reaction from the marked sentiment of his poetry that he issued now a
_jeu d'esprit, A Fable for Critics_, in which he hit off, with a rough
and ready wit, the characteristics of the writers of the day, not
forgetting himself in these lines:

There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb
With a whole bale of _isms_ tied together with rhyme;
He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders,
But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders;
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching
Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching;
His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well,
But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell,
And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem,
At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem.

This, of course, is but a half serious portrait of himself, and it
touches but a single feature; others can say better that Lowell's
ardent nature showed itself in the series of satirical poems which
made him famous, _The Biglow Papers_, written in a spirit of
indignation and fine scorn, when the Mexican War was causing many
Americans to blush with shame at the use of the country by a class for
its own ignoble ends. Lowell and his wife, who brought a fervid
anti-slavery temper as part of her marriage portion, were both
contributors to the _Liberty Bell_; and Lowell was a frequent
contributor to the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, and was, indeed, for a
while a corresponding editor. In June, 1846, there appeared one day in
the _Boston Courier_ a letter from Mr. Ezekiel Biglow of Jaalam to the
editor, Hon. Joseph T. Buckingham, inclosing a poem of his son, Mr.
Hosea Biglow. It was no new thing to seek to arrest the public