LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. I JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL Biographical BY FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1899 Of THE UNIVERSITY OF Copyright, 1881, BY FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD. ps a - CONTENTS. PAGE PARENTAGE AND FAMILY 4 BIRTHPLACE AND SURROUNDINGS 8 EDUCATION 15 His FIRST BOOK 18 HE BECOMES AN EDITOR 20 A SECOND VOLUME OF POEMS 22 THE ANTI-SLAVERY REVOLUTION 28 A LITERARY RETROSPECT . . 30 THE ANTI-SLAVERY REVOLUTION MOVES ON ... 34 HOSEA BIGLOW 38 CAMBRIDGE FIFTY YEARS AGO 49 MARRIAGE AND DOMESTIC LIFE 54 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 59 HE ATTEMPTS SATIRE 63 COLLECTED POEMS. UNIVERSITY LECTURES ... 71 CONVERSATIONS ON THE POETS 75 FIRESIDE TRAVELS 77 His SECOND MARRIAGE. THE "ATLANTIC" . . 80 HOSEA BIGLOW AGAIN 85 JONATHAN TO JOHN 87 FAME t QI INSIDE VIEW OF SECESSION 93 HOSEA BECOMES PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC 95 \i CONTENTS. PAGE PARSON WILBUR 97 YANKEE HUMOR AND PATHOS 100 HOSEA AS AN ORATOR 103 "THE ARGYMUNT " 104 RECONSTRUCTION 106 THE DECAY OF THE YANKEE DIALECT 107 CHAUCER-BOCCACCIO Ill THE PROFESSOR SUPPLANTS THE POET 114 UNDER THE WILLOWS 116 VILLA FRANCA 118 FOR AN AUTOGRAPH 119 METAPHYSICAL SUBTILTY IN POETRY 120 COMMEMORATION ODE 123 Two FRIENDS 125 THE CATHEDRAL. CONSERVATISM 126 CONCORD, CAMBRIDGE, VIRGINIA 133 CLASSICISM 133 THE PROSE OF POETS 137 LOWELL S PROSE 140 GOLD IN QUARTZ 144 PERSONAL TRAITS AND ANECDOTES 150 THE WHIST CLUB 154 HINTS OF FRIENDSHIPS 158 A CHARACTER 162 EDMUND QUINCY 164 BEGINS PUBLIC LIFE AT THE TOP 166 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL Frontispiece ELMWOOD See page 10 ELM WOOD (REAR VIEW) " "11 BEAVER BROOK " "61 THE MILL WHEEL " "62 THE WAVERLEY OAKS . " " 63 OF THC UNIVERSITY OF JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL, A BIOGKAPHICAL SKETCH. THE essence of poetry eludes analysis, and like some of the forces of nature is known only by its effects. These effects are so va rious that any uniform standard is impossible. At times poetry lurks in satire and in images of the grotesque ; sometimes it swells in the fervor of religion or of patriotism ; sometimes it creates for itself an interior world, as the Inferno or the Paradise Lost; sometimes it expresses emotion in view of the beautiful or the sublime in nature ; again it shines in pictures of human life, as in the Canterbury Tales or the Arthuriad ; or it unfolds the mysteries of the soul and touches the uni versal analogies, as in Shakespeare. i 2 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Since the time of Wordsworth, poets of the English race have been strongly influenced by natural scenery. The poets of old made man the subject of verse. Virgil wrote like a modern of woods and fountains, but in this respect he is alone. Homer knew the blue Olympus and the wooded Ida, and Horace could behold the snowy summit of Soracte from his Sabine farm; but all the " scenery" in the classical poems of antiquity (excepting the ^Eneid) would not make a page of a modern magazine. We have been having in our time a surfeit of landscape art, as in Wordsworth himself and in his followers, in cluding Bryant and other Americans. Many modern poets have been scarcely more than literal scene-painters, and have neglected to put human figures in the foreground. Poetry reaches the soul through the in tellect and through the emotions. Purely intellectual poetry may be in a sense " clas sic," but it has no life. Poetry makes men feel, rather than understand, and it suggests A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 3 thoughts and emotions not expressed in words. As History is only ceremony and costume un til genius connects it with the vital interests of the race, so the most artistic landscape is only a vapid picture of still-life until man ap pears in it, informing it with his own hopes and fears. Poetry, in its essential quality, is disengaged from the products of the ordinary mental facul ties. It is something wholly apart, not a sum mary nor an epigram. It never expounds, comments, nor exhorts. It teaches, if it teaches at all, by what it suggests, by sub tile hints, and by apt parables. It is only a truism to say that poetry is the highest and rarest of the productions of mind. But few poets are wholly poetical, or " of imagination all compact." Some dross is fused with their gold. The temptation to discuss is very strong with men who live and bear their part in the world. And it has generally happened that great poetical conceptions have been born in loneliness or in darkness. 4 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. The subject of this sketch is one of the most favorable examples of English descent and American culture. As he was born in a time of ferment, both as to literary and theo- logic dogmas, he was naturally influenced by the revival which the early part of this cen tury witnessed. He has profited by the liter atures of all nations, but he has been the disciple of no one literary master. His suc cess in verse is fairly matched by his brilliant and poetical prose ; and while he is eminent among scholars, he is at the same time capa ble, discreet, and distinguished among pub lic men. The events of the times in which he has lived, and the changes that have taken place in his own sphere, as will be seen here after, have affected in various ways the pro ductions of his pen. PARENTAGE AND FAMILY. The Lowells are descended from Percival Lowell of Bristol, England, who settled in Newbury, Mass., in 1639. In the ancient A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 5 records of the colony the name is written Lowle. The family has been distinguished in every generation. Francis Cabot Lowell (1775-1817) was among the first to perceive that the wealth of New England was to come from manufactures, and it was for him that the city of Lowell was named. John Lowell (1743-1802), an eminent judge, was the au thor of the section in the Bill of Rights, by which slavery was abolished in Massachu setts. John Lowell, Jr. (1799-1836), was the founder of the Lowell Institute in Boston. This great public benefaction, which provides annual courses of free lectures, was estab lished by a bequest of $250,000 in the testa tor s will, written by him while on the summit of the great pyramid. He was travelling in the East, and died not long after at Bombay. Another John Lowell is at present a judge of the District Court of the United States. Charles Lowell (1782-1861), a distinguished divine, was the father of the poet.) The Russells have also an honorable name 6 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. in the colony. Richard Russell, from Here fordshire, settled at Charlestown in 1 640, and became a prominent man. His son James bore a manful part in the trying times of 1688-9, and was all his life in positions of trust. The Lowells have been men of solid char acter, earnest, high-minded, philanthropic, and possessed of strong practical abilities. The genius for poetry, manifested by the subject of this sketch and by his brother Robert, was apparently derived from the maternal line. Dr. Charles Lowell married Harriet Spence, a native of Portsmouth, N. H., belonging to a Scotch family, descended perhaps from Sir Patrick Spens, celebrated in the old ballad. A dim tradition to this effect exists, but of course without the possibility of verification. The mother of Harriet Spence was named Traill, a native of one of the Orkneys. 1 Mrs. Harriet Spence Lowell had a great 1 The reader remembers Magnus Troil in Scott s novel, " The Pirate." Troil and Traill are the same. 8 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. while the appreciation of the beautiful came to them through the other.) Mary Lowell Putnam, born in 1810, is a lady of sin gular mental vigor and of unusual acquire ments, and is the author of several important works. The other daughter, Rebecca, died in middle age, unmarried. Charles, who died at Washington about ten years ago, was a man of superior attainments, and the father of two brilliant young men, Colonel Charles Russell Lowell and Lieutenant James Jack son Lowell, both killed in our late civil war. Mrs. Putnam s only son, Captain William Lowell Putnam, was killed also in the disas trous affair of Ball s Bluff, in the early part of the war. BIKTHPLACE AND SURROUNDINGS. It seldom happens in this country that a lifetime passes without change of residence; but, except during his visits abroad, the poet has always lived in the house in which he was born. *% A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 9 Elmwood, though not very ancient, has an interesting history. The house was built by Peter Oliver, who was stamp distributer just before the outbreak of the Revolution. It will be remembered that, being waited upon by a Boston committee " of about four thou sand," and requested to resign his obnoxious office, Oliver hurriedly complied, and shortly after left the country. The house was next occupied by Elbridge Gerry, an eminent man in his day, from whose crooked plan of districting, the political term " gerrymander ing " was derived. After his death it became the property of Dr. Lowell, about a year before the birth of the poet. It is of wood, three stories high, and stands on the base line of a triangle, of which the apex reaches nearly to the gate of Mount Auburn Ceme tery. The ample grounds have an abundant growth of trees, most of them planted by the prudent Doctor as a screen from the winds. There are a few native elms ; but those which give the name to the estate are 10 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. English, sturdy as oaks, standing in front of the house. In front, also, are large and beautiful ash trees. \ In the deep space at the rear, in the old days, there was perfect seclusion ; it used to seem like the stillness of the woods. The slopes of Mount Auburn, beautiful with na tive growths, and not then covered by fan tastic caprices in marble, are separated only by a narrow street. Dwellings were not numerous or near. /All around the enclosure a gigantic hedge stands like a jagged silhov- ette against the sky.) This lofty hedge is made up of a great variety of trees ; it bristles with points of tufted pines ; it is set at mid-height with thrifty and elbowing wil lows and dense horse-chestnuts ; and beneath it is filled in with masses of shrubs, f In the area are broad grassy levels, with a few pear and apple trees, and nearer the house are younger pines, elms, firs, clumps of lilacs, syringas, fleurs-de-lis, gorgeous rugs of striped grass, and other ornamental growths, A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. H disdained by modern gardeners, but immortal in the calendars of poets. \ ( Elmwood is full of birds, robins and their homelier cousins, the brown thrushes, swallows, blue-birds, flaming orioles, yellow- birds, wrens, and sparrows. The leafy cov erts are inviolate, and some of the tenants, even the migratory robins, keep house the year round. All are perfectly at home, and they appear to sing all day. On summer evenings, after the chatter of the sparrows has ceased and the robins have sung for cur few, you may hear the pee-ad of night-hawks, and the hoarse voices of herons and other aquatic birds, as they fly over from Fresh Pond or the neighboring marshes. N ( During the lifetime of his father the poet occupied as a study the south front room in the upper story. Many years have passed since that period, and many changes have occurred in the landscape (and in the beholder!). Perhaps the description which follows may be far 12 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. from true to-day. Hills have been dug down, and their gravelly sides left bare. Straggling groups of houses have here and there crept out on the wet marsh. The horse-cars have frightened away most of the birds, and almost put to flight the poetical associations. But still faithful memory re calls the prospect, and in her tablets it shines now as it did so long ago. In those treas ured pictures we see the distant view from the study windows in their varying aspects. The view is broad and panoramic, compris ing portions of Brighton, Brookline, and Roxbury, and ending on the left with the dome of the State House in Boston. The nearer view, over the neighboring lawns, includes the Charles and the marshes. The sluggish river winds through tracts of salt meadow, now approaching camps of medita tive willows, now creeping under " cater pillar bridges," and now turning away from terraced villas and turfy promontories. In summer the long coils of silver are set in a A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 13 ground of green that is vivid and tremulous like watered silk ; in autumn the grasses are richly mottled purple, sage, and brown ; and the play of sunlight and shadow, while the winds are brushing the velvet this way and that, gives an inimitable life to the picture. \ The study contained about a thousand volumes of books, a few classic engravings, water-color paintings by Stillman, Roman photographs, a table with papers and letters in confusion, and a choice collection of pipes.) Over the mantel was a panel, venerable and smoky, that had been brought from the house of one of the ancient Lowells in New- bury, on which was painted a group of clergymen in their robes, wigs, and bands, seated about a table, each enjoying a long clay pipe. On an arch above an alcove was this legend in Latin : "In essentials, unity ; in iion -essentials, liberty ; in all things, charity." This picture, though scarcely a work of art, is interesting for the light it throws upon 14 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. the social customs of the clergy of the last century. This room was for many years the delight ful resort of a few friends, especially on Sunday afternoons. After the death of Dr. Lowell, the libraries were brought together in two connected rooms on the lower floor. The new study was more spacious and convenient ; but the precious and undying associations, and the beautiful outlook, belonged to the upper chamber. The house throughout is an example of the picturesque.) In the hall are ancestral por traits (one bearing the date of 1582); busts of Dr. Charles Lowell and his father; a stately Dutch clock; and Page s Titianesque portraits of the poet and his wife in their youthful days. { The prevailing tone of the rooms is sombre, but the furniture is antique and solid, such as would make a covetous virtuoso unhappy for life. Books are every where, mostly well chosen standard works in A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 15 various languages, including a liberal pro portion of plays and romances, j EDUCATION. [ The nearest neighbor to Elmwood in 1825 was William Wells, who kept a boys 7 school, and from him the poet got most of his early education. \ He was for a time, however, pupil of Mr. Daniel G. Ingraham, who had a highly successful classical school in Boston. Mr. Wells was a thoroughly educated English man, who had been a member of a publish ing house in Boston, Wells & Lilly. They published excellent books ; among them, well edited Latin classics. At that time, when Lieut. -governor Armstrong was making his fortune out of the " Life of Harriet Newell" and "Scott s Family Bible," the Wells & Lilly classics were neglected, and were sold for trunk linings. The disheartened pub lisher went to Cambridge to diffuse classical learning in a humbler way. ( Many distin- 16 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. guished men were indebted to Mr. Wells for their early training. He was a teacher of the old school, erudite, formal, and severe ; and it is said that the use of the cane, upon refractory or idle pupils, was not then one of the lost arts.^ fMr. Lowell entered Harvard College in his sixteenth year, and was graduated in 1838. Among his classmates and friends were Charles Devens, a general in our late war, afterwards a judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and lately the Attor ney General of the United States ; the Eev. Rufus Ellis ; the late Professor Nathan Hale ; the Hon. George B. Loring, M. C. ; William W. Story, the sculptor and poet; Professor H. L. Eustis; the Rev. J. I. T. Coolidge ; Professor W. P. Atkinson; and others less known to fame. The Rev. E. E. Hale was in the class following.^ His rank in scholarship was not a matter of pride. He has been used to say that he read almost everything, except the text- A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 17 books prescribed by the faculty. To certain branches of study, especially to mathematics, he had an invincible repugnance. His wide and multifarious reading was the efficient fertilization of his mind. s Learning, in its higher sense, came later. (The voyages, travels, romances, poems, and plays he de voured were a better aliment for a poet than the regulation diet of Harvard. ; !His was a nurture such as Cervantes, Spenser, and Shakespeare received. Though eminent and able in many ways, Lowell remains abso lutely a poet in feeling. His native genius was fostered by the associations of a singu larly beautiful home ; it was nourished by the works of the dramatists, masters of emotion and expression, by the ideal pic tures of poets and novelists, and by the tender solemnity of the discourses of his father and of Channing, and others of his father s friends. Nature and the early sur roundings had been alike favorable; and though he was not a rhyming prodigy like OF THF UNIVERSITY Of 18 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Pope, lisping in numbers, his first effusions as he came to manhood were in poetic form. .