To A Critic

WHO EXTRACTED A PASSAGE FROM A POEM WITHOUT ADDING A WORD RESPECTING THE CONTEXT, AND THEN DERIDED IT AS UNINTELLIGIBLE.

Most candid critic, what if I, By way of joke, pull out your eye, And holding up the fragment, cry, 'Ha! ha! that men such fools should be! Behold this shapeless Dab!--and he Who own'd it, fancied it could see!' The joke were mighty analytic, But should you like it, candid critic?

First published in Morning Post, Dec. 16, 1801: included in Keepsake, 1829, and in Essays, &c., iii. 977-8. First collected in P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 167.

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