friend Ripley, who succeeded her in the “Tribune” and held such sway for many years, was not, in the finer aspects of his art, to be compared with Margaret Fuller.
Passing from her single phrases and obiter dicta to her continuous criticisms, I should name her second paper on Goethe, in the “Dial,”[1] as ranking next to that on Mackintosh; and should add, also, her essay on “Modern British Poets” in “Papers on Literature and Art;” and the “dialogue” between Aglauron and Laurie in the same volume. In this last there are criticisms on Wordsworth which go deeper, I venture to think, than anything Lowell has written on the same subject. I do not recall any other critic on this poet who has linked together the poems “A Complaint” and the sonnet beginning
“There is a change and I am poor,”
and has pointed out that these two give us a glimpse of a profounder personal emotion and a deeper possibility of sadness in Wordsworth than all else that he has written put together. There are also admirable remarks on Coleridge and on Shakespeare; and how fine in thought, how simply and admirably stated, is this conclusion: —
“Were I, despite the bright points so numerous in their history and the admonitions of my own conscience, inclined to despise my fellow-men, I should have found
- ↑ Dial, ii. 1 (July, 1841, reprinted in Life Without and Life Within, p. 23).
