LOWKLL. JAMES RUSSELL. 







.ifo w> long tliut he could wait ; and when we read his 



ilM no\o|- -ll-|>iet tin- existence ill Ililn 



'lit that <>!' observation, as it' Wordsworth, 



tin- iN'ct, wen- a luilt'-nmil land -arveyor, accompanied 



i-worth the distributor of .stamp-. a a 

 k'linl of keeper. Hut .-very one of Kcats's i looms wa* 

 Boo nl' vitality ; a virtue went away t'n-ni him 

 nit" OM-M "in- !' tin-in ; i-\i-ii yet, as we turn the 

 they seem to warm and thrill our finger* .vitli 

 tin- flush of liis thii- senses ami tin- tlutti-r of his 

 electrical nerves, mid we do not wonder ho Ml that 

 what In- did was to be done swiftly. The faults of 

 poctr\ iii-c obvious enough; but it should be 

 remembered that he died at twenty-five, and that lie 

 otfcnds l'\ superabundance and not poverty. It is only 

 i>\ the rich that the costly plainness which at once 

 ..nd the imagination is attainable. 



In selecting some passages I' mm the critical 

 we have tin- double advantage, of learning 

 wha't Lowell thought of the men he criticised 

 and in what manner lie told his thinkings'. It 

 }\u- I'ccn said that although Lowell's criticisms 

 harming as literature, tin- reader did not 

 km>w his opinion of the authors. We do not 

 agree to this; l>ut Lowell seems to talk of men 

 more ill the manner in which he would have 

 talked to them than any writer we can recall. 

 Their personalities seem present while he makes 

 the genial, sympathetic expose of their doings 

 and undoings. His manner of dealing with 

 them suggests that the province of criticism in 

 the broadest sense is analysis rather than con- 

 clusion. He takes criticism out of the field of 

 curiosity into that of imagination. Here are a few 

 sentences from ' Emerson as a Lecturer " : 



His eye for a fine telling phrase that will carry 

 true is like that of u backwoodsman for a rifle; and 

 he will dredge you up a choice word from the mud 

 of Cotton Mather himself. A diction at once so rich 

 and so homely as his I know not where to match in 

 these days of' writing l>v the page; it is like home- 

 spun cloth of gold. The many can not miss his 

 meaning, and only the few can find it It is the open 

 of all true genius. What an antiseptic is a 

 pure life! At sixty -five (or two years beyond his 

 grand climacteric, as he would prefer to call it) he 

 has that privilege of soul which abolishes the calen- 

 dar and presents aim to us always the unwasted con- 

 temporary of his own prime. . . . We do not go to 

 hear what Emerson says so much as to hear Emerson. 

 . . . The first lecture, to be sure, was more disjointed 

 even than common. It was as if, after vainly trying 

 to Lfet his paragraphs into sequence and order, lie had 

 :it l:i.-t tried the desperate expedient of shuffling them. 

 It was chaos come again, but it was a chaos full 

 of shooting stars, a jumble of creative forces. . . . 

 The vice of Emerson's criticism seems to be that, 

 while no man is so sensitive to what is poetical, lew 

 men are less sensible than he of what maKcs a poem, 

 lie values the solid meaning of thought above the 

 subtler meaning of style. . . . But would my picture 

 lie complete it' I forgot that ample and vcgctc counte- 

 nance of Mr. R , of W . how, from its regular 



]M>st at the corner of the front bench, it turned in 

 ruddy triumph to the profaiicr audience as it' he were 

 the inexplicably appointed fugleman of apprecia- 

 tion? I was reminded of him by those hearty cher- 

 ubs in Titian's " Assumption " that look at you as who 

 should say. " I>id you ever sec a Madonna like (lint ' 

