by Edward Simonds
III. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL: 1819-1891.
James Russell Lowell, the youngest of the New England group and the most versatile, was born in Cambridge, February 22, 1819.
Ancestry.
His American ancestry dated from colonial times, and, like Emerson's, was throughout representative of the academic class; his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were graduates of Harvard College. It was Lowell's grandfather who, in 1780, introduced into the Bill of Rights of the state the clause abolishing slavery in Massachusetts. An uncle was the founder of the Lowell Institute in Boston. The poet's father was pastor of the West Church in that city. Mrs. Lowell, a woman of intensely imaginative mind, a lover of poetry and music, was of Scotch parentage, her father having been a native of the Orkney Islands.
Elmwood.
The home of the Lowells, appropriately known as Elmwood, was situated not far beyond the Craigie house, somewhat off the main avenue of travel, a large mansion, surrounded by trees -- a "bowery loneliness" which drew the bluebirds, orioles, and robins; beyond -- the meadows, a stretch of marsh, and the Charles River, --
"a stripe of nether sky,
Now hid by rounded apple-trees between,
Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps bellying by,
Now flickering golden through a woodland screen."
"Ah, this is a pleasant place; I wonder who lives here, what little boy" -- his father said one day to James, as they returned from a drive and passed through the gate of Elmwood. Within the house were books, Rev. Mr. Lowell's well-selected library, among which the boy browsed knowingly. As a child he was read to sleep from The Faerie Queene, and rehearsed its adventurous episodes to his playmates.
College.
After the first study days had been passed in attendance at a classical school in Cambridge, where Latin and Greek were the principal branches taught, young Lowell entered Harvard College in 1834 -- two years before Longfellow took up the duties of his professorship. Here Lowell found further opportunity for wide and varied reading. In his own words, he read "almost everything except the text-books prescribed by the Faculty." After several whimsical breaches of academic discipline, Lowell, near the close of the senior year, was "rusticated," being required to make his residence in Concord, there to remain until Commencement Day. His father and mother were at the time absent in Europe. The young man had already been elected class-poet, and during his enforced stay in the pleasant village where Emerson had recently settled, the student-poet worked upon his production. With Emerson, who was then thirty-five, Lowell now made personal acquaintance, walking and talking with him. One of the events of his college course had been the delivery of the famous Phi Beta Kappa address by Emerson at the preceding Commencement in 1837, which had profoundly impressed the minds of the young men who heard it. Still this independent youth, who always persisted in thinking for himself, was at this time by no means a docile disciple. In his class-poem he satirized the transcendentalists along with the abolitionists, although before many months elapsed he allied himself strenuously with both. The poem, which he was unable to present in person on class day, was privately printed and distributed among his friends. "The year Lowell graduated," says Edward Everett Hale, "we were as sure as we are now that in him was first-rate poetical genius, and that here was to be one of the leaders of the literature of the time."
The Law vs. Literature.
In his choice of a profession, Lowell selected the law; and in 1840 was admitted to the bar. Lowell's verse received its first potent impulse in his love for Maria White, the sister of one of his classmates, a girl of remarkable beauty and rare mental gifts, herself a poet by nature, and an enthusiast in various humanitarian reforms. Their engagement began in 1840. Before the twelvemonth ended, Lowell published his first volume, a collection of poems with the title A Year's Life. During the next three years he wrote busily, finding a ready market for his poems and sketches in leading periodicals like the Boston Miscellany, the Dial, the United States Magazine, and Graham's, then edited by Poe. Between Poe and Lowell there was at this time an interesting correspondence, Poe referring to Lowell's work in terms most appreciative. Meanwhile the young lawyer had not found the legal profession much to his taste; and after three years' waiting for the "First Client," of whom he wrote humorously, Lowell abandoned law and elected literature. In January, 1843, he started a magazine of his own.
The Literary Life.
