Who now shall sneer? In a letter to Mr. J.B. Thayer, who had
James Russell Lowell
criticized this strophe, Lowell admits "that there is a certain
narrowness in it as an expression of the popular feeling as well as
my own. I confess I have never got over the feeling of wrath with
which (just after the death of my nephew Willie) I read in an English
paper that nothing was to be hoped of an army officered by tailors'
apprentices and butcher boys." But Lowell asks his critic to observe
that this strophe "leads naturally" to the next, and "that I there
justify" the sentiment.