Taylor, writing to T. B. Aldrich, March 29, 1873, says:
Story told me that Browning sent him the Echo Club last summer, with a note saying it was the best thing of the kind he had ever seen, and that if he had found the imitations of himself in a volume of his poems he would have believed that he actually wrote them.
Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor.
[P. 281.] All or Nothing. While parodying Emerson's poetry generally Bayard Taylor had probably chiefly in mind The Sphinx:
The Sphinx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled:
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.
Most of Bayard Taylor's parodies are obviously rather of the poets' general styles than of particular poems.
[P. 286.] If life were never bitter. Parody of Swinburne's A Match:
If love were what the rose is