How much satire gains from moral earnestness and a righteous scorn is easily seen in the book which followed close on the heels of “A Fable for Critics,” and with its pungency weakened the impression which might otherwise have been created by its companion in literature. We have already seen that the first number of the “Biglow Papers” appeared in the _Courier_ of Boston in June, 1846, and that Lowell reckoned on producing a greater effect by withholding his name. He told Gay that he might very likely continue to fire from this masked battery while he was openly keeping up with others a fusillade in the _Standard_. In point of fact the first five numbers were printed in the _Courier_, but when the fifth was printed, Lowell was at the beginning of his real connection with the _Standard_, and the remaining four were printed in that paper. The series, thus begun in the _Courier_ in June, 1846, was closed in the _Standard_ in September, 1848.[75] Although Lowell did not sign his name to any of the numbers either in the _Courier_ or in the _Standard_, the authorship was a very open secret indeed. Still, he had the pleasure which sprang from the dramatic assumption, and he took good care not to confuse the personalities in the little comedy, by thrusting his own real figure on the stage. As he wrote forty years later: “I had great fun out of it. I have often wished that I could have had a literary _nom de plume_ and kept my own to myself. I shouldn’t have cared a doit what happened to him.”