Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 101.djvu/238

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Will this kind of reckless hash of punning and profanity extort a smile from any whose smile is worth having? Or would any of us like to see wife or sister smiling over the poet's choice bits of witty helter-skelter irreverence, such as abound in the "Fable for Critics," and of which the foregoing piece of gallows-work (though ill-suited to our Tyburnia) is but a mild type?

In those serious verses which Mr. Lowell devotes to the enforcement of his faith in the onward and upward advance of humanity, there is little to suggest his identity with the rollicking satirist of conservative tendencies. He can be as elevated and impressive as the severest apostle of "Progress," when it is his cue to "look good," as the children say. Not to the most enthusiastic does he yield in enthusiasm, in the hopes he cherishes of man's destiny, and the faith he holds in man's capabilities. If not a believer in human perfectibility, he is little less than kin and more than kind thereto; if not a pure optimist, he is not far from that amiable standard. His Prometheus says,

And again (idem loquitur):

Similarly it is maintained that among the qualifications of the true poet—not the mere silken bard environed by proprieties, but the poet who speaks home to the national heart—this is one, and a foremost one; that he is a man