- After leaving College, Lowell entered the Law School, and having finished the pre scribed course, took his degree of LL.B. in 1840. He opened an office in Boston, but it does not appear that he ever seriously engaged in the practice of law. It is true he wrote a story for the "Boston Miscellany" entitled " My First Client," but that may have been a mythical person. N ; The Rev. Mr. Hale says that his brilliant future was prefigured in his youth, that his original genius was evident from the first. HIS FIRST BOOK. (A little before his twenty-second birthday he published a small volume of poems, en titled " A Year s Life." The motto was from Schiller : Ich habe gelebt und geliebet ; concern ing which it may be said that most young men appear to have reached the maturity of A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 19 having " lived and loved " at a comparatively early period. The poems are naturally upon the subject that inspires youths of one-and- twenty -^ and though they do not, many of them, appear in the author s " complete" col lection, they are by no means unworthy of consideration. They bear a favorable com parison with the " Hours of Idleness" and other first-fruits of genius. The reader is re ferred to " Irene," "With a Pressed Flower," and "The Beggar." (The unnamed lady who is celebrated in the poet s verse, and who afterwards became his wife, was Miss Maria White, a person of delicate and spirit ual beauty, refined in taste, sympathetic in nature, and the author of several exquisite poems, j Although most of the pieces in "A Year s Life" have been set aside by the severer judgment of the poet, the student will discover in them many intimations of the genius that shone out more clearly in later days. But contemporaries seldom have the interpretation which comes later with full- 20 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. blown success. Margaret Fuller, in " The Dial," wrote disparagingly of the verses, say ing that neither their imagery nor their music was the author s own. HE BECOMES AN EDITOR/ In the landscape of letters, dead magazines are the ruins, often more pathetic than pic turesque. Many a young author has felt a shock at the downfall of his castle, and fortu nate is he who is not crushed under it/ In January, 1843, appeared the first number of the " Pioneer," a magazine of moderate size, handsomely printed, and illustrated, after the fashion of the time, with steel engravings. " J. R Lowell and Robert Carter " were announced as " Editors and Proprietors." Three numbers only were issued before the publishers failed. The magazine was too purely literary to be successful. The num bers are now exceedingly scarce, and would bring an almost fabulous price. Imagine a magazine with articles by Byron, Shelley, A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 21 Coleridge, De Quincey, and Vathek-Beck- ford! v )In these three numbers are two of Hawthorne s incomparable stories, " The Birthmark" and "The Hall of Fantasy;" essays upon Beethoven, by John S. Dwight ; able articles by John Neal ; an Oriental tale by Carter; and articles by Lowell on old plays, and the song writers. But the wealth of the magazine was in its poetry ; so many famous people were never enlisted in any one enterprise before or since. Besides the numerous and beautiful contributions of the editor, there were poems by Miss E. B. Bar rett (afterwards Mrs. Browning), Edgar A. Poe, Whittier, W. W. Story, T. W. Parsons (a name that is to endure), Jones Very (dain tiest of sonneteers), and George S. Burleigh. Poe s poems were " The Telltale Heart" and the well-known " Lenore." Whittier s was entitled "Lines Written in the Book of a Friend:"- " On page of thine I cannot trace The cold and heartless commonplace, A statue s fixed and marble grace," etc. 22 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Parsons contributed poems upon "The Hud son River," " The Shadow of the Obelisk," and "The Tower of Pisa." Story was like Mercutio, a loyal and brilliant second, writing both in prose and verse, and furnishing de signs for the engraver. On the whole, the "Pioneer" was a re markable periodical, and its only fault was that it was far above the comprehension of the general public of forty years ago. Before this, Lowell had written some very striking literary essays for the " Boston Mis cellany," conducted by his classmate and in timate friend, Nathan Hale. A SECOND VOLUME OF POEMS. About three years after the publication of "A Year s Life" appeared another volume of poems well known to readers of to-day. "The Legend of Brittany" and " Prometheus" are the longest ; but the most popular are "Rhoecus," "The Shepherd of King Ad- A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. nietus," " To Perdita Singing," " The For lorn," " The Heritage," " A Parable," etc. The matter and the manner of this volume were new and not wholly pleasing to the American public of 1844. As we look back and consider the taste of that public, we can not indulge in any great pride. There were undoubtedly literary circles in each of the principal cities, in which authors and works were estimated with conscientious care ; but the general tone was low. The Tityrus of the herds, as Lowell afterwards styled him, was Doctor Griswold. An hour s study of his volumes is better than a sermon on the vanity of human wishes, or a lament over the perishable nature of literary fame. There were a few names held in honor then that are still more honored now. Long fellow was in the first flush of well- won fame : men had begun to name him in the same breath with Bryant, the recognized chief of the bards. Willis was the Count D Orsay of letters, the arbiter elegantiamm. Holmes 24 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. was thought to be a bright and witty young man of considerable promise. Whittier was talked of, but people said he was prostituting his muse in the service of fanatics. His lyrics, they thought, had some fire, but an abolition ist, of course, could not be a poet. The re tributive tar-kettle would befit him rather than the exhilarating tripod. The first genius of our time at least among romancers was absolutely unknown. The " Twice-Told Tales" had been published (1837, 1842), and scarcely a thousand copies had been sold. Pierpont s odes were shouted by schoolboys, and the din of the rhymes on Public Satur days was like the riveting of steam-boilers. Poe s " Raven" was just about making its sequacious and tantalizing lament. Halleck was the American Campbell. John Neal and Richard H. Dana were great poets, and were sure some day to produce something worthy of their fame. " Woodman, Spare that Tree!" "The Old Oaken Bucket," and " Home, Sweet Home," had filled the cup of A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 25 national glory full. Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Hale, Miss G-ould, and Mrs. Welby were quoted with Mrs. Barbauld and Mrs. Hemans. Editors then seemed perched on loftier heights than now. The Philadelphia maga zines, in particular, were thought to be won derful works of genius and art. Those magazines in which music strove with milli nery, and poetry was entangled with worsted patterns, and whose plates were fine enough for perfumery labels, represented a power and influence with the ingenuous youths of 1844, which the sober " Atlantic " and the versatile " Harper" have never since wielded. Poems admitted into those elegant repositories of the arts were already classic. To be sure, the admiring reader at times had some qualms ; as when, for instance, he learned that a spring gushed " like a fountain of soda," and then saw that the hard-pressed poet was forced to lug in " Godey " for a rhyme. But then, this might be playful. The revolution in letters has scarcely be- 26 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. gun. Pope was still greater than Homer; Byron was grander than Milton s Satan; Scott was the only romancer of the ages; Wordsworth was a dull proser, who took a pedler for his hero and an idiot for the sub ject of his pathos. Tennyson was an airy and effeminate stripling, who had a pleasing trick of rhyme, and who was properly casti gated by Bulwer as " Out-babying Wordsworth and out-glittering Keats." In Lowell s verse there was something of Wordsworth s simplicity, something of Ten nyson s sweetness and musical flow, and some thing more of the manly earnestness of the Elizabethan poets ; but the resemblances were external ; the individuality of the poet was clear. The obvious characteristic of the poems is their high religious spirit. It is not a mild and passive morality that we per ceive, but the aggressive force of primitive Christianity. The vivid conception of the law of love and of the duties of brotherhood A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 27 reminds us of the time when such thoughts were new and startling, and before their vital power had been lost in chanted creeds and iterated forms. There are several of the poems in this col lection which now seem prophetic. They were bold utterances at the time, and were doubtless considered as the rhapsodies of a harmless enthusiast. The ode beginning " In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder The poet s song with blood-warm truth was rife," may be regarded in one aspect as a confession of faith. In force of thought and depth of feeling, and in the energy of its rhythmic movement, it is a remarkable production, whether for a poet of twenty-five or older. Perhaps it is more rhetorical in its energy than maturer taste would approve. It is so compact that a summary is impossible ; but it announces in sonorous strains that the mis sion of the poet, like that of God s prophets, is to attack wrong and oppression, to raise up the weak and reclaim the erring, and to 28 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. bring heaven to men. He decries the bards who seek merely to amuse, and deplores their indifference to human welfare. " Proprieties our silken bards environ : He who would be the tongue of this wide land Must string his harp with chords of sturdy iron, And strike it with a toil-embrowned hand." This stirring ode was a fit prelude to the part our poet was to perform. If there were any doubt as to the application, the grand sonnet to Wendell Phillips, in the same vol ume, gives it emphasis. THE ANTI-SLAVERY REVOLUTION. There are poets whose verse has no re lation to time. " Drink to me only with thine eyes" might have been sung by any lyrist from Anacreon to Algernon Swin burne. Others, like Dante, Milton, Marvell, and Dry den, who live in times when strong tides of feeling are surging to and fro, when vital principles are in controversy, and the A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 29 fate of a people hangs upon the sharp deci sion of the hour, find themselves, whether they would or no, in the place of actors, at once causes and products of the turmoil in which they are born. Probably there were never greater changes in the ideas, habits, and welfare of any civil ized people in any half century than were brought about in the Northern States during the fifty years from the date of the poef s birth. This may appear to be an unnec essarily strong statement, but it will bear scrutiny. That half-century witnessed the astounding changes which followed the ap plication of steam, electricity, and the arts to practical affairs. In the same period the bulk of our literature was produced ; and the press, too, became a power before unknown in this or any country. Legislation and juris prudence were lifted into the light of morals. Organized benevolence, taking upon itself the burdens of society, began to make the Golden Rule an active principle in human 30 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. affairs. In fifty years, the United States had outrun the usual progress of centuries. Europe, too, witnessed great changes in the same period, but they chiefly related to material things. England and France had lit eratures, arts, societies, and traditions. The United States, as a nation, had none. Somewhere in our account of the author we should glance at his intellectual lineage, and trace his relations to the thinkers and thoughts of his age. A LITERARY RETROSPECT. It is sometimes said of a neglected genius that he is born out of time. But this can never be. As the fauna of any epoch find the fit conditions of sustenance, so the intel lectual conditions of any period are the ones appointed for the growth of mind in that time. As the poet embodies in his verse, not only his love of nature and religious feeling, but also the results of philosophy and art, A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 31 he must be considered in connection with the dominant ideas of his time. The English, who say we have no poetry, are disappointed, probably, in not finding some flavor of strangeness, like that of a wild duck, or some daring novelty of form, as in the prophecies of Walt Whitman; forgetting that for the most part we are still British, though under new conditions, and that, with our heritage and traditions, there could be expected from New World singers only slight variations from ancestral strains. Our colonists repre sented a high average of English ability and cultivation. Their history shows their blood to have been of the best. Yet in the wilder ness literary art languished, and taste was perverted. There was no poetry on the manifest of the " Mayflower" or of the " Ar- bella;" it had been left behind with Eng land s larks and daisies. A century passed before the savage forests had lost their ter rors and the homes of the settlers began to bloom in beauty. Neither prose nor 32 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. verse flourished until after the revolutionary war. j Our recognized literature began with Bry ant and Irving; but its real sources were in Channing, his associates and disciples, or rather in the intellectual movement that fol lowed the decline of ecclesiastical rule. Channing, so far as he was a conscious agent, was a mild-tempered agitator, remark able for nobility of character and for a spiritu ality that was almost angelic. The revolution he led was against the dominant theology, but the influence was felt by millions who never accepted the new doctrines. Clerical limitations became obsolete. People redis covered Shakespeare, as amateur astrono mers discover Jupiter ; for the works of the chief of poets had before this been unknown to Puritan libraries. It was found that there were writers and thinkers who were not wearers of Geneva bands. Channing him self was no longer shut up in a remote corner, but was welcomed into the fraternity A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. of lettered men. Until his essays on Milton, Fenelon, and Napoleon appeared, European scholars had never thought of America ex cept in connection with savages, fish, furs, and rebellion. The breadth and force of this movement can scarcely be overesti mated. Excepting Irving, Cooper, and Poe, there has not been an American author of high rank in this century whose intellectual lineage is not traceable, directly or indirectly, to Channing and Emerson. ( A new light emanated from Nature ; or rather the hills, rivers, and lakes were seen with anointed eyes. Religion, as well as literature, was secularized, though the spirit _ of Christianity was still supreme. In the course of time, Christianity got new applica tions, and later, democracy had new and startling definitions. The contest had be gun, which in due time was to wash out the color line with blood. Story and poem, history and essay, national in tone and with vital characteristics, gave new life to 3 34 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. society and new lustre to the American name. N : It was in the springtime of the new thought that our poet was born. THE ANTI-SLAVERY REVOLUTION MOVES ON The function of the critic, as Mr. Stedman has pointed out, is to anticipate the solid and dispassionate judgment of posterity upon the works of to-day, a task sufficiently diffi cult, for the critic himself may be enslaved by the literary fashions which he ought to resist and deplore. No one can say what may be the standard of taste a century hence ; for it cannot be known what direc tion it will receive from some unborn master spirit, who will dominate his age. But in regard to the fundamental laws of ethics there cannot be any retrogressive movement- So much is sure. And to a man in the twentieth century, looking back, what will appear the great fact A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 35 of our time? Indubitably the fulfilment of the democratic idea in the abolition of African slavery. It is the most important event since the discovery of America. The schemes of Bismarck, Gortschakoff, and Bea- consfield, or even the gigantic crimes of Napoleon, are mere games of chess in com parison. Yet the time has been when such an opinion would not have been tolerated in polite society. The evil was intrenched in law, defended by statesmen and political economists, apologized for by clergymen, and made respectable by custom. Like its kindred oppressions, absolutism and caste, (for which we trust Fate has an end at once effectual and peaceful), slavery was adorned by the fictile graces of romance and the false glamour of poesy. The anti-slavery move ment has been lately classed with isms by those who see no deeper than the surface of things, as if it were a fashion, like that of bran bread; but it was such an ism as Christianity, or Democracy, or International Peace, or Human Brotherhood. 36 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. The position of Lowell was fixed from the beginning. The teachings of Channing and of his father, the doctrines of the New Tes tament, and the example of his grandfather (author of the liberty clause in our Bill of Rights), all pointed in one direction. He became an abolitionist when the name signi fied a fanatic and fool. He did not, however, continue long with the theorists who believed the road to universal freedom must be laid over the ruins of the Constitution, but joined with those who meant to extirpate the evil by legal means. The sincerity and the unflinching zeal of trie anti-slavery leaders are not to be ques tioned, but in the nature of things they were scarcely entertaining. Their discourses were seldom enlivened by wit or humor. It was an awful "burden" they bore. One would as soon expect a joke from Jeremiah, j Of lit eral sarcasm and downright blows there were plenty. It is noticeable, also, that in the first two volumes of Lowell s poems there is A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 37 not a single witticism, nor a hint of the comic power that was to place him among the first of humorists and satirists. In his " Conver sations on the Poets," now out of print and scarce, there are many keen strokes and ludi crous comparisons, like those in later books with which the public has become familiar. In the " Conversations" we see more of the natural man ; in the early poems we see the decorous bard in the proprieties of cere monial robes. One might believe that the brilliant raillery which Lowell afterwards turned upon the supporters of slavery had its origin in a reaction from the monotonous oratory of some of his associates. The pub lic, which could bear a great deal of argu ment upon the national sin, unmoved, was found to be keenly sensitive to the corus cations of wit, and sorely vulnerable to the arrows of ridicule. In the summer of 1846, the Mexican war was in progress, and the abolitionists were urging (what is now accepted as the truth of 38 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. history) that it was waged to obtain new territory for the extension of slavery, and thereby to counterbalance the growing power of the Northern States. President Polk had been elected to carry out the scheme. The appeal was to Congress, through the con science of the nation, to stop the supplies. HOSEA BIGLOW. Mr. Lowell wrote a letter in June to the " Boston Courier/ purporting to come from Ezekiel Biglow, enclosing a poem in the Yankee dialect, written by his son Hosea, in which the efforts to raise volunteers in Boston were held up to scorn. " Thrash away, you 11 hev to rattle On them kittle-drums o yourn, T aint a knowin kind o cattle Thet is ketched with mouldy corn." Society was puzzled. Critics turned the homely quatrains over w r ith their talons as kittens do beetles, shook their wise ears, and doubted. Politicians thought them flat or 40 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. were no protection. The unanswerable ar guments of Garrison and the magnificent invectives which Wendell Phillips had hurled at well-dressed mobs were now supplemented by the homeliest of proverbial phrases, set to the airiest, lilting rhythm, adorned with the choicest and most effective slang, and ting ling with the free spirit that had animated a line of fighting Puritans since the time of Naseby. The anti-slavery music was in the air, and everybody had to hear it. The more cultivated of the abolitionists were in ecstasies. Some, however, did not quite understand it. The levity of tone hardly accorded with the prophetic burdens they had been used to. When Charles Sumner saw the first Biglow poem in the " Courier," he exclaimed to a friend, " This Yankee poet has the true spirit. He puts the case admirably. I wish, however, he could have used good English ! " Hosea Biglow kept up the warfare, and each poem was furnished with a preface and A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 41 notes by an imaginary Parson Wilbur. First, a Mexican- war recruit gave his amus ing experiences from the field. Then came " What Mr. Robinson Thinks." This tickled the public amazingly, and "John P. Robinson he Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.," was in every one s mouth, like the " What, never ? " of " Pinafore." Mr. Robinson was a refined and studious man, unhappily on the wrong side of a moral question, and was not a little annoyed by his " bad eminence ; " but he is preserved in the. Biglow amber, like an ante-Pharaonic fly. There is a ludicrous, though perhaps mythical story, that he went abroad, to get out of hearing the sound of his own name. As soon as he landed at Liver pool, however, and got to his hotel, he heard a child in an adjoining room idly singing. He listened. Yes, it was true ; the detested refrain had got across the ocean. It was "John P. Robinson he " 42 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. that the baby-ruffian was trolling. He sailed to the Mediterranean, and stopped at Malta. While looking at the ruins of the works of the Templars he observed a party of English not far distant, and presently another infan tile voice sang " But John P. Robinson he Sez they did n t know everythin down in Judee." About this time the late Dr. Palfrey, the historian, then an able and eloquent member of Congress, had refused to vote for Mr. Winthrop, the Whig candidate for speaker. Hosea Biglow gave expression to the party wrath in a burlesque version of a speech sup posed to have been delivered at an indigna tion meeting in State Street. This was the opening : " No ? Hez he 1 He haint, though 1 Wut 1 Voted agin him? Ef the bird of our country could ketch him, she d skin him ! " "A Debate in the Sennit, sot to a Nusry Rhyme" followed; then "The Pious Editor s Creed," and a burlesque of General Taylor s A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 43 letter accepting the nomination for the presi dency. The first letter from Birdofredum Sawin, the Mexican volunteer, created great merriment on account of its local hits, espe cially those relating to Caleb Gushing, the eminent publicist, who was at that time a general in command. Many of the finest touches are lost upon readers of to-day. The second letter of the series is probably the most fluent, adroit, and effective. The writer had been sadly mutilated, ill-treated, and dis illusioned. He had imagined Mexico as a country " Ware propaty growed up like time, without no cultivation, An gold wuz dug ez taters be among our Yankee nation, Ware nateral advantages were pufficly amazin , Ware every rock there wuz about with precious stuns wuz blazin , Ware mill- sites filled the country up ez thick ez you could cram em An desput rivers run about a beggin folks to dam em." The temptation to quote is strong, but there must be a limit. Every couplet contains some felicitous absurdity or hard hit. The 44 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. volunteer finally descants upon his own mer its and available qualities, and offers himself as a candidate for President under the sobri quet of " The One-eyed Slarterer." In a third letter, the last of the first series, Mr. Sawin withdraws in favor of " 01 Zack" (General Taylor). The poems were finally gathered into a volume, which in comic completeness is with out a parallel. The "work" begins with "Notices of the Press," which are delightful travesties of the perfunctory style both of "soft-soaping" and of "cutting up." There happening to be a vacant page, the space was filled off-hand by the first sketch of " Zekle s Courtship : " " Zekle crep up, quite unbeknown, An peeked in thru the winder, An there sot Huldy all alone, ith no one nigh to bender." This is the most genuine of our native idyls. It affects one like coming upon a new and quaint blossoming orchid, or hearing Schu- A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 45 mamrs Einsame Blume. Its appearance in the "Biglow Papers" was purely an acci dent ; but it had the air of being an extract, and it was so greatly admired that the poet afterwards added stanzas from time to time to fill out the picture. In the original sketch there were six stanzas ; there are now twenty- four. Some of the added stanzas are fully as picturesque and striking as those in the original improvisation. This is the first : " God makes sech nights, all white an still Fur z you can look or listen, Moonshine an snow on field an hill, All silence an all glisten." Of the progress of Zekle s passion he says : " But long o her his veins ould run All crinkly like curled maple, The side she breshed felt full o sun Ez a south slope in Ap il." Of Huldy s nature : " For she was jes the quiet kind Whose naturs never vary, Like streams that keep a summer mind Snow hid in Jenooary." 