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human spirit. The test of this poem, as of all lyric poetry, is in the power with which the feeling of the poet is carried to the mind of the reader.

Russell

Cambridge,

Massachu

setts, 1819;

died, 1891.

Just a pleasant walk up Brattle Street, Cambridge, James from the "Craigie House," brings one to "Elm- Lowell, wood," for many years the home of another of the born in Cambridge group, James Russell Lowell. His father, Rev. Charles Lowell, was almost all his life pastor of one of the Boston churches, but made his home in Cambridge. When the poet graduated from Harvard, in 1838, he illustrated the force of heredity, as his father and grandfather had taken the same degree from the same Alma Mater. His class poem, recited and published in that year, is reckoned as first in the order of his works; though it is not included in the authorized edition of his poems. The same fate has overtaken the volume called "A Year's Life," issued in 1841, which has never been republished, and the most of whose contents were suppressed by the critical judgment of the author. The class poem had contained ridicule of the abolitionists, who were then beginning to attract public attention. But Lowell's maturer thought brought him into close sympathy with those earnest men, and his marriage with Maria White, in 1844, strengthened this tendency by combining these political and social aims with the deepest affections and the highest ideals of his life. He found it somewhat difficult to settle upon a profession, studying law, and beginning to engage in its practice; but feeling always that his heart was divided between political and social reform

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on the one hand, and Literature on the other. He was a contributor to the "Liberty Bell," the "Antislavery Standard," and the "Boston Courier." 1843 he was appointed editor of a magazine called "The Pioneer." Such an editor, and such contributors as Poe, Hawthorne, Mrs. Browning, and Whittier, should have made any magazine successful; but it lived through only three numbers. In 1851 he travelled in Europe; and, in 1853, experienced the great sorrow of the death of his wife. In 1855 he was appointed to succeed Longfellow as professor of modern languages and "belles-lettres" at Harvard; and spent two years abroad in special study with reference to the duties of that position. The "Atlantic Monthly" was founded in 1857 with Lowell as its chief editor. From 1863 to 1872 he was associated with Charles Eliot Norton in the management of the "North American Review." Meanwhile his writings had brought him before the public as an independent supporter of the principal measures of the Republican party; and in -1876 he was one of their presidential electors. In 1877 he was appointed by President Hayes to the Spanish Mission, and in 1880 was transferred to England. Here he remained till 1885, gaining great reputation as an orator on social and ceremonial occasions, and doing much in this way to bring the American and British peoples together. Lowell was keenly sensible of the evils which at different periods have been prominent in American social and political life. He was severe and unsparing in his denunciation of

some forms of corruption; and thus, like Cooper, suffered a loss of popularity by his faithfulness in this respect. During the later years of his life he made his home with his daughter, Mrs. Burnett, of Southboro, Massachusetts, but spent a great deal of his time in England. He died in Cambridge, August 12, 1891.

Lowell's poetical works fall into two clearly marked groups, separated by an interval of fourteen years. The first group begins with the class poem of 1838, and ends with the "Fable for Critics," in 1848; the second group begins with the second series of "The Biglow Papers," the first number of which appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly," January, 1862 (the whole second series was published in 1866), and closes with "Heartsease and Rue," 1888, and a little volume of last poems issued since his death.

Lowell's ideal of what a poet should be he himself ridicules in the "Fable for Critics":

There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme,
He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders,
But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders,
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching
Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching;
His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well,
But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell,

And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem,

At the head of a march to the last New Jerusalem.

His serious statement of the ideal, which in these lines he whimsically ridicules, will be found in the

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"Ode," which is among the earliest poems in the collected edition.

Among the toil-worn poor my soul is seeking
For one to bring the Maker's name to light,
To be the voice of that almighty speaking
Which every age demands to do it right.

*

Who feels that God and Heaven's great deeps are nearer

Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh,

Who doth not hold his soul's own freedom dearer

Than that of all his brethren, low or high;

*

This, this is he for whom the world is waiting
To sing the beatings of its mighty heart,
Too long hath it been patient with the grating
Of scrannel-pipes, and heard it misnamed Art.

*

Awake, then, thou! we pine for thy great presence
To make us feel the soul once more sublime,
We are of far too infinite an essence

To rest contented with the lies of Time.
Speak out! and lo! a hush of deepest wonder
Shall sink o'er all this many-voiced scene,
As when a sudden burst of rattling thunder
Shatters the blueness of a sky serene.

Lowell's earlier volumes contain as their most important narrative poem, “A Legend of Brittany," which scarcely seems to be an effort to reach this ideal. It is a beautiful poem, written in pentameter lines which rime alternately, and arranged in eightline stanzas. The story is a sad one of crime and sin, but contains the immortal lesson of the invincible power of purity and truth. Two powerful historical poems belong to this time: "A Glance Behind the Curtain," which seizes upon the moment

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