SOURCE: Armitage, Shelly. “Christopher Pearse Cranch: The Wit as Poet.” American Transcendental Quarterly n.s. 1, no. 1 (March 1987): 33-47.

In the following essay, Armitage discusses the role of wit, as defined by Emerson, in Cranch's poetry.

You were not born to hide such gifts as yours 'Neath dreary law-books, nor amid the dust And dry routine of desks to sit and rust Where clerks plod through their tasks on office-floors. Let duller laborers drudge through daily chores, And do what fate for them makes fit and just. You bravely do your work because you must; And when released, your genius sings and soars. Such humor your pen hath ever run In pictures or in letters all unforced, As Hogarth, Lamb, or Dickens might have done; Finer than any noted wit, who, horsed Upon the public's favor, waves his blade Like Harlequin, and makes his jests his trade. 

Ariel and...