Later in the same year (1845), however, in that essay on “American Literature” which appeared for the first time in her “Papers,” she wrote the words which created so much indignation, and which simply show that no critic can look forward with infallible judgment to the future development of a poet. She wrote of Lowell, as has already been said, that he was “absolutely wanting in the true spirit and tone of poesy,” adding: —
“His interest in the moral questions of the day has supplied the want of vitality in himself; his great facility at versification has enabled him to fill the ear with a copious stream of pleasant sound. But his verse is stereotyped; his thought sounds no depth, and posterity will not remember him.”[1]
This last is very nearly what Coleridge said of Scott. He said, “Not twenty lines of Scott’s poetry will ever reach posterity; it has relation to nothing.”[2] Coleridge erred as to Scott, and Margaret Fuller as to Lowell; but we must remember that Scott’s poetry was all published when Coleridge’s criticism was made; while Margaret Fuller wrote when Lowell had printed only his “Class Poem” and two early volumes; the “Biglow Papers” and “Sir Launfal,” and all the works by which he is now best known being still unwritten. It was simply a mistaken literary estimate, not flavored with the slightest personal sting; and it