The new magazine was an ambitious enterprise. The first number contained contributions by Lowell, Poe, Hawthorne, and Elizabeth Barrett (afterward Mrs. Browning). Had it not been for a serious difficulty with his eyes, which compelled him to go to New York for treatment, Lowell's first editorial experience might have been longer; as it was, the venture came to an untimely close. With its third issue, the Pioneer expired, and its editor was left eighteen hundred dollars in debt. At the end of the year, Lowell published a volume of Poems which included two or three of marked excellence, The Shepherd of King Admetus, An Incident in a Railway Car, and Rhoecus being among the number. In December, 1844, Lowell was married. For a few months thereafter, he was employed in Philadelphia as an editorial writer on the Pennsylvania Freeman, the paper edited by Whittier a few years earlier. In the spring of 1845, the Lowells returned to Cambridge. Passing through New York, Lowell stopped to call upon Poe, but the visit proved one of embarrassment; he found Poe (as recorded by Mrs. Clemm) "not quite himself." Life at Elmwood was now delightfully idyllic, despite the limitations of a small and somewhat uncertain income. Longfellow, although twelve years the senior, was already a congenial friend; and the social circle of the college community was enlarged through the easy nearness of Boston. The poet himself was fairly embarked on his career as a man of letters, and his reputation as a writer was firmly established. At the close of 1844, Lowell published a volume of essays entitled Conversations on Some of the Old Poets. This volume and also the Poems of the previous year were republished in London.
The Abolitionist.
The ardor of Lowell in the political movement of these pregnant years must not be overlooked, for it is vitally connected with an important phase of his literary work. The interest of his wife in some of the reform enterprises so numerous in the early forties had enlisted the interest of the poet in these same reforms; but definite inspiration came with the development of his own democratic instincts and his own humanitarian sympathies. In 1843, he became an abolitionist, and an ardent supporter of that movement which had won Whittier as its champion ten years before. In 1843, Lowell wrote and published the Stanzas on Freedom and the sonnet Wendell Phillips. The Present Crisis, that superb climax of lyric eloquence, came in 1845; "for twenty years the solemn monitory music of this poem never ceased to reëcho in public halls." Its thrilling lines served as texts for the leading orators of the North. Phillips and Sumner quoted its stanzas in their impassioned addresses. Its resonant call to action was voiced with the prophetic note of authority.
Henceforth, throughout that epoch of stormy debate, the young Cambridge poet stood side by side with Whittier, one of the two great champions of the cause in verse.
Satirist and Humorist.
In 1846, Lowell's genius was revealed in a new and thoroughly original vein. The Boston Courier began the publication of a series of poems in genuine Yankee dialect, purporting to be the work of one Hosea Biglow. These compositions were accompanied by introductory letters, commenting on the work in hand, and by editorial notes signed H. W., these initials standing for the Rev. Homer Wilbur, A. M., pastor of the First Church, in Jaalam, and critical sponsor for his young parishioner, Hosea. The Biglow Papers, as they were called when the series was collected and published in 1848, present in crisp and pungent satire the widely felt opposition of the North to the war with Mexico. Lowell himself was moved by the conviction that the real purpose of the war was to expand slave territory, and thus voiced the protest of New England against this design. The work is filled with epigram and sarcasm, which of course were most effective at the time which gave them their application. It is difficult for us now to appreciate how effective these shafts of Lowell's exuberant wit really were; but they are yet recognized as the keenest examples of political satire in our own literature, and among the best ever written. In the same year which brought the publication of The Biglow Papers, 1848, another humorous poem of some length and of equal pungency appeared. This was the Fable for Critics, a witty review of contemporary American literature. It was in the strict sense an appreciation of the writers of the time, in which compliment is tempered with shrewd hits at their failings; a piece of good-natured fun which it is impossible to read without a sense of the critical insight of its author. For example:--
In sharp contrast to the two works just described is The Vision of Sir Launfal, composed and published in this same notable year, 1848. This, the most popular and one of the most brilliant of the poet's compositions, is a bold excursion into the twilight land of Arthurian romance which Tennyson was to make his own. The exquisite preludes to the two parts of rather slender narrative reveal Lowell's power of lyric description at its best.
