W. LONGFELLOW.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range
Has Olympus for one pole, for t'other the Exchange;
He seems, to my thinking (although I'm afraid
The comparison must, long ere this, have been made).
A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian's gold mist
And the Gascon's shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist.
_A Fable for Critics_. J.R. LOWELL.
CARLYLE AND EMERSON.
C.'s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb,--
E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim;
The one's two thirds Norseman, the other half Greek,
Where the one's most abounding, the other's to seek;
C.'s generals require to be seen in the mass,--
E.'s specialties gain if enlarged by the glass;
C. gives nature and God his own fits of the blues.
And rims common-sense things with mystical hues,--
E. sits in a mystery calm and intense,
And looks coolly around him with sharp common-sense.
_A Fable for Critics_. J.R. LOWELL.
EDGAR ALLAN POE.
There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge,
Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters.
In a way to make people of common sense damn metres,
Who has written some things quite the best of their kind,
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind.
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