426 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 



through Lowell's letters of this restlessness, this subtle sense of one's 

 self which in weaker natures hardens into a mordant self-conscious- 

 ness. Now and then he turns upon himself in a sort of mingled pride 

 and shame, as if at once aware of his power and angry that he has it 

 not wholly at his beck. But for the most part one is aware of a 

 nature singularly at one with life, and finding its greatest satisfaction 

 in getting at the world through the reflection of the world in literature. 

 No one would deny that Lowell was eminently a man of books, but it 

 would be a wholly inadequate phrase which described him as a bookish 

 man. That he was at home in a library his early letters show, but 

 they show also how even then he read through his books into life, and 

 interpreted history and literature by means of an innate spiritual 

 faculty which was independent of intellectual authority. It is this 

 criticism at first hand, this swift, direct penetration of the reality, which 

 mark emphatically what I have characterized as Lowell's self-centred 

 nature. He has told us that his brain required a long brooding time 

 ere it could hatch anything. He was speaking of the matter of expres- 

 sion ; but the phrase is a fit one for his habitual temper. The super- 

 ficial charge of indolence could apply only to his apparent disregard of 

 bustling activity. His nature was of the sort that knows the power 

 of stillness, and though he upbraids himself in his letters for his 

 unproductiveness at times, he had plainly the instinct which waits on 

 opportunity. His faculty of observation was very strong, but it was 

 no stronger than his power of assimilation ; and thus it was that when 

 opportunity came he had not hurriedly to adjust himself to the 

 situation. 



It was while he was engaged with his books and his friends, profess- 

 ing law but practising literature in the way of poetical and prose 

 contributions to the magazines, that he was roused out of his dreams 

 by the prick of necessity in the sudden loss by his father of much of 

 his property, and by the impulse given to his own moral force by the 

 coming into his life of Maria White. He became engaged to this lady 

 in the fall of 1840, and the next twelve years of his life were pro- 

 foundly affected by her influence. Herself a poet of delicate power, 

 she brought an intelligent sympathy with his work ; it was, however, 

 her strong moral enthusiasm, her lofty conception of purity and justice, 

 which kindled his spirit and gave force and direction to a character 

 which was ready to respond and yet might otherwise have delayed 

 active expression. They were not married until 1844, but they were 

 not far apart in their homes, and during these years Lowell was mak- 

 ing those early ventures in literature, and first raids upon political and 



