LOWELL, JAMKS Kl'SSKLL. 



461 



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in Portland a* fine an example as I have 

 w ii nl hnpdcsi loyalty to an ideal. I assisted 

 KO long in a fruitless attempt tn reach Meek- 

 Schwi-rin that at la*t we grinned in ea'-h 

 laces when we met like a couple i.f augurs. 

 Mild imt help asx.ciatiiiir the appiiritinn nf my 

 nd with this series ol ntherw i>.- unaceounta- 

 i|i> pliciminemu 1 accordingly made up my mind to 

 li-ny the debt. . . . He took a high tone with me at 

 . lie even brought dnw ii his proud stomach 

 join himself tn me for the rest of my 

 m. -ward walk, that he miifht give me his views of 



an people. 



l!ut whatever we miu'lit do or leave undone, we 

 i ere imt edited. . . . Though we should boast that 

 the iiivat \\ cM until we were black in the 

 it wnuld imt briiiL,' us an inch nearer to the 

 vorid's west end. ... In short, we were vulgar. . . . 

 1 // am 1 vulgar;" asks the culprit shrinkingly. 

 M- tlmu art not like unto us," answers Lucifer, 

 in of the Mornini;. 



So long its we continue to bo the most common- 

 school, .1 and the lca>t cultivated of people in the 

 world, I suppose we must enn-M-nt to endure this oon- 

 <lcsccndiii;T manner <>f foreigners toward us. They 

 can never ap]'reeiate the immense amount of silent 

 work that has been done here, making this continent 

 slowly fit for the abode of man. A great place in 

 history can only be achieved by competitive examina- 

 tions nay, by a long course of- them. . . . The com- 

 mon blood, and still more the common language, arc 

 fatal instruments of misapprehension. Let them give 

 ri/iiKj to understand us. 



From the essay on Chaucer, written in 1870, 

 we take the following characteristic sentence : 



Modern imaginative literature has become so self- 

 inscious, and therefore so melancholy, that art, 

 Inch should be " the world's sweet inn," whither we 

 repair for refreshment and repose, has become rather 

 a watering-place, where one's own private touch of 

 liver complaint is exasperated by the affluence of 

 >ther sufferers whose talk is a narrative of morbid 

 lymptoms. Poets have forgotten that the first lesson 

 >f literature, no less than of life, is the learning how 

 to burn vour own smoke ; that the way to be original 

 is to be healthy ; that the fresh color, so delightful in 

 all good writing, is won by escaping from the fixed 

 air of self into the brisk atmosphere of universal 

 sentiments, and that to make the common marvelous, 

 if it were a revelation, is the test of genius. 



The following passage from his essay on Pope, 

 written in 1871, suggests another phase in his 

 intellectual development: 



I confess that [ come to the treatment of Pope with 

 diffidence. I was brought up in the old superstition 

 that he was the greatest ]xct that ever lived ; and 

 when I came to find that I hud instincts of my own, 

 and my mind was brought in contact with the 



mstles of a more esoteric doctrine of poetry, I felt 



at ardent desire for smashing the idols I had been 

 brought up to worship, without any regard to their 

 artistic beauty, which characterizes youthful zeal. 

 What was it to me that Pope was called a master of 

 style? 1 felt, as Addison says in his "Freeholder," 

 when answering an argument in favor of the Pre- 

 tender, because he could speak Knglish and George 

 I could not. that I "did not wish to be tyrannized 

 over in the be-t Knirlish that ever was spoken." The 

 young demand thoughts that find an echo in their 

 real and not their acquired nature, and care very- 

 little about the dress they are put in. It is later that 

 we learn to like the conventional, as we do olives. 

 Then- was a time when 1 could not read Pope, but 

 disliked him on principle. ... 1 have since read 

 over every line that Pope ever wrote, and every letter 

 written by or to him, and that more than once. If 1 

 have not come to the conclusion that he is the great- 

 est of poets, 1 believe that I am at least in a condition 

 to allow him every merit that is fairly his. 



If every literary American could tj 

 thing like this with truth, w- should 

 In In- I lie ' ni"st OOIBinOn-choo|<d ami the least 

 cultivated of people. " In 1H7:> Mr. Lowell 

 visited Europe, with his second wife. .Mi-- I ran' .-s 

 Diinlap. "f Portland. Me, whom he had mar- 

 ried in isr>7. On his return the " < Viiti-imiiil " 

 celebrations of 1875-*7<J ap|M-nlcd to his patriot- 

 ism and local sympathy, and he wrote several 

 odes, two of which wen- rend by him at Concord 

 and under the old elm at Cambridge; but they 

 have none <>f the fire and moving power of the 

 "Commemoration Ode." In IH7I! .Mr. Lowell was 

 a presidential elector on the Id-publican ticket, 

 and in the following you- lie ws appointed 

 United States minister at Madrid. Washington 

 Irving had held this office in 184L ) -'4(i. I 

 he \\;is transferred to the court of St. James. 

 Urn- a reprex-ntativo American found oppor- 

 tunity to maintain the simple dig nty O f his 

 country, and he did it to that country's credit 

 and to his own great satisfaction. There were 

 no diplomatic questions to be argued ; and if in 

 the round of social successes his countrymen 

 sometimes felt that he became more English 

 than the Englishmen themselves, they did not 

 lose their admiration of him. He may be judged 

 by his own written words, for, in addition to 

 constant calls for after-dinner and off-hand 

 speeches, he was invited to deliver addresses 

 on many public occasions. One of the most 

 delightful and original of his essays is that 

 upon " Don Quixote," the notes for which were 

 read at the Working Men's College, in London. 

 By reading one paragraph an opinion may be 

 formed of his judgment of the purpose of n 

 book which he considered the work of one of 

 the five greatest authors of the world : 



There is a moral in " Don Quixote," and a very 

 profound one, whether Cervantes put it there or not, 

 and it is this : that whoever quarrels with the nature 

 of things, wittingly or unwittingly, is certain to get 

 the worst of it. 1'he great difficulty lies in finding 

 out what the nature of things really and perdurably 

 is, and the great wisdom, after we have made this 

 discovery, or persuaded ourselves that we have made 

 it, is in accommodating our lives and actions to it as 

 best we may or can. And yet, though all this be 

 true, there is another and deeper moral in the book 

 than this. The pathos which underlies its seeming 

 farcical turmoil, the tears which sometimes tremble 

 under our lids after its most poignant touches of 

 humor, the sympathy with its hero, which survives 

 all his most ludicrous defeats and humiliations, and 

 is only deepened by them, the feeling that he is, after 

 all, the one noble and heroic figure in a world in- 

 capable of comprehending him, and to whose inhab- 

 itants he is distorted and caricatured by the crooked 

 panes in those windows of custom and convention 

 through which they see him all this seems to hint 

 that only lie who has the imagination to conceive, 

 and the courage to attempt a trial of strength with 

 what foists it.self on our senses as the order of nature 

 for the time being, can achieve great results or kindle 

 the <> operative and efficient enthusiasm of his fel- 

 low-men. 



In Exeter Rail, in 1881. at a meeting held in 

 memory of President Garfield, Mr. Lowell said: 



This is no place for the turnings and windings of 

 dexterous rhetoric. In the presence of that death 

 scene, so homely, so human, so august in its unosten- 

 tatious heroism, the commonplaces of ordinary eulosry 

 stammer with the sudden shame of their own inepti- 

 tude. . . . Let us thank God and take courage when 



