William Jennings Bryan | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 9 pages of analysis & critique of William Jennings Bryan.

William Jennings Bryan | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 9 pages of analysis & critique of William Jennings Bryan.
This section contains 2,675 words
(approx. 9 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by H. L. Mencken

SOURCE: “In Memoriam: W. J. B.,” in Prejudices, Fifth Series, Alfred A. Knopf, 1926, pp. 64-74.

In the following essay, Mencken sarcastically eulogizes Bryan.

Has it been duly marked by historians that the late William Jennings Bryan's last secular act on this globe of sin was to catch flies? A curious detail, and not without its sardonic overtones. He was the most sedulous fly-catcher in American history, and in many ways the most successful. His quarry, of course, was not Musca domestica but Homo neandertalensis. For forty years he tracked it with coo and bellow, up and down the rustic backways of the Republic. Wherever the flambeaux of Chautauqua smoked and guttered, and the bilge of Idealism ran in the veins, and Baptist pastors dammed the brooks with the sanctified, and men gathered who were weary and heavy laden, and their wives who were full of Peruna and as...

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This section contains 2,675 words
(approx. 9 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by H. L. Mencken
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Critical Essay by H. L. Mencken from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.