There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge.

These lines come from James Russell Lowell’s satirical poem “A Fable for Critics” (1848), a rollicking verse review of contemporary American writers. Lowell is sketching Edgar Allan Poe, then newly famous for “The Raven” (1845), and he jokes that Poe arrives accompanied by his emblematic bird. The comparison “like Barnaby Rudge” points to Charles Dickens’s novel (1841), which features a pet raven named Grip—often cited as an influence on Poe’s raven imagery. Lowell’s portrait mixes admiration and mockery, reflecting both Poe’s recognized brilliance and the period’s suspicion of his sensationalism and critical abrasiveness.

Lowell’s couplet delivers a backhanded compliment: Poe is “three fifths…genius,” but the remainder is “sheer fudge”—padding, artifice, or melodramatic excess. The arithmetic joke suggests a talent that is undeniable yet uneven, implying that Poe’s effects can feel manufactured even when powered by real imaginative force. By pairing Poe’s raven with Dickens’s, Lowell also hints that Poe’s most famous symbol participates in a broader Gothic-popular tradition rather than standing wholly apart. The lines encapsulate a common nineteenth-century ambivalence toward Poe: awe at his originality and technique, coupled with skepticism about taste, sincerity, and substance.