46 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. There is a burlesque advertisement in Latin of one of Mr. Wilbur s projected works pre ceding the titlepage. The title itself is a travesty reminding one of the days of black- letter quartos. The head-line is " MELIBOEUS HIPPONAX," as much as to say, " This is a horse-eclogue." A note informs us of the po sition of Mr. Wilbur in the learned world, and refers us to some scores of (imaginary) societies to which he belongs. The Introduc tion gives some account of the poet, Hosea Biglow, and quotes specimens of his serious verse ; and it may be said here that these supposititious fragments are equal to the best descriptive poetry of our time. The editor goes on to discuss the Yankee dialect and its pronunciation, and at length loses himself in a maze of genealogical notes and queries. The notes and comments of the grave and erudite parson are difficult to characterize. One sees that he is professionally solemn and pedantic, and often ridiculous in adhering to obsolete modes of spelling and to old-fash- A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 47 ioned ways. In every page there are striking thoughts, as well as a profusion of imagery and an affluence of learning; but there is also a quaint flavor of antiquity, as if the honey of his periods had been gathered from the flowers of Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, and holy George Herbert. Noth ing finer or more characteristic is to be found in any of Lowell s varied and splendid writ ings. Look, for example, at the episodical sketch of the newspaper, as graphic as the best of Carlyle s, or at the picture of the army recruit, who is enlisted the morning after a debauch. In the course of the volume the parson de lineates himself, until he becomes a charac ter as real and as charming as the most enduring creations of English fiction. To parody one of the poet s own couplets : And " Wilbur " won t go to oblivion quicker Than Adams the parson, or Primrose the vicar. Which of the dear and stately black-robed 48 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. visitors of Elmwood sat for this unrivalled picture it may not be wise to inquire ; but all the lettered folk above fifty, in Boston and Cambridge, think they have known him. The creations of genius, like Colonel New- come and Don Quixote, are entities ; while historical characters, such as George IV. and Philip II., may be only shadows. The " Biglow Papers " end appropriately with a comic glossary and index. It must be repeated, by way of emphasis, that, from the .first fly-leaf to the colophon, this is the only complete and perfect piece of grotesque com edy in existence. In time, historical notes will be needed, as they are now for Hudibras. That the Yankee satire is to be enduring, there can be no doubt. Its total merits greatly outweigh those of Hudibras ; it has far more humor, and more quotable lines ; and it has a great advantage in its unique concomitants. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 49 CAMBRIDGE FIFTY YEARS AGO. As the Yankee peculiarities of the " Biglow Papers " are evidently fresh studies, it might appear strange that they could be wrought out by a resident of Cambridge. The vis itor to-day sees magnificent college buildings, broad streets filled with carriages and trav ersed by horse-cars, and comfortable resi dences that testify to wealth and luxury. There is still space for gardens and trees, and for open squares and trim lawns ; but the tone is urban. If Cambridge is in any respect rural, it is not in the least rustic. The prime val Yankee has become scarce everywhere ; he is hardly obtainable as a rare specimen ; he is a tradition, like the aurochs or the great bustard. He and his bucolic manners and speech are utterly gone. There is not the echo of a haow in any of the pretentious Italian villas, nor even in the heavy-tim bered mansions, like that of Lowell s friend, G. N., dating from 1656. The " W. I. Goods " 4 50 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. store, with clusters of farmers teams in front, has yielded to the " march of improvement. Oxen are as strange as camels, and if there were a milkmaid to be found, her hands would smell of mitte-fleurs or patchouli. As soon expect the return of Jacob and Rachel as to see again the originals of the poet s Zekle and Huldy. The old town as it was in Lowell s boy hood is sketched with rare humor and fine touches in an article by him, published in " Putnam s Monthly" in 1853, entitled " Cam bridge Thirty Years Ago." It is in the form of a letter addressed to the " Edelmann Storg ; " namely, to W. W. Story, the sculp tor, Lowell s classmate and intimate friend, whose name a Swiss innkeeper had once so misread. This charming essay, brimming with feel ing and full of the graces that delight culti vated readers, shows Lowell himself in his early maturity in the most striking way. Later essays may be more profound, but A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 51 none of them are so full of the sunshine of the heart. In this masterly picture we see a country village, silent and rural. There are old houses around the bare common, " and old women, capped and spectacled, still peered through the same windows from which they had watched Lord Percy s ar tillery rumble by to Lexington." One coach sufficed for the travel to Boston. It was " Sweet Auburn" then, a beautiful woodland, and not a great cemetery. The " Old Road " from the Square led to it, bending past Elm- wood. Cambridgeport was then a " huckle berry pastur ," having a large settlement of old-fashioned taverns, with vast barns and yards, on the eastern verge.- " Great, white- topped wagons, each drawn by double files of six or eight horses, with its dusty bucket swinging from the hinder axle, and its grim bull-dog trotting silent underneath, . . . brought all the wares and products of the country to Boston. These filled the inn- yards, or were ranged side by side under 52 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. broad-roofed sheds ; and far into the night the mirth of the lusty drivers clamored from the red-curtained bar-room, while the single lan tern, swaying to and fro in the black cavern of the stables, made a Eembrandt of the group of ostlers and horses below." Commencement was the great day, to which the Governor came in state, with military escort. The annual muster of the militia, which took place sometimes at Cam bridge and sometimes in other neighboring towns, brought together all the boys of the county to see the various shows and the hilarious sport called a " Cornwallis." If you look at the people, you ob serve strongly- marked social distinctions. The humbler classes toiled, and were not ashamed of it. They did not ape the man ners of the college circle, nor the luxury ot the wealthy. The provincial tone was evident. You have only to talk with an old Bostonian even now to see how it was. The old A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 53 leaders of society had a little of the mock majesty of Beranger s Eoi d Yvetot. But the main thing was, that, up to 1830, the manners and speech of ordinary folk were those of the seventeenth century. The rustic Yankee was then a fact. In fifty years, by the aid of steam and electricity, Boston became a modern city, on equal terms with the Old World, a centre of itself, and Cambridge was developed into a highly cultivated suburb. The rusticity, leisure, humor, and homespun naturalness were gone. The changes of two hundred years went by in a lifetime. Recalling old Cambridge by the aid of Lowell s reminiscences, we see how the ver nacular idioms and the humorous peculiarities of the people are so naturally reproduced in his comic verse. No poet of a later day could have evolved such creations, so perfect in nature and dress, so thoroughly identi fied with the antique world. The acquaint ance with the primeval Yankee, begun in the old town, was extended afterwards by visits 54 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. to the Adirondacks and to Moosehead Lake ; and though many artists have made striking and effective sketches of this vanished origi nal, notably Mrs. Stowe and Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke, it is the belief of the writer, whose boyhood was passed among the most perfect native specimens of the race, that Lowell has surpassed all rivals in depicting him. This opinion is not based upon the " Biglow Papers " alone. " Fitz Adam s Story," of which something will be said hereafter, is the flowering of Yankee humor and the visible soul of " Down East." MARRIAGE AND DOMESTIC LIFE. Mr. Lowell was married, December 26, 1844, to Miss Maria White of Watertown, near Cambridge. His domestic life at Elm- wood, like the "peace that passeth under standing," could be described only in simile. It was ideally beautiful, and nothing was wanting to perfect happiness but the sense of A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 55 permanence. Mrs. Lowell was a lovely and accomplished woman, but was never very strong, and her ethereal beauty seemed too delicate for the climate of New England. Children were born to them, but all died in infancy, excepting a daughter (now Mrs. Edward Burnett). Friends of the poet, who were admitted to the study in the upper chamber, remember the pairs of baby shoes that hung over a picture-frame. From the shoes out through the southwest window to the resting-place of the dear little feet in Mount Auburn there was but a glance, a tender, mournful association, full of unavail ing grief, but never expressed in words. Poems written in this period show the depth of parental feeling. Readers remember " The Changeling" and " She Came and Went." " As a twig trembles, which a bird Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent, So is my memory thrilled and stirred; I only know she came and went." Mrs. Lowell was a writer of sweet and 56 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. beautiful verse. One of her poems, "The Alpine Sheep," addressed to a sorrowful mother, was suggested by her own bereave ment. " They in the valley s sheltering care Soon crop the meadow s tender prime, And when the sod grows brown and bare The shepherd strives to make them climb " To airy shelves of pasture green That hang along the mountain s side, Where grass and flowers together lean, And down through mist the sunbeams slide. "But nought can tempt the timid things The steep and rugged paths to try, Though sweet the shepherd calls and sings, And seared below the pastures lie, " Till in his arms their lambs he takes Along the dizzy verge to go : Then, heedless of the rifts and breaks, They follow on, o er rock and snow. " And in those pastures, lifted fair, More dewy-soft than lowland mead, The shepherd drops his tender care, And sheep and lambs together feed." A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 57 Mr. and Mrs. Lowell went to Europe in a sailing vessel in the summer of 1851, and spent a year, visiting Switzerland, France, and England, but living for the most part in Italy. They returned in the autumn of 1852. Mrs. Lowell was slowly, almost im perceptibly, declining. Her fine powers were almost spiritualized, and the loveliness of her nature suffered no change by disease. " A blissful vision through the night Would all my happy senses sway Of the good Shepherd on the height, Or climbing up the starry way, " Holding our little lamb asleep, While, like the murmur of the sea, Sounded that voice along the" deep, Saying, * Arise and follow me! " The end came in October, 1853, when like a breath her soul was exhaled. Nine years of wedded life had passed, with loss and sorrow, and often clouded with apprehension, but blessed also by the ten- derest joys permitted to mortals. 58 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. On the day of Mrs. Lowell s death a child was born to Mr. Longfellow, and his poem, "The Two Angels," perhaps as perfect a specimen of his genius as can be cited, will remain forever as a most touching expression of sympathy. " ; T was at thy door, friend ! and not at mine, The angel with the amaranthine wreath, Pausing, descended, and with voice divine Whispered a word that had a sound like Death. " Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom, A shadow on those features fair and thin; And softly, from that hushed and darkened room, Two angels issued, where but one went in." Mrs. Lowell s poems were collected and privately printed in a memorial volume, with a photograph from Page s portrait ; but many of them have been widely copied and be come a part of our literature. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 59 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL. After the brilliant success of the "Biglow Papers," it might have been supposed that Lowell would have continued to produce comic verses ; but it would seem that he had not been satisfied with his early serious poetry, and was conscious of the power of accomplishing better results. His next im portant effort was " The Vision of Sir Laun- fal," a noble poem, full of natural beauty and animated by high Christian feeling. This was composed in a kind of fury, substantially as it now appears, in the space of about forty- eight hours, during which time the poet scarcely ate or slept. It was almost an im provisation, and its effect upon the reader is like that of the outburst of an inspired singer. The effect upon the public was immediate and powerful; the poem needed no herald nor interpreter. In later poems we may ob serve more highly wrought imagery, more 60 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Dantesque suggestion, and more philosophic depth ; but " Sir Launfal " is still the poem most admired by general readers, and it is the one that best shows the poet s fresh and exuberant feeling, his native piety, and his glowing sense of beauty. Every summer the newspapers remind us how " rare " is "a day in June," and every winter we read how " Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old." The preludes of the two movements of the poem have become typical in the minds of our generation. About the same period came " The Pre sent Crisis," an ardent poem, in a high, prophetic . strain, and in strongly sonorous measure. This has been often quoted by public-speakers, and many of its lines are as familiar as the most trenchant of the Proverbs : A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 61 " By the light of burning heretics l Christ s bleeding feet I track." " Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne." " Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust." " For Humanity sweeps onward : where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands." But the whole poem is a Gianfs-Cause- way group of columnar verses. It is a pity to pry out specimens ; they stand better to gether. Mention should be made of " Ambrose," a beautiful legend, with a lesson of tolera tion; of "The Dandelion" and " The Birch Tree," both charming pictures, and already hung in the gallery of fame; and of "An Interview with Miles Standish," a strong piece of portraiture, with a political moral. But of the poems of this period, the most artistic is "Beaver Brook." There is no finer specimen of an ideal landscape in mod- 1 Observe that Thomas Hughes has not quoted this cor rectly, but has printed "martyrs" for "heretics." 62 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. ern verse, a specimen rich enough in its suggestions to serve as an object-lesson upon the poetic art. Beaver Brook, whose valley was a favorite haunt of the poet, is a small stream in the present limits of the town of Belmont, a few miles from Elmwood, not far from Waverley Station. The mill exists no longer, but one of the foundation walls makes a frame on one side for the pretty cas cade of " Armfuls of diamond and of pearl," that descends into the " valley s cup." Not far below is a pasture, in which are the well-known Waverley Oaks, one of the few groups of aboriginal trees now standing near the Massachusetts coast. If a bull be per mitted, the largest of the oaks is an elm, now unhappily dying at the roots. This tree has a straight-out spread of one hundred and twenty feet, sixty feet from the giant trunk each way The oaks are seven or eight in number, as like as so many stout brothers, planted on sloping dunes west of the brook. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 63 They have a human, resolute air. Their great arms look as if ready to " hit out from the shoulder." Elms have their grace ful ways, willows their pensive attitudes, firs their loneliness, but the aboriginal oaks ex press the strength and the rugged endurance of nature. The oaks have been often painted, but there are many ways of looking at them, all equally charming. HE ATTEMPTS SATIRE. Mr. Lowell s next venture was again in the field of satire. " A Fable for Critics," " A Glance at a Few of our Literary Progenies (Mrs. Malaprop s word) from the Tub of Diogenes," was " Set forth in October, the 31st day, In the year 48, G. P. Putnam, Broadway." As one looks back, for 1848, though it seems but yesterday to some of us, was really a great while ago, one hardly knows whether to be more amazed at the audacity 64 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. or the brilliancy of this elaborate jeu d esprit. The preface declares : "I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender thing, rhymey- winged, with a sting in his tail." There was no doubt about the sting in the minds of those who felt it ; but private grievances have been forgotten, except per haps by the friends of a celebrated woman between whose renown and whose works there remains an unaccountable discrepancy. To bring up the representative authors of a vain and touchy people for censure (using the word in its broad original meaning) was an undertaking of some difficulty and deli cacy. But when allowance is made for the humorous and sportive tone of the Fable, and we get at the real critical opinions, either singly or in mass, it is surprising to see how the poet anticipated the taste of the coming generation, and how sound and appreciative, according to present standards, his judgments are. Naturally there may be BEAVER BROOK. Sec page 61. