Editing Joaquin Miller (section)

==Critical response and reputation==
[[File:Joaquin Miller later years.jpg|thumb|Miller in later years]]
[[File:Miller cabin14.JPG|thumb|[[Joaquin Miller Cabin]] in Washington, D.C.'s [[Rock Creek Park]]]]
Miller was championed, although not enthusiastically, by [[Bret Harte]] and [[Ambrose Bierce]].{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}  In his time, Miller was known for his dishonesty and womanizing. Bierce, his friend and contemporary, said of him, "In impugning Mr. Miller's veracity, or rather, in plainly declaring that he has none, I should be sorry to be understood as attributing a graver moral delinquency than he really has. He cannot, or will not, tell the truth, but he never tells a malicious or thrifty falsehood."<ref>{{cite book |last=Gale |first=Robert L. |date=2001 |title=An Ambrose Bierce Companion |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SWZkmUJEGkQC |location=USA |publisher=Greenwood Press |page=187 |isbn= 9780313311307}}</ref> Miller's response was, "I always wondered why God made Bierce."{{citation needed|date=May 2014}}

Called the "Poet of the Sierras" and the "Byron of the Rockies", he may have been more of a celebrity in England than in his native U.S. Much of his reputation, however, came not from his poetry but from the image he created for himself by capitalizing on the stereotypical image of Western frontiersmen.<ref>Lewis, Nathaniel. ''Unsettling the Literary West: Authenticity and Authorship''. University of Nebraska Press, 2003: 78. {{ISBN|0-8032-2938-0}}</ref> As poet [[Bayard Taylor]] bitterly noted in 1876, British audiences "place the simulated savagery of Joaquin Miller beside the pure and serene muse of [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow|Longfellow]]."<ref>Loving, Jerome. ''Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens''. University of California Press, 2010: 234. {{ISBN|978-0-520-25257-8}}</ref> Critics made much of Miller's poor spelling and rhymes; he once rhymed "[[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]]" and "teeth". [[Henry Cuyler Bunner]] satirized the error in a poem titled "Shake, [[Molière|Mulleary]], and Go-ethe".<ref>Untermeyer, Louis. ''Modern American Poetry''. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1921: 64.</ref> Miller himself once admitted, "I'm damned if I could tell the difference between a [[hexameter]] and a [[pentameter]] to save my scalp."<ref>Marberry, 90</ref>

The ''[[Westminster Review]]'' referred to Miller's poetry as "[[Walt Whitman|Whitman]] without the coarseness".<ref>Peterson, 66</ref> For a time, Miller's poem "Columbus" was one of the most widely known American poems, memorized and recited by legions of schoolchildren. Miller is remembered today, among other reasons, for lines from his poem in honor of "Burns and Byron":

:In men whom men condemn as ill
::I find so much of goodness still.
:In men whom men pronounce divine
::I find so much of sin and blot
:I do not dare to draw a line
::Between the two, where God has not.