Samuel Taylor Coleridge
To a Critic
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?