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 65 undue warmth here and a shade of coolness there, but there is a general equity and candor. And we must remember that, by and by, the honeyed compliments that are exchanged be tween living writers are to be forgotten, that poems and histories are to be scrutinized like coins by money-changers, and reckoned at their just value and no more, and that then will begin the havoc with reputations now fortified behind friendly reviews and journals, and fostered by social, political, and religious cliques. Not <me in ten of the popular writers of an epoch can hope to be remembered and read by the next ; and it will be found hereafter that Lowell s Apollo was perhaps more generous than severe in his comments upon the literary procession. The Fable is as full of puns as a pudding of plums. The good ones are the best of their kind, strung together like beads, and the bad ones are so " atrocious" as to be quite as amusing. Materials for any number of Hoods exist in it. Verbal sparkles catch 66 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. the eyes of youth ; but those who see deeper find vigorous good sense, power of analysis and illustration, as well as manly indepen dence and just national pride, such as few comic poets possess. The successive pages seem like a series of portraits, done by an artist who knows how to seize upon the strong points of likeness and avoid carica ture ; and that is to produce living pictures in the style of the masters. The reader who has had his volume by him since that thirty-first of October knows it by heart ; the judgments are established, and their curious felicity of phrase always haunts the memory. Emerson, for example, is the subject of a keen and almost per fect characterization. If the satirist laughs (as he may), the reader hesitates to join in the mirth ; for he feels the resistless force, and sees that the gayety is only the myrtle bough that covers a sword. Similar praise may be given to the powerful sketch of Theodore Parker, although that great preacher was A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 67 more tender and more profoundly religious than he appears in Lowell s verse. Alcott, " calm as a cloud," and the graceful Willis are happy specimens. To Bryant the satirist is perhaps scarcely just, although the cold ness of that great poet s passive muse, and the want of elasticity and sympathy in his nature, must be acknowledged. There is more enthusiasm in the picture of " Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart." The lyrical fervor of the verses harmonizes with the conception of the beloved and ven erated bard. Hawthorne is limned with touches so fine and aerial that one scarcely sees how it is done ; yet the likeness and the style are in imitable. It is a delicate tribute from one of the first of poets to the most original and imaginative of romancers. The estimate of Cooper, if not wholly complimentary, is mag nificently wrought. The lines are imbedded in thought, and resist change and time. 68 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. One of the most charming of these (appar ently) off-hand descriptions is that of Philo- thea, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, the ablest woman in America in her prime. There is an airy lightness in the treatment of this author that has the effect of wit in action. The tale of the " marvellous aloe " is a suffi cient instance of the genius of the author. Imagine a commonplace writer attempting to fashion such an illusory legend ! For Irving and for Poe perhaps Lowell s Apollo is no more than just; and as for Judd, although his (neglected) " Margaret" is a work of genius, probably our author means to assert what his fame should have been, rather than what it is. Holmes and Longfellow are generously mentioned, and Lowell s own verse comes in for ironical com pliment. The character of " Miranda" has been sup posed by some to be intended as a caricature of Margaret Fuller. If this were true, it would be an instance of unusual severity, for A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 69 the passages in which " Miranda" figures, though among the most amusing, are terribly sarcastic. Such a woman as the Minerva of the Fable, if there were one, might fully deserve the treatment. Miss Fuller never minced her words, and she always scorned the shelter of sex ; but, though she had some traits that drew upon her as much censure as compliment, it is not at all probable that " Miranda " was drawn for her, any more than the sketch of the dull and pedantic reviewer was intended for a well-known Harvard professor. "Miranda" is undoubt edly an imaginary female literary bore. Of the various episodes there is no room to write. Readers will see that the poet was still zealous for human rights, strongly op posed to the horrors of capital punishment, and energetic in upholding the honor of the republic of letters. And all who trace their origin from Pilgrim or Puritan ancestry will feel a new thrill of pride in the glowing apostrophe to Massachusetts with which the poem ends. 70 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. The Fable appeared anonymously, but such a secret could not be kept. When people had time to think about it, it was evident that no other American could have written it. No poem of the kind in the lan guage equals it in the two aspects of vivid genius and riotous fun. The Fable careers like an ice-boat. Breezes fill the light sails, as if toying with them ; but the course is like lightning, and every movement answers to the touch of the helm. No British poet has equalled it. Think of the dirt of the Duntiad and the whooping savagery of the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers! Yet " Eraser s Magazine" consid ered the Fable as " clever doggerel." But when the Fable is calmly surveyed, though we admit the fervid genius that ani mates it, and though we are sure that no other poet could have written it, or ap proached it in comic or serious power and swiftness, still we must see that it carries along like a flood a considerable burden of A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 71 " inconsidered trifles." There is a lack of proportion and of just treatment here and there which might have been remedied by the labor of revision. It seems like an off-hand sketch, with all the brilliant points and some of the defects that characterize first thoughts hurriedly set down. COLLECTED POEMS. UNIVERSITY LECTURES. In 1849 Mr. Lowell s poems were collected in two volumes ; the " Biglow Papers/ " A Fable for Critics," and " A Year s Life " were not included. In 1853, and for some years afterwards, he was a frequent contributor to " Putnam s Monthly," conducted by George William Curtis and Charles F. Briggs. Some of his finest productions, both in prose and verse, appeared in that brilliant periodical. In the winter of 1854-55 he delivered a course of twelve lectures on English poetry, in the Lowell Institute. The lectures made a deep impression upon cultivated auditors, and full 72 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. reports of them were printed in the Boston " Advertiser." Their success was due to their intrinsic merits. The popular lecturer is often led to imitate the vehement action of a stump orator and the drollery of a comedian by turns. Mr. Lowell s pronunciation is clear and precise, and the modulations of his voice unstudied and agreeable ; but he seldom, if ever, raised a hand for gesticulation, and his voice was kept in its natural compass. He read like one who had something of impor tance to utter, and the just emphasis was felt in the penetrating tone. There were no oratorical climaxes, and no pitfalls set for applause. But the weighty thoughts, the ear nest feeling, and the brilliant poetical images gave to every discourse an indescribable charm. The younger portion of the audi ence, especially, enjoyed a feast for which all the study of their lives had been a prepa ration. It is probable that by this time our poet had begun to think of some connection with A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 73 the University. The illustrious professor of belles lettreSj it was known, desired to retire from the chair, and public opinion pointed to Lowell as a proper person for his successor. In the summer of 1854 Mr. Longfellow re signed, and Mr. Lowell was appointed in his place, with leave of absence for two years. He went to Europe to pursue his studies, and remained abroad, chiefly in Dresden, until the spring of 1857, when he returned arid began his courses of lectures. No profes sor was ever more popular with his classes. Students speak of him always in terms of admiration and love. His lectures upon Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Cervantes, in particular, have made an ineffaceable im pression upon the scholars of Harvard. In the two years of residence abroad, he had time for much methodical reading, par ticularly in the literatures of modern Europe ; but, in truth, the studies which made him a distinguished scholar had been begun long before, and have been pursued ever since. 74 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. His power of assimilation has been even more remarkable than his facility of acqui sition. The best things in all tongues natu rally gravitated to him ; and it was difficult for any but the most curiously learned to say whether he seemed more at home with the philosophic authors of Germany, the great poet of Italy, the immortal romancer of Spain, the brilliant wit and classic finish of the French, or with the long line of poets, chroniclers, and thinkers of our old home. His resources were ample for almost any un dertaking. His characteristics as a writer of prose will be considered in the proper place ; but it may be observed here that, along with his varied studies, he had early cultivated, unconsciously perhaps, a learned, rich, and allusive style, singularly apt and forcible, and teeming with poetic illustrations. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 75 CONVEKSATIONS ON THE POETS. The germs of his literary criticism are to be found in his " Conversations on the Poets," published in his twenty-fifth year. The book is a valuable part of his literary biography. The sentences give an impres sion of prolixity at first, not so much of words as of teeming, struggling thought. They at test the yet untrained luxuriance of genius. The doctrines are of the modern school, in opposition to the formal antithesis and the superficial glitter of Pope and his French masters, and in favor of the simplicity and vigor of the Elizabethan authors, and of Chaucer. A good part of the volume is devoted to the modernization of pas sages from Chaucer, and to comments upon Spenser, Shakespeare, Chapman, Drayton, Ford, Marlowe, and other dramatic poets. Marvell is also a favorite, and Jeremy Tay lor is dwelt upon with a poet s enthusiasm. Of the moderns, he appears to hold Keats 76 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. and Tennyson in highest esteem, though the strength and naturalness of Wordsworth are admitted. We make room for a few sen tences : " You may claim for Pope the merit of an envi ous eye, which could turn the least scratch upon the character of a friend into a fester, of a nimble and adroit fancy, and of an ear so nig gardly that it could afford but one invariable caesura to his verse ; but when you call him poet, you insult the buried majesty of all earth s noblest and choicest spirits. Nature should lead a true poet by the hand, and he has far better things to do than to busy himself in counting the warts upon it, as Pope did." " Pope treated the English language as the image -man has served the bust of Shakespeare yonder. To rid it of some external soils he has rubbed it down till there is no muscular expres sion left." " A poet could not write the c Dunciad, nor read it." The citations are given for the opinions, not as specimens of the style. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 77 From the time of the Conversations (1845) to that of the first lectures (1855) there was a marked change, but only the change from adolescence to manhood. It was the normal development of an active, original, and poetic mind. Even the matter of the lectures un derwent a change before being presented to the public, fifteen years later. Only a small part of the critical labors has been printed, but the most important subjects have been elaborated into the stately essays which form the last three volumes of prose. FIRESIDE TRAVELS. The volume of " Fireside Travels," con taining the sketch of old Cambridge already mentioned, was published in 1864. The ar ticles were written when Lowell was thirty- four, a mature young man, chastened and thoughtful, but still joyously young. It was the period when fresh feeling was in the ascendant, and when the poet had no in- 78 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. clination to exchange the creative pencil for the scalpel of the critic. There is a tide in the soul of man, and it comes neither too early nor too late in life, a time when the poet or artist is at his best, hand and brain and heart at one. The youth con ceives, but often fails adequately to embody the creation. The veteran would gladly ful fil his soul s behest, but the feeling has gone with the visions of his morning. The en thusiasm and creative power belong to young blood. What the ardent youth achieves may lack the maturer graces, but it will be in his springtime, if ever, that he will put his ideas of beauty into enduring forms. " Fireside Travels," among prose works, is the product of Lowell s best days. It is ex uberant, but not in the least crude. In fact, the art is quite as remarkable as the fertility. Pages appear like the soil of hot-house beds, with thoughts, serious, jocose, learned, allu sive, sprouting everywhere. It does not matter where the reader opens, for every A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 79 sentence has some salient or recondite charm. The Italian journals, the life in the Maine woods, and the reminiscences of Cambridge are equally fascinating. As mere studies of a highly ornamented style they are perfect. It is true that in graver essays Lowell has displayed more profundity, more learning, and more grand figures; but those who know the earlier volume well will surely turn to it oftener. The sketches of President Kirkland, Professors Popkin and Sales, and of Allston the painter, and others, all too brief, are not only delightful in style, but are full of warm and generous feeling that knits author and reader henceforth in an indissoluble bond. One often wonders, after reading of the Cambridge dons for the twen tieth time, where there is to be found another essay like it. In Thackeray s essays there are points of resemblance. The " Rounda bout Papers," " The Four Georges," and the " English Humorists," though totally differ ent in matter and in style, give a similar 80 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. inward satisfaction. A comfortable feeling remains long after the verbal felicities have been enjoyed and passed out of remem brance. HIS SECOND MARRIAGE. THE "ATLANTIC." Two important events in his life occurred in 1857. Mr. Lowell was married in Septem ber to Miss Frances Dunlap, of Portland, Maine, who had had charge of the education of his only daughter during his residence abroad. For a time he resided in Oxford Street, Cambridge, with Dr. Estes Howe, who had married a sister of Maria White Lowell ; but not long after he returned to Elmwood. In November, " The Atlantic Monthly" was started under the auspices of the chief authors of New England, with Mr. Lowell as editor-in-chief. One purpose of the maga zine was to give the active support of letters to the anti-slavery cause, and in this respect its position was decided. Before this there THE MILL-WHEEL. Sec page 62. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 81 was no popular magazine with positive opin ions. The editor s contributions were both in prose and verse, and were conspicuous for their force, and often for their pungent wit. At the beginning, the political articles were written by an eminent author of New York, but after a time the department was managed by the editor alone. In less than two years from the time the " Atlantic" was started, both the senior mem bers of the publishing, house, Messrs. Phillips, Sampson, & Co., died^ and the magazine passed into the hands of Messrs. Ticknor & Fields. Mr. Lowell continued as editor until 1862. when he was succeeded by Mr. Fields. In the first three volumes there are a few notable articles from Lowell, including two of a political character, entitled "A Pocket Celebration of the Fourth," and " A Sample of Consistency." Among the poems may be mentioned "The Dead House," one that no reader ever forgets. It appears to have haunted the memory of some poets also. 82 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. " The Origin of Didactic Poetry," in the first number, is an amusing fable, in the poet s happiest vein. Several fine poems appeared in the first volume, among them " The Nest," which does not appear in the "complete" collection. As Lowell was never given to the pro duction of merely fanciful verses, the very lightest of his thistledowns having some seed in them, and as his mind always moved to the tides in the ocean of human thought and feeling, it will not appear strange that the great events following the election of Presi dent Lincoln gave a new direction to his ac tive faculties. In feeling, as before observed, he is primarily a poet; but he is also, like Milton, a thinker, with a fund of uncommon practical sense, and as much of a man of action as any retired scholar can be. The topsails may fill or flutter in celestial airs while the hull struggles in the heaving sea. In earlier days there were dreams of the peaceful solution of all controversies ; swords A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 83 were to be beaten into ploughshares ; kings and nobles were to be submerged in the ris ing tide of humanity. " Round the earth s electric circle" went the flash of sympathy. The young Victor Hugos of Heidelberg and Jena, Paris and Bologna, Berlin and London, were in accord. Conservatism was fright ened : the millennium was coming ; the doc trines of American democracy were to have a generous, practical illustration in the gov ernments of enlightened nations. Literature was animated by a high philanthropic spirit. The poetry of the new school was as pure as the Gospels, and as uncompromising as the early church. Brook Farm, with its aesthetic communism, had been one of the signs of the times, a precursor, it was hoped, of Arca dian days to come. Plainness in dress pre vailed, even among the rich and delicately bred. Lowell s youthful portrait, by Page, represents him in a coarse brown coat, with his broad shirt-collar turned down, and with long hair, parted at the centre of the forehead, 84 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. and hanging in careless grace upon ruddy and wind-tanned cheeks. The poetry of the picture is in the calm and dreamy eyes, look ing out of a shadow of bronze mist. But the time of boundless hope for human ity went by, and after the reaction the con servatives were stronger than ever before. In this country the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill was the answer to the efforts of the abolitionists. When the contest between North and South was settled, as far as bal lots could do it, by the election of Lincoln, the struggle was immediately transferred to the field, and for four years the power and endurance of the two sections were tried to the uttermost. The rebellion surprised most people, but wise observers had long seen its approaching shadow. A Massachusetts gov ernor procured military overcoats months before the rattle of drums was heard. