112 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



he was to lecture on Goethe, at that time an object of my wor- 

 ship, since unhappily relegated by what seems to me to be a 

 better understanding to a secondary place, both as a humanist 

 and as a naturalist. Lowell was then a fellow worshipper and 

 that led me to hear him further. There was to me a peculiar 

 fascination in his quality, though I did not then nor afterward 

 when we were colleagues come to like him. As I saw it, he was 

 the most perfect and most natural poser I have ever known. 

 This acting was not of a purpose, he appeared to try to hide it 

 even from himself, by contriving a garment of naturalness 

 which he wore cleverly, but it did not hide the self -conscious- 

 ness which tormented him. As I learned afterward, he had a 

 devouring hunger for praise, which seemed necessary to lift 

 him out of the self-critical humor which possessed him. While 

 I felt this defect in the man in such a measure that at times it 

 made me fairly ache to look at him, his lectures fascinated me : 

 he gave me indeed my first contact with a man of high literary 

 quality, with something of true genius in him. He read his lec- 

 tures; they smell of the lamp, but he read them admirably; 

 some of them stay with me after near half a hundred years. 

 But none of his hearers seemed to come any nearer to him than 

 I did, and I was kept at a distance. Any effort to get with him 

 after his lectures led to failure. A few vague polite words made 

 it plain that "those who did not leave when the performance 

 was over would be put out by the police." 



I particularly desired to know Lowell, for I had a hunger for 

 the human quality that he knew, at least historically, so well. 

 I desired to know him also because he was an Abolitionist and 

 I was at that time curious as to the state of mind of cultivated 

 men of that faith. I failed in this latter purpose with Lowell 

 as I did with Edmund Quincy, the only other strong Anti- 

 slavery man I hoped to approach. Quincy was my father's 

 classmate and they for certain reasons had been thrown closely 

 together, but he made it plain to me that he could not have 

 relations with people who held slaves as my family did. This 



