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298 would be hardly possible, in these milder days, for such a criticism to call out the kind of retaliation that is to be found in the "Fable for Critics." But that was a period, as has already been intimated, of great literary truculence; a time when, as Heine says of the Germans, an author, like an African chief, felt bound to moisten the base of his own throne with the blood of his slain foes. Lowell, probably, also thought that, in the case of Margaret Fuller, he was immolating the good-natured Longfellow's literary enemies with his own.