 l>id you ever behold one hundred and fifty pounds 

 of -womanhood mount heavenward before like a 

 rocket <" . . . Kmerson awakened us, saved us from the 

 body of this death. Did tho\ say he was dis.-on 

 nected \ So were the stars, that seemed larger to our 

 eyes, still keen with that excitement as we walked 

 homeward with prom'er stride over the creaking 

 snow. And w ere they not knit together by a higher 



l-./ic iliuii our inert 1 HOMO could mauler ? NN 



enthusiast*? 1 ho|n- and l>clic\o we were, Olid 1 Bill 

 thankful to the man who made u* worth r.,n : . thing 

 for once in our liven. If aitkod what wan left, what 

 we carried homo, we *hould not have been i-un-ful 

 for all answer. It would have been enough if wo hitd 

 said that sonn-thini.' beautiful hud passed that wuy. 

 ... I have heard some great hjH-ukern and some, ac- 

 complished orator*, but never any that *o nn>\ d and 

 jM-rsuadcd men as he. Tin-re is a kind of undertow 

 in that rich baritone of his that .-weeps our mind* 

 from their foothold into di C|MT water* with a drift we 

 can not and would not resist 



In the opening passage of his essay on " Tho- 

 reau," Lowell gives a passing glance at tran- 

 scendentalism, some sentences from which are 

 here given : 



The nameless eagle of the tree Yggdrasil won about 

 to sit at last, and wild-eyed enthusiasts rushed from 

 all sides, each eager to thrust under the mystic bird 

 that chalk egg from which the new ami fairer crea- 

 tion was to be hatched in due time. Bran had its 

 prophets, and the presartorial simplicity of Adam 

 its martyrs, tailored impromptu from the tar-pot by in- 

 censed neighbors and sent forth to illustrate the 

 feathered Mercury as defined by Webster and Wor- 

 cester. Some haa an assuranceof instant millennium 

 BO soon as hooks and eyes should be substituted for 

 bution.3. Communities wen- established where every- 

 thing was to be common but common sense. The be- 

 lated gift of tongues, as among the Fifth-Monarchy 

 men, spread like a contagion, rendering its victims 

 incomprehensible to all Christian men ; whether 

 equally so to the most distant possible heathen or not 

 was uhexperimented, though many would have sub- 

 scribed liberally that a fair trial might be made. It 

 was the Pentecost of Shinar. Many foreign revolti? 

 tioniste out of work added to the general misunder- 

 standing their contribution of broken English in every 

 most ingenious form of fracture. All stood ready at 

 a moment's notice to reform everything but them- 

 selves. 



Of Thoreau he says : 



As we walk down Park Street our eye is caught by 

 Dr. Winship's dumb-bells, one of which bears an in- 

 scription testifying that it is the heaviest ever put at 

 arm's length by any athlete; and in reading Thoreau 

 we can not help feeling as if he sometimes invited 

 our attention to a particular sophism or paradox as 

 the biggest yet maintained by any single writer. 

 The radical vice of his theory of life was that he con- 

 founded physical with spiritual remoteness from men. 

 A man is far enough withdrawn from his fellows if 

 he keep himself clear of their weaknesses. He is not 

 so truly withdrawn as exiled if he refuse to share 

 their strength. 



From 1845 to 1851 Mr. Lowell contributed 

 many reviews and poems to the "Dial," the 

 " Democratic Review," and the " Massachusetts 

 Quarterly Review." In 1851 he went abroad 

 with his wife. They traveled in England, France, 

 and Switzerland, and resided in Italy for some 

 time. Here Mr. Lowell made the study of Dante 

 that, revealed that author to many of his coun- 

 trymon, and enriched his works with many 

 studies and essays on Italian art and literature. 

 Although used by him in his succeeding profess- 

 orship and not published until much later, these 

 i ays belong to this period of his intellectual 

 life/and extracts are in place here: 



As a contribution to the physiology of genius no 

 other book is to be compared w'ith the" Vita Nm>\a." 

 It is more important to the understanding of Ihintc 

 as a poet than any other of his works. It shows him 

 land that in the midst of affairs demanding practical 

 ability and presence of mind) capable of a depth of 



