cutthroat weather in the months that precede it. Perhaps it is so in
reality; for what nature makes us suffer from at one time she commonly
atones for it another.

The "Fable for Critics" is written in an easy, nonchalant manner, which
helps to mitigate its severity. Thoreau could not have liked very well
being called an imitator of Emerson; but the wit of it is inimitable. "T.
never purloins the apples from Emerson's trees; it is only the windfalls
that he carries off and passes for his own fruit." Emerson remarked on
this, that Thoreau was sufficiently original in his own way; and he
always spoke of Lowell in a friendly and appreciative manner. The whole
poem is filled with such homely comparisons, which hit the nail exactly
on the head. The most subtle piece of analysis, however, is Lowell's
comparison between Emerson and Carlyle:

"There are persons, mole-blind to the soul's make and style,
Who insist on a likeness 'twixt him and Carlyle;
To compare him with Plato would be vastly fairer,
Carlyle's the more burly, but E. is the rarer;
He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, truelier,
If C.'s as original, E.'s more peculiar;
That he's more of a man you might say of the one,
Of the other he's more of an Emerson;
C.'s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb,--
E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim;
The one's two-thirds Norseman, the other half Greek,
Where the one's most abounding, the other's to seek."

It was the fashion in England at that time to disparage Emerson as an
imitator of Carlyle; and this was Lowell's reply to it.