Explore "The Roving Critic" by Carl Van Doren on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
PETIT UP TO THIRTY
From the inquisitive elder Disraeli, Petit the Poet learned that Lope de Vega was a poet from his cradle, and he learned it bitterly, for he was sixteen, and his poetic April lingered. There was great solace in Keats, who had begun to be a poet at an age which gave Petit still two years to falter in. But what of these cradle rhymes of the Spaniard? What of the numerous lispings of Pope to nurse and bottle? What of the spines of satire Bryant put out at three-and-ten, or the _Blossomes_ Cowley bore midway his second decade? And Chatterton!