people Lowell is known chiefly through his poetry, which, despite its admirable qualities, reveals only one side of his genius. All that is best in men like Burns and Byron and Shelley is revealed by their poetry; further study brings to light little that is valuable. But with Lowell the case is different. He was brilliantly successful as teacher and editor, and his prose work demands as much praise as the best of his verse. Finally, he was himself one of the few international Americans, a man at home in the libraries as well as the courts of the old world, but firmly rooted in the soil of the western continent, and as fine a representative of that new civilization as either Lincoln or Emerson. BIBLIOGRAPHY EDITIONS. Shortly before Lowell's death, Houghton Miffin brought out the Riverside Edition of his collected works, in ten volumes. In 1904 the same publishers issued the somewhat more inclusive Elmwood Edition, 16 vols., which contains four volumes of letters. The most useful one-volume edition of the poems is the Cambridge, ed. Horace Scudder, Boston, 1897. BIOGRAPHIES. The standard life is still Horace Scudder's James Russell Lowell, Boston, 1901, 2 vols. Ferris Greenslet's James Russell Lowell: His Life and Work, Boston, 1905, is the best of the briefer biographies. CRITICAL ARTICLES. Of the many critical articles the following will be of interest to any student of Lowell: Poe's Poems by James Russell Lowell, first published in Graham's Magazine for March, 1844, and his caustic review of the Fable for Critics, published in the Southern Literary Messenger, February, 1849, and included in the Stedman-Woodberry edition of Poe, vol. VI, p. 240; Henry James's essay in the Atlantic, January, 1892; Charles Eliot Norton's in Harper's Magazine, May, 1893; and two articles, interesting because of their British point of view, in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1891, and January, 1900. NOTES SONG 610. This lyric was one of many poems which Lowell wrote during the five years of his betrothal to Maria White, whom he met Dec. 1, 1839, and married Dec. 26, 1844. SONNET: WENDELL PHILLIPS Published in 1843, when Phillips (18111884) was the greatest orator among the abolitionists. RHŒCUS The poem-published in 1843-should be compared with Walter Savage Landor's Hamadryad, a rendering of of the same fable, which was published three years after Rhocus. Landor gives the story for its own sake without the moral. COLUMBUS 613. Written in 1844, two years after the appearance of Tennyson's Ulysses, by which Lowell was doubtless influenced. Compare Joaquin Miller's Columbus, p. 1032, above. 615. 110. Pharos. The site of a worldfamous lighthouse in Egypt. 616. 158. Laocoön. The metaphor of the snake is inevitable in view of the popularity of the Laocoön group of statuary. 185. The Tuscan. Dante. 189. The wise Athenian. Plato tells of the lost continent of Atlantis. 190. Bjorne. Bjarni Herjulfson (variously spelled), who is traditionally credited with the discovery of Vinland, some fifteen years before the voyage of Leif Ericsson. The publication of the Biglow Papers, of which the first series appeared in the Boston Courier, 1846-1848, and the second in the Atlantic. Monthly, 1862-1866, was an important episode in the life of Lowell, in the history of American literature, and in the struggle against slavery. These racy satirical comments on politics brought the poet his first wide popularity; they have endured as poetry because of their cleverness, and because of the glowing intensity with which they express Lowell's hatred of injustice and oppression. Though Lowell's opposition to the Mexican Waran opposition which is obvious in the entire first series-was futile, the first series was influential in strengthening the determination of the North to resist any further extension of slavery; the second did much to unite the North in opposition to secession. Number 1 A cruetin Sarjunt. A recruiting sergeant, enlisting volunteers for the Mexican War. Hosea's reaction to the situation is, of course, Lowell's. 619. 33. Ez fer war, I call it murder. Lowell's categorical statement should be interpreted in the light of his own conduct. He believed that war in the abstract was unjustifiable. When, however, the situation in 1861 made it necessary to engage in war, Lowell was quite willing to lay aside his theoretical objections and face the existing situation. No more staunch supporter of the Union cause could have been found than this man who fifteen years before had branded war as "murder." Number III 621. 