"And what is so rare as a day in June?" introduces the familiar passage which everybody recognizes as the supreme tribute of poetry to the season of perfect days, and distinguishes the singer as the poet of the month.
Personal Experiences.
Oftener than we are apt to remember, these years of Lowell's early manhood were invaded by sorrow. In 1847, the parents lost their little daughter Blanche, scarce a twelvemonth old; three years later, Rose, their third child, died in infancy. The intimate expression of the poet's grief is given in the affecting lyrics She Came and Went, The Changeling, and The First Snowfall. In 1850, occurred the death of the poet's mother, from whom he had inherited the mystical tendency so clearly felt in his serious work. Her intensely imaginative mind had become disordered, and for several years she had been an inmate of an asylum. The cloud had rested heavily over the household, but bitterness was still in store. In 1852, while enjoying their first trip abroad, the Lowells were again bereaved in the death of Walter, their little son, as they were spending the winter in Rome. Meanwhile Mrs. Lowell's health was declining, and soon after the return home, in 1853, the poet buried the wife of his youth. His weight of sorrow is felt in Palinode, After the Burial, and The Dead House. "Something broke my life in two," he said later, "and I cannot piece it together again."
Lecturer, Professor, Editor.
In the winter of 1854-1855, Lowell gave a course of lectures on Poetry at the Lowell Institute, a course which established the poet's place as an authority and critic of high rank.
At the same time he was appointed to be Longfellow's successor in the professorship
at Harvard. A year was spent in Europe preparatory to entering upon his duties
at the college. In 1857, coincidently with the founding of the Atlantic Monthly,
Mr. Lowell became editor-in-chief of that most notable of American magazines.
This was also the year of his marriage to his second wife, Miss Frances Dunlap,
of Portland, Maine. Four years later, Lowell resigned the editorial chair, but
in 1864 became an associate editor, with his friend Charles
Eliot Norton,
of the North American Review, a position which he retained ten years.
To these two periodicals, Lowell contributed most of his essays on literary
and nature subjects, including those which appeared in the volumes Among
My Books (two series, 1870, and 1876) and My Study Windows (1871). Fireside Travels, a
volume of reminiscent sketches, among which is the delightfully humorous Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, appeared in 1864. "New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of
Truth;
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate win-
ter sea,
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key."
"There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
and so on with the rest of the choir, including Lowell himself. The Fable was written rapidly and without thought of publication; as the various parts were completed they were sent to a friend in New York. Eventually they were gathered and printed, as Dr. Holmes said, "capped with a percussion preface, and cocked with a title-page as apropos as a wink to a joke." Sir Launfal.
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on,
Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows,
Is some of it pr -- No, 't is not even prose" --
The Civil War.
During the years of conflict, Lowell was again moved to wield the pen of satire. The second series of the Biglow Papers appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, beginning in 1862; they were published collectively in 1867. While not so brilliant as the first series, there were nevertheless some notable examples of Yankee humor and patriotic feeling in this group. In The Courtin' and Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line, the poet exercises the homely dialect upon themes remote from those of war. The farm-boy's description of springtime in New England is worthy to stand with that famous picture of June in The Vision of Sir Launfal.
"Fust come the blackbirds clatt'in' in tall trees,
An' settlin' things in windy Congresses, --
... . .
Then saffern swarms swing off from all the willers
So plump they look like yaller caterpillars,
Then gray hossches'nuts leetle hands unfold
Softer'n a baby's be at three days old:
Thet's robin-redbreast's almanick; he knows
Thet arter this ther's only blossom-snows;
... . .
'nuff sed, June's bridesman, poet o' the year,
Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here;
Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings,
Or climbs against the breeze with quiverin' wings,
Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair,
Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air."
