Note 69 — Chapter V · A FABLE FOR CRITICS, THE BIGLOW PAPERS, AND THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 1847-1848

The reference apparently is to Miss Fuller’s criticism of Lowell three years previously, in which she said: “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 thoughts sound no depth, and posterity will not remember him.”—Papers on Literature and Art, p. 308.