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 85 HOSEA BIGLOW AGAIN. The " Atlantic " had a number of vigorous political articles in prose, and, a few months after the outbreak, Lowell again set up the simple Biglow stage with the old dramatis persona to ridicule secession. The first at tempt was an epistle in rhyme from the veteran Birdofredum Sawin to Hosea. The hero of the Mexican war had become a Southerner, had been tarred and feath ered (perhaps by way of acclimatization), had been in the State s Prison on a ground less charge, and on his release had married a widow, the owner of slaves. He had therefore reached an eminence from which he could look down on the " mudsills" of his native State. " Nough said, thet, arter lookin roun , I liked the place so wal, Where niggers doos a double good, with us atop to stiddy ern, By bein proofs o prophecy an suckleatin medium, Where a man s sunthin coz he s white, an whiskey s cheap ez fleas, An the financial pollercy jes sooted my idees, 86 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Thet I friz down right where I wuz, merried the Wiclder Shennon, (Her thirds wuz part in cotton-land, part in the curse o Canaan,) An here I be ez lively ez a chipmunk on a wall, With nothin to feel riled about much later 11 Eddam s fall." The correspondent desires that Hosea should break the news of his Southern mar- riage to the wife he had left behind. " I want thet you should grad lly break my merriage to Jerushy, An there s a heap of argynmnts thet s emple to indooce ye \ Fust place, State s Prison, - wal, it s true it warn t for crime, o course, But then it s jest the same fer her in gittin a disvorce ; Nex place, my State s secedin out hez leg lly lef me free To merry any one I please, pervidin it s a she ; Fin lly, I never wun t corne back ; she need n t hev no fear on t, But then it s wal to fix things right, fer fear Miss S. should hear on t ; Lastly, I ve gut religion South, an Eushy she s a pagan Thet sets by th graven imiges o the gret Nothun Dagon ; An ef J. wants a stronger pint than them thet I hev stated, Wy, she s an aliun in my now, an I ve been cornfiscated." The light and mocking tone of this epistle is in strong contrast with the deep and A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 87 almost passionate feeling that breathes in the later poems of the series. In the sum mer and autumn of 1861 people thought the campaign was to be something like a picnic excursion. JONATHAN TO JOHN. The capture of the rebel commissioners, Mason and Slidell, by Commodore Wilkes, a resolute and truly British proceeding, though in violation of the law of nations, will forever endear his name to the American people. None but lawyers will consider the persons of those emissaries more sacred than spies or munitions of war. Still we must approve the cautious policy, or the magna nimity of Lincoln, whichever it was, that decided upon returning the two white ele phants. The surrender, however, was a great trial to pride, particularly in the East ern States, where the memory of England s arrogant assumption of sovereignty on the seas was still rankling. Lowell has, prob- 88 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. ably, better than any one, expressed this mingled feeling in his famous " Yankee Idyll." The preface by the Rev. Mr. Wil bur shows that gentleman at his best. It is worth all the starched formality of the State papers on the subject ; for it puts the case to the British ministry in a way that leaves its unfriendliness, in recognizing the rebels as belligerents and in fitting out priva teers, without even the rags of hypocrisy to cover it. In this unaccredited despatch Earl Russell might read the sentiments of the indignant Northern people. The style of the preface is curiously apt. The Latin quotations are numerous, as usual, and the pungent phrases have an unstudied air, as if pugnacity were as natural as breathing. But under the equable flow of discourse one feels there is a patriotic fire that burns un- quenchably. International law has gained by the con troversy. The English ministers were right and the Commodore was wrong ; but Wilkes A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 89 is a hero forevermore, and Earl Eussell and his associates are accomplices in a national crime. In the stern Idyl that follows, the talk between .Concord Bridge and Bunker Hill Monument sounds like the click between flint and steel. Concord expresses the natu ral wrath of the nation ; Bunker Hill its calm reason and wise policy. The Bridge calls up old grievances : " I recollect how sailors rights was won, Yard locked in yard, hot gun-lip kissin gun. Better thet all our ships an all their crews Should sink to rot in ocean s dreamless ooze. Than seek sech peace ez only cowards crave : Give me the peace of dead men or of brave ! " Hosea, we see, grows oratorical, but the heart forgives the swelling tone when such a feeling inspires it. The Bridge keeps a little ahead in the dis cussion, as anger generally outruns prudence ; and there follows a terrible arraignment of 90 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. the English before the tribunal of the nations. Those who lived as mature men and women in those times well remember the thrilling apostrophe with which the poem concludes. The dialect is unchanged, but it flows with resistless energy. The poet has transmuted each rustic phrase into a fiery symbol, and the images loom up, majestic as the home spun heroes he celebrates. " O strange New World, thet yit wast never young, Whose youth from thee by gripin need was wrung, Brown foundlin o the woods, whose baby-bed Was prowled roun by the Injun s cracklin tread, An who grew st strong thru shifts an wants an pains, Nussed by stern men with empires in their brains, Thou, skilled by Freedom an by gret events To pitch new States ez Old- World men pitch tents, Thou, taught by Fate to know Jehovah s plan Thet man s devices can t unmake a man, An whose free latch-string never was drawed in Against the poorest child of Adam s kin, The grave s not dug where traitor hands shall lay In fearful haste thy murdered corse away ! " Then came the impressive ballad, in which all the force of the preceding argument was fused into a passionate deprecation. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 91 " It don t seem hardly right, John, "When both my hands was full, To stump me to a fight, John, Your cousin, tu, John Bull ! Ole Uncle S. sez he, * I guess We know it now, sez he, The lion s paw is all the law, Accordin to J. B., Thet s fit for you an me ! " Shall it be love, or hate, John ? It s you thet s to decide ; Ain t your bonds held by Fate, John, Like all the world s beside ? Ole Uncle S. sez he, I guess Wise men forgive, sez he, But not forget ; an some time yet Thet truth may strike J. B., Ez wal ez you an me. " FAME. The satires of Hosea Biglow had been appreciated by anti-slavery men and by judges of poetic art, a very select com pany in any age, but the ballad " Jona than to John," appealing to a natural patriotic pride, became immediately popular. Party 92 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. dissensions were stilled during the awful struggle for national existence, and though England was knit to us by ties of kindred and by a community of letters and laws, there was no one to defend her course in any Northern State. The statement of our country s case against the " mistress of the seas " was received with universal applause. The author who had patiently waited for recognition could now be satisfied, if fame had been his desire. Many literary reputa tions have been built up with as much fore thought and tact as go to the making of fortunes. Lowell would not be human if he did not relish a good word better than an ill one ; but he never asked for the one or deprecated the other. His fame came as slowly as if it had been extorted from an unwilling public, as if it had been weighed out to him, ounce by ounce, from an inex orable balance. When unjustly criticised, if a friend proposed to take the field, he would say, " Don t bother yourself with any A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 93 sympathy for me under my supposed suffer ings from critics. I don t need it in the least. If a man does anything good, the world always finds it out, sooner or later; and if he does n t, why the world finds that out, too, and ought." There is a similar consolation in a couplet from the " Fable for Critics : " " All the critics on earth cannot crush with their ban One word that s in tune with the nature of man." INSIDE VIEW OF SECESSION. Mr. Sawin was next heard from in a letter to Hosea, detailing his " conversion," des canting upon the superior strain of South ern blood, and anticipating the creation of a batch of nobles as soon as Secession should be established. His new wife, he says, was a Higgs, the " first fem ly" in that region, " On her Ma s side all Juggernot, on Pa s all Cavileer." After some ridicule of "Normal" blood and 94 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Huguenot descent, we have an inside view of Secession, salt selling by the ounce, whiskey getting "skurce," and sugar not to be had. Meantime the corner-stone of the new State is a powder-cask, and Jeff. Davis is " cairn the Constitooshun roun in his hat." The ironical compliments of Mr. Sawin to the national Congress conclude the letter. A burlesque message of Davis to the Con federate Congress and a speech of a South ern sympathizer in a secret (Northern) caucus followed, and then came one of the most justly celebrated of the series, entitled, " Sunthin in the Pastoral Line." One other, soon to be mentioned, rises to a higher key ; but this Pastoral is the perfection of descrip tive poetry. It is wonderful to see how the dialect is moulded by the thought. When the sights and sounds and odors of spring come to mind, the crabbed speech becomes poetical, as a plain face glows into beauty on the sudden impulse of the heart. There have been many serious and comic descrip- A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 95 tions of the waywardness and coquetry of a New England spring, but this may serve as a resume, like a cyclopaedia. Every line suggests a picture, neither stately nor jocose, but like nature itself. There are ancient musical " modes" that are neither major nor minor, in which the movement from grave to joyous chords is made without modulation and without shock. So in this unique Pastoral we pause over the loveliest images and hints of tantalizing like ness ; and, while the pleasure still lingers, we find that Hosea has gone on, whittling away at some problem, and using his mother-wit with unconscious and aphoristic art. To give in stances would be to quote the poem. Sooner quote any one of the thousand clumps of rosy mist from Mr. Sargent s acre of azaleas. HOSEA BECOMES PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC. After a while, Hosea, declaring himself "unsoshle as a stone," because his "innard vane" has been "pintin east" for weeks 96 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. together, starts off to lose himself in the pine woods. He comes to a small deserted "school usV a favorite resort when in a bluish revery, and, sitting down, he falls asleep. Here comes a passage that must be quoted : " Our lives in sleep are some like streams thet glide Twixt flesh an sperrit boundin on each side, Where both shores shadders kind o mix and mingle In sunthin thet ain t jes like either single; An when you cast off moorin s from To-day, An down towards To-morrer drift away, The imiges thet tengle on the stream Make a new upside-down ard world o dream." A Pilgrim Father appears. " He wore a steeple-hat, tall boots, an spurs With rowels to em big ez ches nut burrs." This was Hosea s remote ancestor, once a colonel in the parliamentary army. He makes himself known, and tells his descend ant that he had " worked round at sperrit-rappin some, An danced the tables till their legs wuz gone, In hopes o larnin wut wuz goin on. But me] urns lie so like all-split Thet I concluded it wuz best to quit." A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 97 In his youth, he tells Hosea, he had youth s pride of opinion : " Nothin from Adam s fall to Huldy s bonnet, Thet I warn t full-cocked with my jedgment on it." He makes a parallel between the cause of the loyal North and that of the Commonwealth against King Charles, and exclaims : " Slav ry s your Charles, the Lord hez gin the exe * Our Charles/ sez I, * hez gut eight million necks. " He likens the rebellion to the rattle of the snake, and adds : " It s Slavery thet s the fangs an thinkin head, An , ef you want selvation, cresh it dead ! " PAESON WILBUR. In the preface to the next poem the death of the Rev. Mr. Wilbur is announced, and, shadow though he be, the reader feels his loss like that of a friend. The thought of grief for the death of an imaginary person is not qiiite so absurd as it might appear. One day, while the great 98 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. novel of "The Newcomes" was in course of publication, Lowell, who was then in Lon don, met Thackeray on the street. The novelist was serious in manner, and his looks and voice told of weariness and affliction. He saw the kindly inquiry in the poet s eyes, and said, "Come in to Evans s, and I ll tell you all about it. I have killed the Colonel" So they walked in and took a table in a remote corner, and then Thackeray, draw ing the fresh sheets of manuscript from his breast pocket, read through that exquisitely touching chapter which records the death of Colonel Newcome. When he came to the final Adsum, the tears which had been swell ing his lids for some time trickled down upon his face, and the last word was almost an inarticulate sob. Let us go on with Mr. Wilbur. In the letter which gives the news of his death, the writer declares that the good clergyman s life was shortened by our unhappy civil war. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 99 The train of thought which follows proba bly represents the state of the poet s own mind. Mr. Wilbur, in an unfinished letter, left behind, says: "It has been my habit, as you know, on every recurrence of this blessed anniversary (Christmas), to read Mil ton s Hymn of the Nativity, till its sublime harmonies so dilated my soul and quickened its spiritual sense, that I seemed to hear that oilier song which gave assurance to the shep herds that there was One who would lead them also in green pastures and beside the still waters. But to-day I have been unable to think of anything but that mournful text, 1 1 came not to bring peace, but a sword. " The poem sent with the good parson s last letter is a vigorous appeal for ending the warj a protest against vacillation and half- heartedness. The prelude shows the heart s desire : "Ef la song or two could make Like rockets druv by their own burnin , All leap an light, to leave a wake Men s hearts an faces skyward turnin !" 100 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. The key-note of the poem is in the last coup let of the first stanza : " Wut s wanted now s the silent rhyme Twixt upright Will an downright Action." Truly the struggle had been long and agonizing. YANKEE HUMOR AND PATHOS. If the test of poetry be in its power over hearts, the tenth in this series must be placed in the highest rank. The beginning is quaint, simple, and even humorous, but with a sub dued tone; there is no intimation of the coming pathos ; nor are we conscious of the slow steps by which we are led, stanza by stanza, to the heights where thought and feeling become one. Admirers of the great actor, William War ren, who is called a comedian, but who is possessed of the rarest pathetic power, have often been indignant when rural auditors, imagining that everything uttered by the A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 101 favorite must be funny, giggle and clap at the marvellous accents and action which move all thinking people to sudden tears. It is with some kindred apprehension that the present writer ventures to quote a stanza in the native dialect ; though full of delicate feeling, expressed with the inimitable art of a great poet, the unlettered style suggests only what is ridiculous " to the general," who can see nothing touching in the senti ment of a rustic, and are not softened by tears unless shed into a broidered handker chief. " Sence I begun to scribble rhyme, I tell ye wut, I hain t ben foolin ; The parson s books, life, death, an time Hev took some trouble with my schoolin ; Nor th airth don t git put out with me, Thet love her z though she wuz a woman; Why, th* ain t a bird upon the tree But half forgives my beiri human" The poet goes on recalling " Sights innercent ez babes on knee, Peaceful ez eyes o pastur d cattle ; " 102 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. The "yaller pines," "When sunshine makes em all sweet-scented, An hear among their furry boughs The baskin west-wind purr contented " Then " The farm-smokes, sweetes sight on airth, Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin Seem kin o sad, an roun the hearth Of empty places set me thinkin ." This brings to mind the poet s slain nephews " Why, hain t I held em on my knee ? Did n t I love to see em growin , Three likely lads ez wal could be, Hahnsome an brave an not tu knowin ? " " Wut s words to them whose faith an truth On War s red techstone rang true metal, Who ventered life an love an youth For the gret prize o death in battle ? To him who, deadly hurt, agen Flashed on afore the charge s thunder, Tippin with fire the bolt of men Thet rived the Rebel line asunder? " In this last stanza the direct, weighty words, the intensity of feeling, and the force of the bold images create a sensation that A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 103 is nothing less than sublime. It refers, as readers perhaps know, to the poet s nephew, General Charles Russell Lowell, at the battle of Winchester, who, thougii he had received a wound which he knew to be mortal, mounted his horse, and led his troops in a brilliant charge, was again mortally wounded, and shortly after expired. Here the sorrowing Hosea exclaims : " T ain t right to hev the young go fust, All throbbin full o gifts an graces." But the lines are palpitant like naked nerves, and every word is like the branch plucked by Dante, which trickled blood. We must leave the poem with its aching burden, and forbear to copy even its noble conclusion. HOSEA AS AN ORATOR. The last of the " Biglow Papers" is a speech of Hosea in the March town meeting. The preface is by the Meliboeus-Hipponax himself, and is a delightful ragout of Yankee 104 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. phrases, peppered with pungent wit. His summary or "argymunt" of a popular speech has been often copied, and has done service in many comic readings; but its irresistible drollery keeps it fresh. Those who know the real sources of cur rent proverbial slang, and of much of the wit of Yankeeland, need not be told that the " Biglow Papers" have furnished enough for the stock in trade of a dozen professional humorists. " THE ARGYMUNT. " Interducshin, w ich may be skipt. Begins by talkin about himself : thet s jest natur an most gin ally allus pleasin , I b leeve I ve notist, to one of the cumpany, an thet s more than wut you can say of most speshes of talkin . Nex comes the gittin the goodwill of the orjunce by lettin em gether from wut you kind of ex dentally let drop thet they air about East, A one, an no mistaik, skare em up an take em as they rise. Spring interdooced with a flew approput flours. Speach finally begins witch nobuddy need n t feel oboly- gated to read as I never read em an never shell A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 105 this one ag in. Subjick stalled ; expanded ; de- layted; extended. Pump lively. Subjick staited ag in so s to avide all mistaiks. Ginnle remarks ; continooed ; kerried on ; pushed furder ; kind o gin out. Subjick re-staited ; dielooted ; stirred up permiscoous. Pump ag in. Gits back to where he sot out. Can t seem to stay thair. Ketches into Mr. Seaward s hair. Breaks loose ag in an staits his subjick ; stretches it ; turns it ; folds it ; onfolds it ; folds it ag in so s t no one can t find it. Argoos with an imedginary bean thet ain t aloud to say nothin in repleye. Gives him a real good dressin an is settysfide he s rite. Gits into John son s hair. No use tryin to git into his head. Gives it up. Hez to stait his subjick ag in ; doos it back ards, sideways, eendways, criss-cross, bevel- lin , noways. Gits finally red on it. Concloods. Concloods more. Reads some xtrax. Sees his sub jick a-nosin round arter him ag in. Tries to avide it. Wun t du. Misstates it. Can t conjectur no other plawsable way of staytin on it. Tries pump. No fx. Finely concloods to conclood. Yeels the flore." In the course of the speech that follows, Mr. Biglow observes : 106 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. " N. B. Reporters gin lly git a hint To make dull orjunces seem live in print, An , ez I hev t report myself, I vum, I 11 put th applauses where they d ough* to come!" Little did the orator of Jaalam suppose that his shrewd plan would be copied years afterwards by a great lecturer. RECONSTRUCTION. The speech is supposed to have been made in April, 1866, a year after the surrender of Lee; and the "subjick" is naturally upon what has since been called " reconstruction." In the light of the history of the last dozen years, the sound sense and almost prophetic character of this speech are remarkable. It is free from bitterness, but it states with un flinching rigor the only conditions of national unity. Of these the chief is " the old Amerikin idee, To make a man a Man an let him be." The President, Andrew Johnson, comes in for the hardest hits. