iric humor, and deriding conservatism
began to change countenance. "No speech, no plea, no appeal," says
George William Curtis, "was comparable in popular and permanent effect
with this pitiless tempest of fire and hail, in the form of wit,
argument, satire, knowledge, insight, learning, common-sense, and
patriotism. It was humor of the purest strain, but humor in deadly
earnest." As an embodiment of the elemental Yankee character and
speech it is a classic of final authority. Says Curtis, "Burns did not
give to the Scotch tongue a nobler immortality than Lowell gave to the
dialect of New England."

The year 1848 was one of remarkably productive results for Lowell.
Besides the _Biglow Papers_ and some forty magazine articles and
poems, he published a third collection of _Poems_, the _Vision of Sir
Launfal_, and the _Fable for Critics_. The various phases of his
composite genius were nearly all represented in these volumes. The
_Fable_ was a good-natured satire upon his fellow authors, in which he
touched up in rollicking rhymed couplets the merits and weaknesses of
each, not omitting himself, with witty characterization and acute
critical judgment; and it is still read for its delicious humor and
sterling criticism. For example, the lines on Poe will always be
quoted:

"There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge."

And so the sketch of Hawthorne:

"There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare
That you hardly at first see the strength that is there;
A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet,
So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet,
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet."

Lowell was now living in happy content at Elmwood. His father, whom he
once speaks of as a "Dr. Primrose in the comparative degree," had lost
a large portion of his property, and literary journals in those days
sent very small checks to young authors. So humble frugality was an
attendant upon the high thinking of the poet couple, but this did not
matter, since the richest objects of their ideal world could be had
without price. But clouds suddenly gathered over their beautiful
lives. Four children were born, three of whom died in infancy.
Lowell's deep and lasting grief for his first-born is tenderly
recorded in the poems _She Came and Went_ and the _First Snow-Fall_.
The volume of poems published in 1848 was "reverently dedicated" to
th