over-literary

Updated: July 7, 2025

It was a little fearsome to hear him frankly owning to Lowell his dislike for something over-literary in the phrasing of certain verses of 'The Cathedral. But Lowell could stand that sort of thing from a man who could say the sort of things that Harte said to him of that delicious line picturing the bobolink as he "Runs down a brook of laughter in the air."

William Dean Howells - A Belated Guest (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)

It was a little fearsome to hear him frankly owning to Lowell his dislike for something over-literary in the phrasing of certain verses of 'The Cathedral. But Lowell could stand that sort of thing from a man who could say the sort of things that Harte said to him of that delicious line picturing the bobolink as he "Runs down a brook of laughter in the air."

William Dean Howells - Literary Friends and Acquaintance; a Personal Retrospect of American Authorship