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 107 " Nobody ain t a Union man, sez he, Thout he agrees, thru thick an thin, with me ;" " Is this ere pop lar gov ment thet we run A kin o sulky, made to kerry one ? " "Who cares for the Resolves of 61, Thet tried to coax an airthquake with a bun?" " He thinks secession never took em out, An mebby he s correc , but I misdoubt ; Ef they war n t out, then why, n the name o sin, Make all this row bout lettin of em in ? " [Derisive cheers.] " 0, did it seem z ef Providunce Could ever send a second Tyler ? To see the South all back to once, Reapin the spiles o the Freesiler, Is cute ez though an ingineer Should claim th old iron for his sheer Coz t was himself that bust the biler! " [Gret laughter.] THE DECAY OF THE YANKEE DIALECT. From this comparatively long, but really brief and inadequate, synopsis the reader may infer the high aim and definite moral 108 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. purpose of the "Big-low Papers," and their intimate connection with our national his tory. Poetry seldom needs comment ; the lightning flash explains itself ; and, in truth, comment rarely carries admiration along with it into the mind of the reader. But the " Big- low Papers " are in a foreign tongue for all city folk ; and even in the country the patois has for a long time been faithfully grubbed up by school-ma ams, like the Canada thistle. An appreciation of Burns comes after as much study as the Provengal songs require, and it is only one " native and to the manner born " who is able to perceive and to convey by vocal inflections the right effect of the eli sions and contractions that make such thorny thickets of Yankee verse. On the other hand, few of those who have inherited knowledge of the dialect have the cultivation and the innate feeling for the essence of poetry, which many of Lowell s productions ask of the reader. Between the difficulties of the dialect, and the high demands of all true A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 109 poetry upon the intelligence, the highest qualities of the " Biglow Papers" are far enough removed from popular apprehension. But whoever will give them such a study as will insure mastery, will be rewarded by the knowledge of some of the most vigorous, impassioned, humorous, dainty, quaint, and glowing verse of our century. As, at the beginning, Lowell was men tioned as one of the forces and products of the age, an actor and sympathizer in its moral and political movements, it has been deemed essential to dwell more upon the works which have become a part of our his tory. The usual topics of poetry nature and man have been illustrated in many graceful and noble poems by many loved and honored poets : by Lowell also ; but in the ordinary acceptation of the meaning and use of poetry he is but one of several emi nent masters, each having his own great merits ; while in this new field he is wholly without a rival, the sole laureate of the 110 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. native, unlettered speech, and the exemplar of the mother-wit of New England. The few characters in his dramas are comple mentary, or perhaps, as he himself sug gests, " humorously identical under a seem ing incongruity." The Rev. Mr. Wilbur expresses " the more cautious element of the New England character and its pedantry," as Hosea Biglow does "its homely common- sense vivified and heated by conscience. . . . Finding that I needed some one as a mouth piece of the mere drollery, ... I invented Mr. Sawin for the clown of my little puppet show." The introduction to the series is a learned and masterly account of the dialect, as a legitimate derivative of the spoken English of the Elizabethan age, and a protest against the prevalent "fine writing," as tend ing to weaken prose and stifle poetry. He defends certain extravagances in speech (la mented by purists) as being evidences of " intensity and picturesqueness, symptoms of A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. the imaginative faculty in full health and strength." He says, " The first postulate of an original literature is that a people should use their language instinctively and uncon sciously. . . . Even Burns contrived to write very poor verse and prose in English. Vul garisms are often only poetry in the egg." The whole essay is pervaded by the in tense individuality of genius. After enduring the petulance and assumption of philologists, and the canal-water flow of conservators of the purity of English, this fresh and original discussion is as charming and exhilarating as a day in the woods in spring. CHAUCER-BOCCACCIO. "Fitz Adam s Story" was printed in the "Atlantic" for January, 1867, but has not yet been included in any " complete" edi- tion. A note informs us that it was intended as a part of a longer poem to be called " The Nooning." It stands like the wing of a pro jected edifice, waiting for the main structure to give it countenance. H2 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. This poem has many traits in common with the best of the " Biglow Papers." Like them, it is exuberant in feeling and secular in tone ; and its movement is breezy, out-of- doors, and natural, as different from the precise, conscious, and scholastic manner as the glowing energy of a sermon by Beecher is from the marmorean elegance of Everett. The poem is not wholly in a comic vein. The portrait of Fitz Adam himself is a master piece, an instantaneous view of a complexity of character and motive, genius and whim kneaded together and made real flesh and blood. In fact, the author uses the whole gamut, and has the ready chords for senti ment and poetical description as well as for the swift parlando of wit and the unrestrained chorus of fun. Fitz Adam tells us, " Without a Past you lack that southern wall O er which the vines of Poesy should crawl." He pays his homage to our great ro mancer : A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 113 " You have one story-teller worth a score Of dead Boccaccios, nay, add twenty more, A hawthorn asking spring s most southern breath, And him you re freezing pretty well to death." He takes us to Shebagog County, where the summer idlers " Dress to see Nature in a well-bred way, As t were Italian opera, or play, Encore the sunrise, (if they re out of bed,) And pat the Mighty Mother on the head." Fond of the frontiers-men and their natu ral ways, he puts them in a line : " The shy, wood- wandering brood of character." He paints the landlord- of the rustic inn. The picture seems as deep-lined and lasting as one of Chaucer s. We see the tanned cheeks and the "brambly breast," and how " a hedge of gray Upon his brawny throat leaned every way About an Adam s apple that beneath Bulged like a bowlder from a furzy heath." The landlord gives an axiom for the kitchen, for which the epicure will hold him in affec tionate remembrance : 8 114 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. " Nothin riles me (I pledge my fastin word), Like cookin out the natur of a bird." Fitz Adam describes the solemn parlor in a way to raise a sympathetic chill in the reader : " Where the black sofa with its horse-hair pall Gloomed like the bier for Comfort s funeral." The bar is painted as if by Teniers, with its great wood-fire, and the coals in which was heating " the loggerhead whose hissing dip, Timed by nice instinct, creamed the mug, of flip." Then follows the encounter of teamsters wits, and the sketch of Deacon Bitters, a mean and avaricious wretch whose tricks brought him to a sulphureous end. The audacity of the story is forgotten in its absurdly comic keep ing. It is a modern Canterbury Tale. THE PROFESSOR SUPPLANTS THE POET. Though Harvard College and its succes sive classes of students and the learned world have been indebted to the critical A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. H5 labors of Lowell, yet mankind at large have been more interested in the original creations of his genius. The effect of his engrossing and protracted studies has been to make more prominent the philosophic tone in his verse. To him who is day by day wrestling with the stern problems of Dante, or con templating the creations of Shakespeare, there may come a high and noble mastery of philosophy and art. But the period in which the poet delights in outdoor life when his soul feels God in nature, and floats in the ocean of analogies between the real and the ideal world is the period in which his best poems are born. The work of the great critic may imply the rarer power ; but mankind cherishes more the pictures of Beaver Brook and Appledore, the song of bobolinks, the joy of spring, and the loves of Huldys and Zekles. Lowell s mind un derwent a change also in the loss of his heroic nephews and other near relatives in the war. This is painfully evident in the 116 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. poem before quoted. There were to be fewer birds and blossoms thenceforth. The awful lessons of Divine Providence were such as to sadden the most joyous or the most religious of men. Under such afflic tions, particularly after life has passed its meridian, it is impossible to feel anew the ecstatic thrills in the presence of nature ; the mind grows introspective, ponders the deep questions of Job and his friends, and forgets the external world. UNDER THE WILLOWS. It will be seen that the period in which Lowell s most popular works appeared ended with the late war. They cannot be classified, however, in a chronological order, because he sometimes allowed a considerable period to pass before giving a poem to the public. The collection entitled " Under the Willows," published in 1869, contains " A Winter-Even ing Hymn to my Fire," printed originally in " Putnam s Monthly" fifteen years before. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 117 " Fitz Adam s Story," which has just been considered, belongs to a similar period, as do the gay and characteristic acknowledgment of Mr. John Bartlett s trout, and the well-known pathetic ballad, " The First Snow-Fail." In the variety of subjects, the perfect keeping of the style of each, the power of suggesting a landscape or an image by a single phrase, and in the mature and perfect art, this volume has a rightful place among the chief intel lectual works of the century. It is difficult to convey an adequate im pression of these poems, because it is seldom that the striking paragraphs are separable. The address " To the Muse " is the most subtile and delicate in treatment ; and " Villa Franca" and " The Washers of the Shroud" are the strongest in thought. Two stanzas are quoted from " Villa Franca" which show a singular prophetic power. The poem was written in 1859, at the time of the meeting of the three emperors, when Napoleon III. appeared to be as firmly established as his great and long-descended compeers. 118 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. VILLA FRANCA. "We shall see him come and gone, This second-hand Napoleon. " We saw the elder Corsican, And Clotho muttered as she span, While crowned lackeys bore the train, Of the pinchbeck Charlemagne : * Sister, stint not length of thread ! Sister, stay the scissors dread ! On Saint Helen s granite bleak, Hark, the vulture whets his beakl Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist ! and, Atropos, sever ! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever. " The Bonapartes, we know their bees That wade in honey red to the knees ; Their patent reaper, its sheaves sleep sound In dreamless garners underground : We know false glory s spendthrift race Pawning nations for feathers and lace ; It may be short, it may be long, T is reckoning-day! sneers unpaid Wrong, Spin, spin, Clotho, spin ! Lachesis, twist ! and, Atropos, sever ! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever." A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 119 One small poem is printed entire, as a rare specimen of aphoristic art. FOR AN AUTOGKAPH. Though old the thought and oft exprest, T is his at last who says it best, I ; 11 try my fortune with the rest. Life is a leaf of paper white Whereon each one of us may write His word or two, and then comes night. " Lo, time and space enough," we cry, " To write an epic ! " so we try Our nibs upon the edge, and die. Muse not which way the pen to hold, Luck hates the slow and loves the bold, Soon come the darkness and the cold. Greatly begin ! though thou have time But for a line, be that sublime, Not failure, but low aim, is crime. Ah, with what lofty hope we came ! But we forget it, dream of fame, And scrawl, as I do here, a name. 120 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. As a critic, Lowell has been more unspar ing upon his own productions than upon the works of others. Genius and Taste are twin- born ; the one creates, the other tests. Many a day Genius produces nothing that Taste will allow. Taste corrects or blots out, so as to leave nothing that Time will destroy. Happy is the Genius with whom Taste continues to dwell as a friend and helper. Too often he goes over to the enemy, and sits in judgment with the reviewers. Some of his later poems have, as in Emer son s " Test," been hung in the wind and smelted in a pot, " Till the meaning was more white Than July s meridian light. Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor Time unmake what poets know." METAPHYSICAL SUBTILTY IN POETRY. The original traits of Lowell s genius are unmistakable ; and, in spite of the gravity of his later poems, the reader often comes upon the turns of thought which marked his verse A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 121 twenty years before. But along with the continued likeness there has been a slowly growing divergence. In the development of a scholar and poet we expect to see the evi dences of maturing powers, varied experience, and mastery of expression ; that is to say, force, wisdom, and skill are the natural gains of twenty years. This is true in the case of Lowell ; but what is more remarkable is the steady lifting of his intellectual horizon, and the spiritualizing of thought, so that, as in the celestial mechanics, words become the symbols of ideas that reach towards the infinite. This is considered to be in the domain of Emerson, but Lowell is some times more transcendental even than the great poet-philosopher himself. In "The Foot-Path" the. reader begins with a view that is within his not infrequent experience : " It mounts athwart the windy hill Through sallow slopes of upland bare, And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still Its narrowing curves that end in air." 122 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. But the poet s aerial way only begins where mortal vision ends. As stanza succeeds musical stanza, the mind follows clews and glimpses, conscious of sensations for which there are no words, and of an upward motion into a realm where ideas are as fluent as air, and as impalpable. Read this exquisite but tantalizing poem to any chance-gathering of well-bred people, and observe their puzzled expression ! To some it will appear a musi cal stream, without ripple and without mean ing. Few will climb the poet s stairway to the heaven of thought ! Humboldt said that the vegetation upon the sides of Chimborazo exhibits at succes sive elevations all the characteristic flora from the equator to the arctic circle : the bound less luxuriance of the tropics at the base, and the eternal ice of the pole at the sum mit. Poetry likewise comprehends many zones. Its lower level is in scenes of lavish beauty, and it concerns itself in the joy of the senses in external nature. Higher up A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 123 there are fewer flowers and hardier growths, but "purer air and broader view." Still higher are the brown and lichened steeps that tax strength and demand self-denial. Above, and reaching into the infinite sky, is the silent peak, inaccessible, eternal. COMMEMORATION ODE. The Commemoration Ode (July 21, 1865) naturally succeeds the poignant grief of the later " Biglow Papers." The dedication is one that only a poet could have written : " To the ever sweet and shining memory of the ninety-three sons of Harvard College who have died for their country in the war of nationality." In the privately printed edi tion of the poem the names of eight of the poet s kindred are given. The nearest in blood are his nephews, General Charles Russell Lowell, killed at Winchester, Lieu tenant James Jackson Lowell, at Seven Pines, and Captain William Lowell Putnam, 124 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. at Ball s Bluff. Another relative was the he roic Colonel Robert G. Shaw, who fell in the assault upon Fort Wagner. The Commemo ration services took place in the open air, in the presence of a great assembly. Promi nent among the speakers were Major-General Meade, the hero of Gettysburg, and Major- General Devens. The wounds of the war were still fresh and bleeding, and the interest of the occasion was deep and thrilling. The summer afternoon was drawing to its close when the poet began the recital of the ode. No living audience could for the first time follow with intelligent appreciation the de livery of such a poem. To be sure, it had its obvious strong points and its sonorous charms ; but, like all the later poems of the author, it is full of condensed thought and requires study. The reader to-day finds many passages whose force and beauty es caped him during the recital, yet the effect of the poem at the time was overpowering. The face of the poet, always singularly ex- A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 125 pressive, was on this occasion almost trans figured, glowing, as if with an inward light. It was impossible to look away from it. Our age has furnished many great his toric scenes, but this Commemoration com bined the elements of grandeur and pathos, and produced an impression as lasting as life. Of the merits of the ode it is perhaps too soon to speak. In nobility of sentiment and sustained power it appears to take rank among the first in the language. To us, with the memories of the war in mind, it seems more beautiful and of a finer quality than the best of Dryden s. What the people of the coming centuries will say, who knows ? We only know that the auditors, scholars and soldiers alike, were dissolved in admiration and tears. TWO FRIENDS. As the people were dispersing, a fresh- looking, active, and graceful man of middle age, in faultless attire, met the poet with an 126 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. outstretched hand. There was a hearty greeting on both sides, so hearty, that one wonders how it could have happened be tween two Bostonians, whose marble man ners the public knows so well from our recent fashionable novels. It was not the formal touch of gloved hands, but an old- fashioned energetic " shake;" and it was accompanied by spontaneous, half-articulated words (such as the heart translates without a lexicon), while eager and misty eyes met each other. The new-comer was William W. Story, the sculptor and poet. "When did you come over?" "I landed at Bos ton this morning. I had heard you were to read a poem ; there was just time to make the trip, and here I am." " And so you have come from Rome merely to hear me recite an ode ? Well, it is just like you." THE CATHEDRAL. CONSERVATISM. "The Cathedral" is a profound medita tion upon a great theme. A poet is riot A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 127 held to the literal meaning of the motto he selects, but the lines prefixed to this poem 1 are strongly significant of a grow ing conservatism in thought. " Not at all do we set our wits against the gods. The traditions of the fathers, and those of equal date which we possess, no reasoning shall overthrow ; not even if through lofty minds it discovers wisdom." This is perhaps a fair indication of the feeling of the poem. The incidents of the day at Chartres are unimportant, except in connection with the poet s admiration for Gothic architecture, and his musings upon the associations of the cathedral, the old worship, the old reverence, and the old ways. It would seem that the intellectual move ment in which the poet had been borne on for so many years was latterly becoming too rapid and tumultuous, according to his think ing, ready to plunge into an abyss, in fact. In particular, it may be observed that, though 1 Euripides, Bacchae, 196-199. 