Fully in accord with the solemn and ominous spirit of the time are The Washers of the Shroud, written in 1861, On Board the '76, written for the seventieth birthday of the poet Bryant, in 1864, and the Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration, July 21, 1865. This last, one of Lowell's best compositions, was written at white heat in two days' time, after the poet had despaired of accomplishing anything worthy of the occasion; then, says he, "something gave me a jog and the whole thing came out of me with a rush." Although not without technical defects, this sonorous Ode, which glows with the patriotic fire so characteristic of its author, has come to have a recognized place among the choicest compositions of American verse. The tribute to Lincoln in the poem is perhaps the best ever paid to the memory of the martyred President.
"Here was a type of the true elder race,Verse on Other Themes.
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face."
Other poems, the accumulated compositions of these years, were included in a new edition of his poems, published in 1869. A volume, entitled Under the Willows, appeared in the same year and also The Cathedral, the most important of Lowell's subjective poems. When, in 1874, Louis Agassiz, the great scientist and teacher, died, the event drew from Lowell, who was then in Europe, another masterpiece, the poem Agassiz. After the poet's return, two historic anniversaries were the inspiration of two more notable odes: that read at the one hundredth anniversary of the fight at Concord bridge, and Under the Old Elm, on the centenary of Washington's taking command of the American army. An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1876, completed the group published under the title Three Memorial Poems, in 1876. These three compositions confirm their author's fame as the foremost of our patriotic poets. Lowell's later compositions were collected in the volume Heartsease and Rue (1888).
Diplomatic Service.
Like Irving, Mr. Lowell was called upon to serve his country in the responsible and delicate position of a representative at foreign courts. In 1877, he was appointed minister to Spain, under President Hayes. He was received in Madrid as a worthy successor of the author of Knickerbocker and of Columbus; but Lowell found no time for literary work while there. The duties of his position, though trying, he discharged with success, and in 1880 was transferred to the English Court of St. James. Here, in the most important of all our diplomatic offices, Lowell was brilliantly successful. It is said that he became one of the most popular men in England. The notable writers of the time were all his friends. On all public occasions he was a welcome guest, and an indispensable participant on occasions of any literary significance. He delivered addresses at the unveiling of busts of Fielding and Coleridge, and was, naturally, the principal speaker when the bust of Longfellow was placed in Westminster Abbey. In these occasional speeches, Lowell was inevitably happy -- never more successful than in his famous address on Democracy, delivered in 1884, on assuming the presidency of the Birmingham and Midland Institute. This speech, now classic, was a clear and thoughtful exposition of the American idea; a striking interpretation to an English audience of our political system. If the charm of Lowell's personality won the hearts of Englishmen, the tact and firmness with which he conducted the affairs of his office commanded their respect. Lowell never forgot that he was an American, and no one was ever more loyal to the ideals of his country; nor has any of our official representatives done more to cement the friendship between the two countries.
After five years' residence as minister in London, and seven years since his departure for Madrid, Lowell returned to America in 1885. He was again alone; his wife had died in England shortly before his return.
The Last Activities.
The remaining years were tinged with the melancholy that comes with the breaking up of old associations and the loss of old friends. His health was not robust, yet he was not inactive. He delivered a number of public addresses, including a course of Lowell Institute lectures in 1887 -- again upon his favorite subject, Old English Dramatists. His volume of poems, Heartsease and Rue, was published in 1888, together with a volume of Political Essays. In 1889, he delivered in New York an address upon Our Literature, and wrote an introduction for a new edition of Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler. The summers of 1886, 1887, 1888, and 1889, he passed in England, making his place of sojourn regularly in the ancient town of Whitby, which had been a favorite resort during his official term. His final task was the revision of his works. The poet's home was again at Elmwood; and here the shadow fell upon him. He died August 12, 1891.
His Art.
