DGR wrote this poor little epigram in 1871. It clearly reflects his pained reaction to Buchanan's critique of his 1870 Poems . DGR's notebooks are littered with brief textual fragments and notes for poems (like one he projected with the title the âThe Verminiadâ) that reflect how disturbed he was by Buchanan's review. His sustained public reply to Buchanan came as his essay âThe Stealthy School of Criticismâ, and it is certain that a poem like âSoothsayâ, whose drafts are in the same notebooks, was itself written as a kind of philosophical response to the situation.
Two texts of this unpublished epigram survive: one (the earliest) is the pencil draft in the Ashley Library's so-called
Notebook I, the otherâcopied from that textâis in the
so-called Note Book III in the Duke University Library.
This collection contains 2 texts and images, including:
Note Book III (Duke University Library) text
Scholarly Commentary
IntroductionÂ
DGR wrote this poor little epigram in 1871. It clearly reflects his pained reaction to Buchanan's critique of his 1870 Poems . DGR's notebooks are littered with brief textual fragments and notes for poems (like one he projected with the title the âThe Verminiadâ) that reflect how disturbed he was by Buchanan's review. His sustained public reply to Buchanan came as his essay âThe Stealthy School of Criticismâ, and it is certain that a poem like âSoothsayâ, whose drafts are in the same notebooks, was itself written as a kind of philosophical response to the situation.
Textual History: CompositionÂ
Two texts of this unpublished epigram survive: one (the earliest) is the pencil draft in the Ashley Library's so-called Notebook I, the otherâcopied from that textâis in the so-called Note Book III in the Duke University Library.