would he do, nor a word would he utter, Till he ’d weighed its relations to plain bread and butter. When he left Alma Mater, he practised his wits In compiling the journals’ historical bits, — Of shops broken open, men falling in fits, Great fortunes in England bequeathed to poor printers, 24 A FABLE FOR CRITICS And cold spells, the coldest for many past win¬ ters, — Then, rising by industry, knack, and address, Got notices up for an unbiased press, With a mind so well poised, it seemed equally made for Applause or abuse, just which chanced to be paid for: From this point his progress was rapid and sure, To the post of a regular heavy reviewer. And here I must say he wrote excellent articles On Hebraical points, or the force of Greek par¬ ticles ; They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for, And nobody read that which nobody cared for ; If any old book reached a fiftieth edition, He could fill forty pages with safe erudition : He could gauge the old books by the old set of rules, And his very old nothings pleased very old fools ; But give him a new book, fresh out of the heart, And you put him at sea without compass or chart, — His blunders aspired to the rank of an art ; For his lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in him, Exhausting the sap of the native and true in him, So that when a man came with a soul that was new in him, Carving new forms of truth out of Nature’s old granite, A FABLE FOR CRITICS 25 New and old at their birth, like Le Verrier’s planet, Which, to get a true judgment, themselves must create In the soul of their critic the measure and weight, Being rather themselves a fresh standard of grace, To compute their own judge, and assign him his place, Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round it, And, reporting each circumstance just as he found it, Without the least malice, — his i*ecord would be Profoundly aesthetic as that of a flea, Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print, for our sakes, Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes, Or, lodged by an Arab guide, ventured to render a Comprehensive account of the ruins at Denderah. As I said, he was never precisely unkind, The defect in his brain was just absence of mind ; If he boasted, ’t was simply that he was self-made, A position which I, for one, never gainsaid, My respect for my Maker supposing a skill In His works which our Hero would answer but ill ; And I trust that the mould which he used may be cracked, or he, Made bold by success, may enlarge his phylactery. And set up a kind of a man-manufactory, — An event which I shudder to think about, seeing That Man is a moral, accountable being. 26 A FABLE FOR CRITICS He meant well enough, but was still in the way, As dunces still are, let them be where they may ; Indeed, they appear to come into existence To impede other folks with their awkward assist¬ ance ; If you set up a dunce on the very North pole All alone with himself, I believe, on my soul, He ’d manage to get betwixt somebody’s shins, And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins, To the grave polar bears sitting round on the ice, AJ1 shortening their grace, to be in for a slice ; Or, if he found nobody else there to pother, Why, one of his legs would just trip up the other, For there ’s nothing we read of in torture’s inven¬ tions, Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of inten¬ tions. A terrible fellow to meet in society, Not the toast that he buttered was ever so dry at tea ; There he ’d sit at the table and stir in his sugar, Crouching close for a spring, all the while, like a cougar ; Be sure of your facts, of your measures and weights, Of your time, — he ’s as fond as an Arab of dates ; You ’ll be telling, perhaps, in your comical way, Of something you ’ve seen in the course of the day ; And, just as you ’re tapering out the conclusion, You venture an ill-fated classic allusion, — The girls have all got their laughs ready, when, whack ! A FABLE FOR. CRITICS 27 The cougar comes down on your thunderstruck back ! You had left out a comma, — your Greek ’s put in joint, And pointed at cost of your story’s whole point. In the course of the evening, you find chance for certain Soft speeches to Anne, in the shade of the curtain : You tell her your heart can be likened to one flower, “ And that, O most charming of women ’s the sun¬ flower, Which turns ” — here a clear nasal voice, to your terror, From outside the curtain, says, “ That ’s all an error.” As for him, he ’s — no matter, he never grew ten¬ der, Sitting after a ball, with his feet on the fender, Shaping somebody’s sweet features out of cigar smoke (Though he ’d willingly grant you that such doings are smoke) ; All women he damns with mutabile semper, And if ever he felt something like love’s distemper, ’T was tow’rds a young lady who spoke ancient Mexican, And assisted her father in making a lexicon ; Though I recollect hearing him get quite ferocious About Mary Clausum, the mistress of Grotius, Or something of that sort, — but, no more to bore je With character-painting, I ’ll turn to my story. 