Lowell might, perhaps, have had a higher place among the poets had he been more careful in his art; his composition is often marred by haste; he gave little time to revision, and even the more important poems were put forth rapidly. But the poet was a master of language and of rhythm. In the literary training which helps to artistic expression, Lowell had the advantage over his contemporaries except Poe and Longfellow. The quality which in these two poets has appealed so universally to readers abroad as well as at home is apparently lacking in Lowell; but we feel that there is a masculine strength in his verse which we do not find in Longfellow, and a sincerity of utterance that does not appear in Poe.
General Survey.
A survey of Lowell's work in literature reveals the versatility of his genius as well as the general excellence of his achievement. Not only is he the only American writer who has won high distinction in both prose and verse, -- except Poe, -- but in both verse and prose he has touched so many keys with such precision and such power, that he must be regarded as distinctly the most gifted among American men of letters. He is the only notable critic who has appeared on this side the Atlantic; his literary essays may even outlive his verse. Through his well-known essay on Dante, his name is permanently associated with the critical study of the Italian poet.
Suggestions for Reading.
In the rôle of Hosea Biglow, Lowell appears as the strongest of American humorists. No. 1 of the Biglow Papers should be read with its epistolary introduction to understand the dramatic machinery of the satire. No. 3 and No. 6 are good examples of Hosea's utterances. Of the second series, The Courtin' and Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line should be read not only as illustrating the poet's best achievement in the use of Yankee dialect, but also as remarkable presentations of the sentimental phases of rural New England life. Lowell's wit is exhibited most brilliantly in the Fable for Critics. To appreciate this, and also something of his keen critical insight, read the passages portraying Emerson, Bryant, Whittier, Cooper, Poe, Holmes, and Lowell himself. The solemn strength of Lowell's patriotism is felt especially in The Present Crisis and the Commemoration Ode. Along with the portraiture of Lincoln in this Ode should be read the fifth, sixth, and seventh strophes of Under the Old Elm, for that other masterly description of Washington. As a nature poet, Lowell may be seen at his best in An Indian-Summer Reverie, To a Dandelion, the preludes in the Vision of Sir Launfal, Under the Willows, and Pictures from Appledore. Lowell was much freer than Longfellow in the lyrical expression of his own joys and griefs. The love-poems of his earliest volume tell the story of his own romance, as Palinode, The Wind-Harp, After the Burial, and The Dead House are the poignant memorials of his great bereavement. These poems are remarkable for the intensity and frankness of their expression. Wonderfully pathetic are the three poems on the death of the child: The Changeling, She Came and Went, and The First Snowfall. On Board the '76 (in honor of Bryant), To H. W. L., To Whittier on his Seventy-fifth Birthday, and To Holmes on his Seventy-fifth Birthday are occasional poems which have a strong personal interest. Of the miscellaneous poems, select the sonnet To the Spirit of Keats, The Shepherd of King Admetus, Columbus, The Vision of Sir Launfal, The Singing Leaves, and Turner's Old Téméraire.
In Lowell's prose writings the student should read selections, at least, from Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, My Garden Acquaintance, and Democracy. Of the literary essays, that upon Chaucer is particularly attractive.
Authorities.
The Complete Works of Lowell are published by Houghton Mifflin Company. The Cambridge Edition contains the poems in a single volume. The Letters of Lowell, edited by Charles Eliot Norton, should not be overlooked; they have a distinguished place in our literature. Among biographies, that by Horace E. Scudder is standard. The most recent life of Lowell, especially suggestive in the critical study of his work and place in literature, is that by Ferris Greenslet (1905). James Russell Lowell and his Friends, by Edward Everett Hale, is a volume rich in reminiscence of the poet and his generation. T.W. Higginson, in Cheerful Yesterdays, W.D. Howells, in Literary Friends and Acquaintance, and J.T. Trowbridge, in My Own Story, have written of Lowell. There are many noteworthy essays on the poet, of which we may mention especially those by Barrett Wendell, G.W. Curtis, Henry James, G.E. Woodberry, and H.W. Mabie. Stedman, Trent, Richardson, and Wendell are authoritative references in criticism.
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