128 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. the physical aspect of evolution had engaged his attention, as it has that of all intellectual men, and had commanded, perhaps, a startled and dubious assent, yet his strong spiritual nature recoiled in horror from the material istic application of the doctrine to the origin of things. Force could never be to him the equivalent of spirit, nor law the substitute for God. In conversation once upon the " prom- ise-and-potency " phrases of Tyndall, he ex claimed with energy, " Let whoever wishes to, believe that the idea of Hamlet or Lear was developed from a clod ; I will not." A couplet from " The Foot-Path " makes a similar protest against the theory of the uni verse which leaves out a Creator : " And envy Science not her feat To make a twice-told tale of God." Intimations of the Berkeleyan theory ap pear in " The Cathedral," not as matters of belief, but of speculation. But the granitic basis of the poem is the generally received doctrine of the being of God, of His works A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 129 and His dealings with men. The clear pur pose is seen by the attentive reader, although at times through a haze of poetic diction. Its strong points are in the simplicity and sug- gestiveness of its illustrations, its firm hold upon the past, and its tranquil repose in the care of Divine Providence. The style is for the most part scholastic, nervous, and keen- edged. There are some lovely rural pictures near the beginning, so characteristic that if they were done in color we should not need to look at the corner for the " J. R. L. pinxV The episode of the two Englishmen at Chartres, who, on account of the poet s full and ruddy beard, mistook him for a French man, and endeavored to engage him as a guide, is a piece of drollery that one would prefer to see in a sketch by Artemus Ward or Mark Twain. "My beard translated me to hostile French; So they, desiring guidance in the town, Half condescended to my baser sphere, And, clubbing in one mess their lack of phrase, Set their best man to grapple with the Gaul. 9 130 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 1 Esker vous ate a nabitang ? he asked ; I never ate one ; are they good 1 asked I ; Whereat they stared, then laughed, and we were friends." The wit is perhaps bright, but the passage is painfully incongruous. It is true the old cathedrals have carvings of grotesque comedy, but they are in stone, and are not obtrusive. This appears to be the single thought out of place in the high serenity of a philosophic poem. Two instances of the harmony of sound and sense are quite remarkable. One is the description of the falling of an ash-leaf, " Balancing softly earthward without wind," an inimitably perfect line. The other sug gests the swinging of a bell-blossom : " As to a bee the new campanula s Illuminate seclusion swung in air." A few lines and passages may be quoted with advantage : " I found mine eyes Confronted with the minster s vast repose. Silent and gray as forest-leaguered cliff Left inland by the ocean s slow retreat. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 131 (Of Gothic Architecture. ) But ah ! this other, this that never ends, Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb, As full of morals half-divined as life, Graceful, grotesque, with ever new surprise Of hazardous caprices sure to please, Heavy as nightmare, airy-light as fern, Imagination s very self in stone ! Far up the great bells wallowed in delight, Tossing their clangors o er the heedless town. Use can make sweet the peach s shady side, That only by reflection tastes of sun. ... on the sliding Eure, Whose listless leisure suits the quiet place, Lisping among his shallows homelike sounds At Concord and by Bankside heard before. Blessed the natures shored on every side With landmarks of hereditary thought ! Now Calvin and Servetus at one board Snuff in grave sympathy a milder roast, And o er their claret settle Comte unread. Fagot and stake were desperately sincere : Our cooler martyrdoms are done in types. 132 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Thou beautiful Old Time, now hid away In the Past s valley of Avilion, Haply, like Arthur, till thy wound be healed, Then to reclaim the sword and crown again ! Thrice beautiful to us ; perchance less fair To who possessed thee, as a mountain seems To dwellers round its bases but a heap Of barren obstacle that lairs the storm And the avalanche s silent bolt holds back Leashed with a hair, meanwhile some far-off clown, Hereditary delver of the plain, Sees it an unmoved vision of repose, Nest of the morning, and conjectures there The dance of streams to idle shepherds pipes, And fairer habitations softly hung On breezy slopes, or hid in valleys cool, For happier men." True to its name, " The Cathedral " is a grand poem, at once solid and imaginative, nobly ornate, but with a certain austerity of design, uplifting and impressive. These edi fices are perhaps the most wonderful produc tions of mind ; but they are gloomy also, and in some moods strike a chill to the very marrow. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 133 CONCORD, CAMBRIDGE, VIRGINIA. Three odes have since appeared, written for important occasions, all characterized by a lofty tone of sentiment and stately poetic diction. The first is one read at Concord, April 19, 1875; the next is that read at Cambridge, under the Washington Elm, July 3d in the same year; the third, an ode for the Fourth of July, 1876. The Concord ode contains the most exquisite music, and shows the most evident inspiration. The Cam bridge ode is remarkable for its noble tribute to Washington and to the historic Common wealth of Virginia. The last is beautiful also, and strong, but scarcely so clear and fortunate as the others. But these, with the Commemoration Ode, are an Alpine group, an undying part of our national literature. CLASSICISM. The poetry called classic in our time has little vitality. The poems of Matthew Ar nold, for instance, cold and correct as mort- 134 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. uary tributes, differ from pensive prose only in respect to metrical form. In this sense Lowell s poems are not classic : they are in stinct with life. They show marks of care ; but the care has been bestowed less upon melody than upon condensation and energy. The earlier poems were more melodious. In stances enough could be given, but two stan zas from "The Dandelion" must serve : " Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, Where, as the breezes pass, The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue That from the distance sparkle through Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. "My childhood s earliest thoughts are linked with thee ; The sight of thee calls back the robin s song, Who, from the dark old tree Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, And I, secure in childish piety, Listened as if I heard an angel sing With news from heaven, which he could bring Fresh every day to my untainted ears When birds and flowers and I were happy peers." A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 135 This devotion to the force and beauty of ideas is everywhere to be seen. The poet will not give up a harsh word, nor elide an unmusical huddle of consonants, if any strength would be lost thereby. A stanza from "Beaver Brook 7 will illustrate this : " Swift slips Undine along the race Unheard, and then, with flashing bound, Floods the dull wheel with light and grace, And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round." Sibilants and gutturals may delay the fas tidious reader, but when the lines are fin ished he will think only of the immortal beauty of the image. Pure poetry, like the subtile essences of the chemist, is rarely seen but in combina tion. In itself it is thought sublimed, remote from demonstration, persuasion, or narration. The influences of the strong and serviceable qualities of mind are apt to be felt at times in the verse even of great poets, - like stains of iron in marble ; so that the wholly fortunate or perfect specimens are 136 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. few. The common error is in lapsing into philosophic discourse, or indulging in reflec tive or hortatory asides. Something of this tendency appears in parts of Lowell s odes, dimming their lustre, and even tending to obscurity. There is nothing in them obscure to a well-trained mind; but unfortunately not all minds are so trained as to dissolve his thought from out the richly incrusted diction. So it remains that the stronger poems of Lowell are beyond the comprehen sion of all but cultivated readers. A wonderful sifter is Time. "Complete" works will shrink. Stanzas or even whole poems may drop out, but the best will be preserved. And it is difficult to believe that an intelligent reader, whether in the year 2000 or 3000, will come upon certain poems of Lowell without a thrill of sympathy and delight. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 137 THE PROSE OF POETS. The prose writings of poets are rarely conspicuous for masculine qualities. The Laureate has been heard only in numbers, as if, like an operatic performer, he were theo retically incapable of any but musical speech. If his predecessor had similarly refrained from prosaic utterances, he would have been the gainer, and the world too. Byron wrote natural and effective prose, but with out either trained ratiocination, scholarly al lusion, or finish. Cowper s letters are models of ease and grace. Southey s prose is mag nificent; his poetry? Really one questions whether he was a poet at all. " Thalaba " seems as unreal as a Wagnerian legend or an Ossianic wraith. Milton alone holds a fixed place among the greatest of poets and the ablest of prose writers. The prose works of Lowell consist of the " Fireside Travels," already referred to, and three volumes of essays, published in 1870, 138 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 1871, and 1876. Of these, the one entitled " My Study Windows "will be found most interesting to general readers. The other two are entitled " Among My Books," and are of a purely literary character. A large number of his essays have appeared in maga zines and reviews, and have not been as yet reprinted. It is a common but baseless supposition that the poetic faculty must exist singly ; as if the cranium, like a flower-pot, could hold but one plant. It is true that great poets are rarely men of affairs ; but every genius is an absolutely new combination of traits and powers, and no one knows the possibilities. Four arts owned Michelangelo master, and he was almost equally great in all. /We have seen that in the mind of Lowell there is an unfailing spring of analogy and suggestion, and a power of illustrating subtile and pro found thoughts. And side by side with this undeniable poetic power is to be seen the solid understanding, the ready wit, and the A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 139 practical sagacity that are more commonly the birthright of unpoetic men. It is as if the souls of Shelley and Ben Franklin had blended. The poet leads, but the man of ethereal imagination and the man of sturdy force are one. The prose of a true poet, if one reflects upon it, must have some marked peculiar ities. That which is of the essence of poetry is not in its musical cadence, not in its shin ing adjectives and epithets: it is in substance as well as in form different from the ordinary productions of mind. And as the power of appreciation is really rare, though often as sumed, the distinctive prose of a poet is necessarily quite removed from general ap prehension. The difficulty lies in following the movement of the poetic mind, which is by nature erratic, if measured by prose stand ards, taking many things for granted which the slower-footed expect to see put down in order, and often supplying the omission of a premiss in a logical statement, or the want 140 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. of a formal description, by a single flashing word. Those people who need to have poe try expounded to them, will require similar help to understand the prose of poets. " Villa Franca," "The Foot-Path," " The Washers of the Shroud," and " The Cathedral " will never be easy of comprehension ; such poems make drafts upon the knowledge and the insight of even superior minds. Certain of Lowell s essays especially those upon Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton will be fully appreciated by only a limited num ber of readers in any generation. LOWELL S PEOSE. It is not wonderful that this rich and im aginative prose, permeated as it is with the essence of poetry, should have called fortli unfavorable comment and objurgation. Pro fessor Wilkinson, some years ago, wrote a series of labored articles in a popular mag azine, which it was expected were to demol ish our poet s reputation as an essayist. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 141 Perhaps some characteristic sentences will better illustrate our meaning as to the diver gence between the poetic and the prosaic mind. Of Wordsworth, Lowell says : " His longer poems are Egytian sand wastes, with here and there an oasis of exquisite greenery, a grand image, Sphynx-like, half buried in drifting commonplaces, or the Pompey s Pillar of some towering thought." How absurd this is ! What has Words worth to do with Egypt and the Sphynx and Pompey s Pillar ? though, to be sure, one sees what he would say. If it had been the critical professor who had to give the opinion, it might have been phrased like this : " His longer poems are flat and dreary, with here and there a spot of human interest, some originally fine image, half covered with mean ingless words, or some striking thought that holds the attention." This is plain sailing : no nonsense about it. The idea is the same, and everybody can 142 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. understand it. In a similar perspicuous man ner the " practical" critic might tell us of Milton s style : " Milton has a grand manner. The sentences move slowly and with stateli- ness. He borrowed phrases from poets and writers of all times ; and these epithets are continually coming in the way, obscuring the clear thought." This is the way Lowell has it : " Milton s manner is very grand. It is slow, it is stately, moving as in triumphal procession, with music, with historic banners, with spoils from every time and every region ; and captive epithets like huge Sicambrians, 1 thrust their broad shoulders between us and the pomp they decorate." Of course this is all wrong. Burke, also, ought to undergo revision. If a practical person were to undertake it, it is probable that the twelve volumes of Burke could be compressed into three or four, simply leaving 1 " Te caede gaudentis Sicambri Compositis venerantur armis." Hor. Lib. IV. Carm. XIV. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 143 out useless images, and the like. The staple of "Modern Painters" could be printed in one duodecimo. Following the same plan, each of Hawthorne s romances could be got into the limits of a magazine story ; and, by eliminating the fine writing and metaphysics, they would be as easily understood as Peter Parley or the Rollo Books. The prose essays of Lowell l cover a wide range of thought and observation, but all have the inevitable family likeness. Men tion has been made of the delightful " Fire side Travels." Of a similar tone are "My Garden Acquaintance," " A Good Word for Winter," and "On a Certain Condescen sion in Foreigners." The last is a speci men of pure irony, keen as a Damascus blade, and finished to the utmost. It is doubtful if there is another essay in modern English superior in power, wit, and adroit ness. The essay upon Lessing is a charming 1 " Among My Books," 2 vols. ; " My Study Windows," 1vol. 144 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. piece of writing, full of bright passages, but interesting mainly to scholars. " New Eng land Two Centuries Ago " is an historical article, in which the Puritans and Pilgrims are boldly sketched, neither unduly flat tered nor summarily condemned. GOLD IN QUARTZ. A few additional specimens of poetical imagery are quoted : " The commentary on Shakespeare by Gervinus reminds one of the Roman Campagna, penetrated underground in all directions by strange winding caverns, the work of human borers in search of we know not what. Above are the divine poet s larks and daisies, his incommunicable skies, his broad prospects of life and nature ; and meanwhile our Teutonic teredo worms his way below, and offers to be our guide into an obscurity of his own creating." " The German Language has such a fatal genius for going stern-foremost, for yawing, and for not minding the helm without some ten minutes notice in advance, that he must be a great sailor indeed A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 145 who can safely make it the vehicle for anything but imperishable commodities." " Wordsworth wrote too much to write always well ; for it is not a great Xerxes-army of words, but a compact Greek ten thousand that march safely down to posterity." " The best of Schiller s lyrical poems find no match in modern verse for rapid energy, the very axles of language kindling with swiftness." " Chaucer s best tales run on like one of our inland rivers, sometimes hastening a little and turning upon themselves in eddies that dimple without retarding the current ; sometimes loitering smoothly, while here and there a quiet thought, a tender feeling, a pleasant image, a golden-hearted verse, opens quietly as a water-lily, to float on the surface without breaking it into ripple." As some stress has been laid upon the poetical ornaments of the style, or rather, it might be said, upon the diffusion of golden grains of poetry through the quartz of prose, it should be again stated more emphatically that the literary essays are chiefly valuable 10 146 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. !