OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
His nature's a glass of champagne with the foam on 't.
As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont;
So his best things are done in the flash of the moment.
A Fable for Critics. J.R. LOWELL.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
There in seclusion and remote from men
The wizard hand lies cold,
Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen,
And left the tale half told.
Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power,
And the lost clew regain?
The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower
Unfinished must remain!
Hawthorne, May 23, 1864 H.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.