SOURCE: Miller, F. DeWolfe. “Christopher Pearse Cranch—Poet, Painter, and Humorist.” In Christopher Pearse Cranch and His Caricatures of New England Transcendentalism, pp. 3-28. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951.

In the following excerpt, Miller assesses Cranch's modest reputation as artist and writer.

The character of Christopher Pearse Cranch presents no anomalies and no particularly difficult paradoxes. The even moral tenor of his long good life reveals him as a man to whom it was so natural to be good that no especial praise is suggested. Diffidence was his most marked characteristic, and the trait of course found its way into much of his work. We are bound to conclude that he would have made more mistakes had he been less timid. He did not have the vigor and vinegar which disposed his friend Theodore Parker toward barn-burning. On the other hand he did not have the great reserve of...