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By Root 16542 0

which we have already touched in a general way. “The malevolence appears.” We laugh not so much at the author’s victims as at himself for letting them put him in such a passion. The very title of the book shows the want of a due sense in respect to the satiric essence, sarcasm. This “fable” — this severe lesson — is meant “for the Critics.” “Ah!” we say to ourselves at once — “we see how it is. Mr. L. is a poor-devil poet, and some critic has been reviewing him, and making him feel very uncomfortable; whereupon, bearing in mind that Lord Byron, when similarly assailed, avenged his wrongs in a satire which he called ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,’ he (Mr. Lowell) imitative as usual, has been endeavoring to get redress in a parallel manner — by a satire with a parallel title — ‘A Fable for the Critics.’ “

All this the reader says to himself; and all this tells against Mr. L. in two ways — first, by suggesting unlucky comparisons between Byron and Lowell, and, secondly, by reminding us of the various criticisms, in which we have been amused (rather ill-naturedly) at seeing Mr. Lowell “used up.”

The title starts us on this train of thought, and the satire sustains us in it. Every reader versed in our literary gossip, is at once put dessous des cartes as to the particular provocation which engendered the “Fable.” Miss Margaret Fuller, some time ago, in a silly and conceited piece of Transcendentalism, which she called an “Essay on American Literature,” or something of that kind, had the consummate pleasantry, after selecting from the list ­of American poets, Cornelius Mathews and William Ellery Channing, for especial commendation, to speak of Longfellow as a booby, and of Lowell as so wretched a poetaster “as to be disgusting even to his best friends.” All this Miss Fuller said, if not in our precise words, still in words quite as much to the purpose. Why she said it, Heaven only knows — unless it was because she was Margaret Fuller, and wished to be taken for nobody else. Messrs. Longfellow and Lowell, so pointedly picked out for abuse as the worst of our poets, are, upon the whole, perhaps, our best — although Bryant, and one or two others are scarcely inferior. As for the two favorites, selected just as pointedly for laudation, by Miss F. — it is really difficult to think of them, in connexion with poetry, without laughing. Mr. Mathews once wrote some sonnets “On Man,” and Mr. Channing some lines on “A Tin Can,” or something of that kind — and if the former gentleman be not the very worst poet that ever existed on the face of the earth, it is only because he is not quite so bad as the latter. To speak algebraically: — Mr. M. is ex ecrable, but Mr. C. is x plus 1-ecrable.

Mr. Lowell has obviously aimed his “Fable” at Miss Fuller’s head, in the first instance, with an eye to its ricochêt-ing so as to knock down Mr. Mathews in the second. Miss F. is first introduced as Miss F —— , rhyming to “cooler,” and afterwards as “Miranda;” while poor Mr. M. is brought in upon all occasions, head and shoulders; and now and then a sharp thing, although never very original, is said of them or at them; but all the true satiric effect wrought, is that produced by the satirist against himself. The reader is all the time smiling to think that so unsurpassable a — (what shall we call her? — we wish to be civil,) a transcendentalist as Miss Fuller, should, by such a criticism, have had the power to put a respectable poet in such a passion.

As for the plot or conduct of this Fable, the less we say of it the better. It is so weak — so flimsy — so ill put together — as to be not worth the trouble of understanding: — something, as usual, about Apollo and Daphne. Is there no originality on the face of the earth? Mr. Lowell’s total want of it is shown at all points — very especially in his preface of rhyming verse written without distinction by lines or initial capitals, (a hackneyed matter, originating, ­we believe, with Frazer’s Magazine:) — very especially also, in his long continuations of some particular rhyme — a fashion introduced, if