/ for their clear thought and their varied and splendid learning. Let any student read the essay on Chaucer, and then consider where he can find its parallel! It is not merely a specimen of magnificent writing: it is a compact and lucid account of the origin and growth of English poetry, with a series of brilliant characterizations ; and it is such an account as no historian or critic has made. The antiquarian scholars have the literal facts at command ; but no one possessed of the necessary erudition has had at the same time the power of raising literary annals into aesthetic history. Taine s treatment of the same period is characteristically pretentious, sentimental, and shallow. We can see evidences of the same thorough preparation in the other essays. Lowell has never trusted to " style" to carry him through: not Dryasdust himself could have had the details of the subject more at com mand. So it may be asserted, in general, that each essay contains the latest thought as A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 147 well as the most complete information. All of them are redolent of learning, and all have an incommunicable flavor. The treatment of Dry den is able and masterly; albeit his numerous apostasies are too leniently dealt with. Spenser is the subject of an essay scarcely inferior to that upon Chaucer, and equally indispensable to students of English literature. Dante seems to be a literature in himself, and none but devoted students have the right to judge him, or the essays upon him. It may be observed that most who have studied Dante profoundly have become in the end conservatives in religion, if not Cath olics. The circle of his admirers is neces sarily small. Lowell s essay is evidently a tribute of affection ; and as the esti mate of a poet, it is worthy of respectful study. It exhibits the results of protracted thought upon the highest themes which have occupied the mind of man. But of all the series, the one entitled 148 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. " Shakespeare Once More " is doubtless the best. There will always be some new light radiating from the works of the greatest of poets, and each succeeding generation will be satisfied only with its own estimate ; but the most comprehensive estimate of Shakes peare to-day is Lowell s. The essays of Lowell, it must be admitted, have not the elements of general popularity. Criticism in its highest form is not attractive except to thinkers. The few essays that are widely read like Macaulay s and Carlyle s are studies of historical characters, or of great epochs, with graphic personal descrip tions and parallels, treated in a highly- wrought style of rhetoric. In fact, the ordinary critical essays, unless there is a personal flavor in them, such as we perceive in Montaigne and in the " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," are as short-lived as the reign of a London beauty. The changes in literary fashion soon make the critic obsolete. Except as curiosities, who cares now for the A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 149 opinions of Lockhart, Jeffrey, Mackintosh, Gifford, and the rest ? The tables are turned. Byron, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, and Words worth now " compute " their reviewers. In general, it may be said that the quality which prevents the general appreciation of Lowell s prose is its exceeding richness. It is like cloth of gold, too splendid and too cum brous for every-day wear. It is upon his poems that the sure foun dation of Lowell s fame will rest. Some of them are the clear and fortunate expression of the noblest modern thought, and others are imbedded in the history of an eventful time. When the relative perspective of his tory is adjusted, Lincoln s proclamation of freedom to the slave will tower in importance. The elders are perhaps weary of the topic, but the vindication of the anti-slavery agi tators and poets may be safely left to Time. 150 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. PERSONAL TRAITS AND ANECDOTES. In person Lowell is of medium height, rather slender, but sinewy and active. His movements are deliberate rather than impul sive, indicating what athletes call staying qualities. His hair at maturity was dark auburn or ruddy chestnut in color, and his full beard rather lighter and more glowing in tint. The eyes of men of genius are seldom to be classified in ordinary terms, though it is said their prevailing color is gray. Colonel Higginson mentions Hawthorne s gray eyes ; while the present writer, who once studied them attentively, found them mottled gray and brown, and at that time indescribably soft and winning. That they were some times accipitral we can readily believe. Lowell s eyes in repose have clear blue and gray tones, with minute dark mottlings. In expression they are strongly indicative of his moods. When fixed upon study, or while listening to serious discourse, they are grave A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 151 and penetrating; in ordinary conversation they are bright and cheery ; in moments of excitement they have a wonderful lustre. Nothing could be finer than his facial expres sion while telling a story or tossing a repartee. The features are alive with intelligence ; and eyes, looks, and voice appear to be working up dazzling effects in concert, like the finished artists of the Comedie Frangaise. The wit of Hosea Biglow is the native wit of Lowell, instantaneous as lightning ; and Hosea s common sense is Lowell s birthright, too. When the same man, moreover, can extemporize chuckling puns, or blow out a breath of poetical reverie as naturally as the smoke from his pipe, the combination be comes almost marvellous. Other men may have been as witty, though we recall but three or four in our day ; some may have had a similar fund of wisdom mellowed with humor ; others have talked the staple of idyls, and let off metaphors like soap-bubbles; but Lowell combines in conversation the varied 152 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. powers of all. His resources are inexhausti ble. It is no wonder that he has been ad mired ; for at his best he is one of the most fascinating of men. There is but one com peer, the immortal Autocrat, and it would be difficult and perhaps impossible to draw a parallel between them. Steele said of a lady, that to have known and loved her was a liberal education. More than one man who enjoyed Lowell s society found that the wise and witty converse of years did much to supply lamented defects in his own study and training, and perhaps warmed even late-flowering plants into blos som and fruitage. This also should be said, that every man who has known Lowell well considers him much greater than the aggre gate of his works. He always gives the im pression of power in reserve, and of the probability of still higher achievement. He used to enter upon the long walks which have aided in making him one of the poets of nature with the keenest zest. ) There A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 153 was no quicker eye for a bird or squirrel, a rare flower or bush, and no more accurate ear for the songs or the commoner sounds of the forest. Evidences of this the reader will find in the " Study Windows." But those who have visited Fresh Pond, Clematis Brook, Love Lane, or the Waverley Oaks in his company remember an acuteness of vision and a delight in every form of beauty of which the essay gives no conception. His habits have been scarcely methodical, reading, correspondence, composition, ex ercise, and social converse coming often hap hazard, yet, being incapable of idleness, he has accomplished much. His reading has been enormous, covering the literature of many countries and times : from Marco Polo to Doctor Kane ; from Piers Plowman to Swinburne ; from the Christian Fathers to Channing; from Boccaccio and Cervantes to Thackeray ; from Froissart to Motley ; and this has given him the materials indis pensable to a great writer. His works show 154 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. the effective use he has made of the intel lectual treasures of the world. Mrs. Hawthorne relates that before her hus band completed " The Scarlet Letter" there was a visible knot in the muscles of his fore head, caused by the intensity of thought. When a great theme was in mind, Lowell used always to go to his desk with all his might. (Like Sir Walter Raleigh, he could "toil terribly." It has been already men tioned that "Sir Launfal" was written in about two days. The production of a poem like "The Cathedral" or the Commemoration Ode taxed his faculties to the utmost, and always left him exhausted in body and mind. At such periods his wife and daughter, know ing his nature and needs, used various arti fices to divert him, and prevent the strain becoming too tense. THE WHIST CLUB. Between 1850 and 1860, Lowell was not much in society, in the present restricted A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 155 sense of the word. Dinner parties and recep tions of the fashionable world appeared to have little attraction for him. He never enjoyed being lionized. In Cambridge there were several men with whom he was on in timate terms, and to them he gave his society ungrudgingly. Chief among these was his brother-in-law, Dr. Estes Howe, a man of liberal education and delightful social quali ties. He is " The Doctor" referred to in the preface to the " Fable for Critics." "The Don" was a pleasant nickname for Mr. Robert Carter, formerly Lowell s coadjutor in the short-lived " Pioneer," and employed at that time as secretary by Mr. Prescott, the his torian. Carter was a remarkable man, prin cipally on account of his great reading and retentive memory. He was an able writer also, but he had read more out-of-the-way things than any man living. Lowell used to say that he would back Carter on a wager to write off-hand an account of a journey in the fifth century B. C. from Rome to 156 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Babylon or Pekin, with descriptions of all the peoples on the way. Carter lived at first in a modest house near the Willows (cele brated in Lowell s verse), and afterwards in Sparks Street, not far from the Riedesel House. The Sparks Street house has asso ciations such as belong to the tavern of Kit North s friend Ambrose, lacking, how ever, the overplus of toddy and the coarse ness which smirched the discourse of the Black wood coterie. Carter s house was often a rendezvous for whist parties. But whist was the least of the business or pleasure of the evening. The new books, or old ones, magazines, pictures, reminiscences, and stories occupied the available intervals. The silence and severity of Mrs. Battles was unknown. Charles Lamb and his venerable dame were often quoted by Lowell, but the " rigor of the game " was a transparent joke. When a story came to mind, or an epigram, or double-shotted pun, the cards might wait ; when the story was told, or the puns had cor- A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 157 ruscated amid roars of laughter, the professor would blandly ask, " What are trumps I " Other players must rest in shadow. Two of them may be named in whom the reading world has an interest. One was John Bart- lett, author of the book of " Familiar Quota tions," a charming companion, and a man of refined taste. The other, who was the de light of all companies, was John Holmes, brother of the poet-professor. He was the songless poet, the silent Autocrat. It is diffi cult to say what he might have done if shut up with pen, ink, and paper ; but he had the rarest humor and a genius for the unexpected. He always had the art of showing the other side of a statement, and of bringing a joke out of the impossible, like a conjurer. Changes in the whist parties occurred, as was natural, owing to illness or absence ; but they continued for several years. The members are all living except Carter, who died in Cambridge about a year ago, univer sally regretted. May he rest in peace ! The 158 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. recollections of that period form a bond not to be sundered while life and thought con tinue. Of the other friends of Lowell much might be said if there were room. Some of them are named in his books. HINTS OF FRIENDSHIPS. The edition of poems published in 1849 was affectionately dedicated to the eminent painter, William Page. The second series of the " Biglow Papers " was appropriately inscribed to E. R. Hoar, who is " the Jedge, who covers with his hat More wit an gumption an shrewd Yankee sense Than there is mosses on an ole stone fence." " Fireside Travels " is a series of letters ad dressed to Story, the sculptor. " Under the Willows" bears the name of Charles Eliot Norton, Professor of the History of Art at Cambridge ; " The Cathedral " is inscribed to Mr. James T. Fields ; " Three Memorial A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 159 Poems/ to Mr. E. L. Godkin, editor of the "Nation;" " My Study Windows," to Francis J. Child, Professor of English Literature; " Among My Books," to the present Mrs. Lowell ; the second volume of the same se ries to the illustrious Emerson. The chief honor appears to have been paid to George William Curtis, to whom the complete edi tion of poetical works is dedicated. Arthur Hugh Clough, an English scholar and poet, lived in Cambridge for about a year (1855), and appears to have made a deep impression upon Lowell. The un learned public knows little of Clough; but all poets know the author of "The Bothie" and " Qua Cur sum Ventus" and cultivated people know the charming memoir of the author by Professor Norton. He had a beautiful, spiritual face and delicate, shy manners ; such a face and such manners as are dimly seen in morning dreams. One may be sure that such a rare being, if real flesh and blood, would at some time be found 160 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. at Elmwood. Clough strongly advised Low ell to continue and develop the Yankee pas torals. In the introduction to the " Biglow Papers," Lowell says, apropos of the approval of friends : " With a feeling too tender and grateful to be mixed with any vanity, I men tion as one of these the late A. H. Clough, who more than any one of those I have known (no longer living), except Hawthorne, impressed me with the constant presence of that indefinable thing we call genius." The artists Stillman and Rowse were fre quent visitors. Many of their pictures and sketches adorn Lowell s house. Crancli the poet and painter was a fre quent and welcome visitor. President Felton was a stanch friend, and had great delight in Lowell s society. He and his brother-in- law, Agassiz, were alike hearty and natural men, fond of social pleasure, and manifesting the unaffected simplicity of children. Few men have won such deserved distinction in science and letters, and retained the freshness A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 161 of youthful feeling. At the club, Agassiz was generally the centre of interest ; for his vast knowledge enabled him always to fur nish some ready and pertinent analogue. Longfellow s house is but a short distance from Elmwood, perhaps a quarter of a mile ; and the relations of the two poets have always been intimate, as every observant reader knows. Holmes lives in Boston ; but he was a frequent visitor in Cambridge at the old house near the college, especially while his mother lived. Lowell always paid tribute to the consummate art and finish of his friendly rival s verses, and to the vigor and freshness of his style. The father of Dr. Holmes was a stout Orthodox clergyman ; Lowell s father was a mild and conservative Unitarian. The Autocrat has developed into a liberal, and our poet has been growing more conservative, until now the relative positions of the sons are nearly the reverse of those of their fathers. 11 162 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. A CHARACTER. Among the strange and remarkable people that come to mind, Count Gurowski may be mentioned. That brilliant and eccentric man, in exile from his beloved Russia, was engaged to deliver a course of lectures on the civil law at the University. His habit of unsparing censure soon got him into diffi culty. The tongue which Russian nobles and dames had dreaded would wag in Cambridge. " Humbug" and " ass " were the mildest terms he could find for some of the pro fessors. His engagement was terminated, and he shortly after disappeared. His singular figure, his undaunted look, and his old-world garments had made him a conspicuous object, and he was missed. He was too proud to ask for help, even for a sixpence. He pre ferred to starve. The generous Carter un dertook to look him up, and after a long search found him digging in Hovey s nursery grounds, at a dollar a day. He was wretched, A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 163 because old and unused to manual labor. Carter took him to his house, and kept him until some turn of fortune put the former statesman and diplomatist on his feet again. While he was at Carter s house a meeting of the whist club occurred. Grurowski could not say enough to Carter s friends of his gratitude to the man who he declared had saved his life. But in the course of the even ing he said a great deal more. He attacked everybody and everything. He combated modern philosophy, scouted modern history, and belittled modern poets. He was the autocrat of all the Russias, and of mankind in general. The lustre of his remaining eye (its fellow had been quenched in a duel) was fascinating, and held his audience like Cole ridge s Ancient Mariner. He bore down upon the company like a full-rigged ship in a trade wind, with all sails set. He would have no contradiction. Sic volo, sic juleo. Lowell interposed now and then some bright and apposite remarks, but Gurowski tolerated no 164 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. criticism or qualification. In the conflict of impetuous talk he was the Missouri bearing the current of the clearer and gentler Mis sissippi away to the opposite shore. His command of English, like Kossuth s, was miraculous, and the foreign accent was an attraction rather than impediment. But, of course, he was arbitrary and unjust to the last degree ; and his triumph was not one of logic, for he talked for victory only. Such an ex hibition was an experience of a lifetime. To be sure, it settled no facts nor principles, but it gave one an idea of the vast resources of a great mind under the guidance of a moody and wayward temper. EDMUND QUINCY. Edmund Quincy, son of the eminent presi dent of Harvard, a man of education, taste, and wealth, was one of the foremost of the early abolitionists, and a ready and indus trious writer upon the great question of his day. He was an early and intimate friend A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 165 of Lowell, and their visits were frequent. Mr. Quincy had a large and comfortable house, of the style of a century ago, at Dedham, near the Charles. There was a noble grove of pine-trees in the rear, ex tending to the river s edge. The estate was called Bankside. Mr. Quincy is commemo rated in a fine poem under this title. There is a reference to it, also, in " The Cathe dral." Mr. Quincy took a warm interest in the " Atlantic," having been one of the original coterie of fourteen. He contrib uted no long articles ; but several book notices are still remembered for their pun gent wit and epigrammatic force. He died a few years ago, and it is permitted now to say that few more elegant and accom plished men have ever been reared in Mas sachusetts. His manners were courtly and refined, never cold or formal. His address was graceful, and his courtesy unfailing. Lowell used to say that, if we had an aris tocracy, Quincy would be a duke. A visit 166 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. to Bankside in the old days was something to be remembered. BEGINS PUBLIC LIFE AT THE TOP. In the course of this sketch there has been little attempt to follow order. The events of Lowell s life since 1860 have been few. The important dates are the dates of his books. One year has been like another, passed at the same residence, cheered by the same friends, engrossed in the same studies and pleasures. He visited Europe with Mrs. Lowell in 1873. He had never held office, not even that of justice of the peace ; and though he has always had a warm interest in public affairs, he has not been a politician. It was therefore with some surprise as well as gratification that his friends heard of his appointment as Minister to Spain. He had been offered the Austrian mission, and had declined it ; but some good spirit, perhaps Mr. Ho wells (a relative of President Hayes), sug- A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 167 gested that Vienna was perhaps not the place to attract a scholar and poet, and that Ma drid would be preferable, even with a smaller salary. After the retirement of Mr. Welsh, minister to England, Mr. Lowell was trans ferred to London. His reception in the metropolis of letters and of English-speaking people has been in the highest degree cor dial and honorable. He still holds his rank as professor at Cambridge, evidently expecting to resume his duties there. Perhaps in the Indian sum mer of his life he may put his heart into a poem that will be even more worthy of his genius than any he has yet written. OF THE OF 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. #riw -.. REC D LD MAY 3 1960 8JI 63WS REC D LD JUL7 1963 KC D LD JUN / Cb *S7P LD 21A-50m-4, 60 (A9562slO)476B General Library University of California Berkeley l.t