28 A FABLE FOR CRITICS Now, Apollo, who finds it convenient sometimes To get his court clear of the makers of rhymes, The genus, I think it is called, irritabile. I ’d apologize here for my many digressions, Were it not that I’m certain to trip into fresh ones (’T is so hard to escape if you get in their mesh once) ; A FABLE FOR CRITICS 31 Just reflect, if you please, how ’t is said by Hora- tius, That Maeonides nods now and then, and, my gra¬ cious ! It certainly does look a little bit ominous When he gets under way with ton d' apameibome- nos. (Here a something occurs which I ’ll just clap a rhyme to, And say it myself, ere a Zoilus have time to, — Any author a nap like Yan Winkle’s may take, If he only contrive to keep readers awake, But he ’ll very soon find himself laid on the shelf, If they fall a-nodding when he nods himself.) Once for all, to return, and to stay, will I, nill I — When Phoebus expressed his desire for a lily, Our Hero, whose homoeopathic sagacity With an ocean of zeal mixed his drop of capacity, Set off for the garden as fast as the wind (Or, to take a comparison more to my mind, As a sound politician leaves conscience behind), And leaped the low fence, as a party hack jumps O’er his principles, when something else turns up trumps. He was gone a long time, and Apollo, mean¬ while, Went over some sonnets of his with a file, For, of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it ; 32 A FABLE FOR CRITICS It should reach with one impulse the end of its course, And for one final blow collect all of its force ; Not a verse should be salient, but each one should tend With a wave-like up-gathering to break at the end ; So, condensing the strength here, there smoothing a wry kink, He was killing the time, when up walked Mr. D - ; At a few steps behind him, a small man in glasses Went dodging about, muttering, “Murderers! asses ! ” From out of his pocket a paper he ’d take, With a proud look of martyrdom tied to its stake, And, reading a squib at himself, he ’d say, “ Here I see ’Gainst American letters a bloody conspiracy, They are all by my personal enemies written ; I must post an anonymous letter to Britain, And show that this gall is the merest suggestion Of spite at my zeal on the Copyright question, For, on this side the water, ’t is prudent to pull O’er the eyes of the public their national wool, By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull All American authors who have more or less Of that anti-American humbug — success, While in private we ’re always embracing the knees Of some twopenny editor over the seas, And licking his critical shoes, for you know ’t is The whole aim of our lives to get one English no¬ tice ; A FABLE FOR CRITICS 38 My American puffs I would willingly burn all (They ’re all from one source, monthly, weekly, diur¬ nal) To get but a kick from a transmarine journal ! ” So, culling the gibes of each critical scorner As if they were plums, and himself were J ack Hor¬ ner, He came cautiously on, peeping round every corner, And into each hole where a weasel might pass in, Expecting the knife of some critic assassin, Who stabs to the heart with a caricature, Not so bad as those daubs of the Sun, to be sure, Yet done with a dagger-o’-type, whose vile portraits Disperse all one’s good and condense all one’s poor traits. Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps approaching, And slipped out of sight the new rhymes he was broaching, — “ Good day, Mr. D - , I ’m happy to meet, With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so neat, Who through Grub Street the soul of a gentleman carries ; What news from that suburb of London and Paris Which latterly makes such shrill claims to mon¬ opolize The credit of being the New World’s metropolis ? ” “ Why, nothing of consequence, save this attack On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful hack, Who thinks every national author a poor one, 34 A FABLE FOR CRITICS That is n’t a copy of something that ’s foreign, And assaults the American Dick — ” “ Nay, ’t is clear That your Damon there ’s fond of a flea in his ear, And, if no one else furnished them gratis, on tick He would buy some himself, just to hear the old click ; Why, I honestly think, if some fool in Japan Should turn up his nose at the 4 Poems on Man,’ (Which contain many verses as fine, by the bye, As any that lately came under my eye,) Your friend there by some inward instinct would know it, Would get it translated, reprinted, and show it ; As a man might take off a high stock to exhibit The autograph round his own neck of the gibbet ; Nor would let it rest so, but fire column after col¬ umn, Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something as solemn, By way of displaying his critical crosses, And tweaking that poor transatlantic proboscis, His broadsides resulting (this last there ’s no doubt of) In successively sinking the craft they ’re fired out of. Now nobody knows when an author is hit, If he have not a public hysterical fit ; Let him only keep close in his snug garret’s dim ether, And nobody ’d think of his foes — or of him either ; A FABLE FOR CRITICS 35 If an author have any least fibre of worth in him, Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth in him ; All the critics on earth cannot crush with their ban One word that ’s in tune with the nature of man.” “ Well, perhaps so ; meanwhile I have brought you a book, Into which if you ’ll just have the goodness to look, You may feel so delighted (when once you are through it) As to deem it not unworth your while to review it, And I think I can promise your thoughts, if you do, A place in the next Democratic Review.” “ The most thankless of gods you must surely have thought me, For this is the forty-fourth copy you ’ve brought me, I have given them away, or at least I have tried, But I ’ve forty-two left, standing all side by side (The man who accepted that one copy died), — From one end of a shelf to the other they reach, ‘ With the author’s respects ’ neatly written in each. The publisher, sure, will proclaim a Te Deum, When he hears of that order the British Museum Has sent for one set of what books were first printed In America, little or big, — for ’t is hinted. That this is the first truly tangible hope he Has ever had raised for the sale of a copy. 