1. Guvener B. George N. Briggs, Governor of Massachusetts from 1844-1851, defeated "Gineral C" (General Caleb Cushing) in the campaign, despite the fact that John P. Robinson, an influential Whig, went over to the Democrats. SHE CAME AND WENT 622. First published 1849. A FABLE FOR CRITICS 622. Numerous forerunners of the Fable could be mentioned, among the most prominent being Pope's Dunciad and Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. An admirable recent imitation is Miss Amy Lowell's A Critical Fable (1923), in which she discussed contemporary poets as Lowell had commented on those of his own day. To the Reader. As an illustration of his whimsical statement that his own style "is neither good verse nor bad prose," Lowell has printed this Preface as prose, though it has a vigorous poetic rhythm and an easily detectable rime-scheme. 623. 553. Plotinus. An Egyptian philosopher of the third century. Montaigne. A French philosopher and essayist (1553-1592). 558. Never a doorway to get in a god. Not an altogether fair statement, yet touching one of Emerson's recognized peculiarities. 624. 818. Griswold says so. Rufus W. Gris wold (1815-1857), an influential critic and editor. For several years he was connected with Graham's Magazine. His Poets and Poetry of America (1842) was the work to which Lowell probably had reference. 625. 830. Ices. A pun on Isis, a goddess of the Egyptians. 873. Hesiod. An early Greek poet, whose Works and Days abounds with proverbial wisdom. The specific refer ence is to a rather cryptic passage (1.40): "Fools! They know not by how much the half is greater than the whole." 898. Like old what's-his-name. Taillefer, a minstrel, is said to have chanted the Norman army to victory at the battle of Hastings (1066). He sang "of Charlemagne, and of Roland, and of Oliver, and of the knights who died at Ronceval." 626. 904. Anne haec, etc. Is this indeed the dress of thy son? 905. Leather-clad Fox. George Fox (1624-1691), the founder of the Society of Friends. Popular report credited him with making for himself a suit of leathern clothes, in order to be freed from concern about dress. See Carlyle's chapter, Incident in Modern History, in Sartor Resartus. 1008. Fouqué. Friedrich Heinrich Karl Fouqué (1777-1843), a German poet and novelist. Tieck. Ludwig Tieck (17731853), a German novelist. 1021. Cooper. The reference is to Cooper's controversial works, especially, his accounts of his European travels, and such a novel as Home as Found. 1036. Natty Bumppo. The hero of the Leatherstocking Tales. 627. 1037. Long Toms. Long Tom Coffin is a character in The Pilot. 1060. Adams; Primrose. Parson Adams is one of the characters in Fielding's Joseph Andrews; Primrose is the central figure in Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. 1305. You musn't fling mud-balls at Longfellow so. A reference to Poe's ill-considered article, Longfellow and Other Plagiarists. 1318. Greek metres in English. Lowell's opinion of Evangeline is now generally accepted: that the poem is successful in spite of the meter. 628. 1331. Theocritus. The earliest of the Greek pastoral poets. He wrote ca. 260 B. C. 1581. There's Lowell. Lowell's self-criticism is severe but in general accord with the facts. His early work especially suffers from excessive "preaching." THE FIRST SNOW-FALL In March, 1847, Lowell was saddened by the death of his daughter Blanche, aged fourteen months; but in September of the same year the birth of another daughter, Mabel, brought him some consolation. This poem was written in 1849. THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD 629. The poem was begun Oct. 7, 1861, and printed in the November Atlantic use of Teutonic mythology: Monthly. At that time Fort Sumter had surrendered, and the Northern troops had been defeated at Bull Run and elsewhere. Lowell's own nephews were at the front. The atmosphere of grim foreboding is excellently created by the Odin is the ruler of the gods, and Thor is the god of thunder; but the destiny of men lies chiefly in the hands of the three sisters, Udur, Verdandi, and Skuld. (Cf. the Witches in Macbeth and Gray's Fatal Sisters, and see Professor F. E. Farley's Scandinavian Influences in the English Romantic Movement.) The "mystic Tree" is the Tree Igdrasil. These grim sisters wove a web of fate, but Lowell has slightly popularized the mythology by references to the better known corresponding divinities Greece-the three Fates who spun, measured, and cut the thread of life. 630. 50. Hesper. The evening star, which always appears in the west. Here it signifies the United States. of 631. 107. Dear ones by Potomac's side. The poet's "passionate pain" was destined to grow more tragic; three of his nephews (Charles Russell Lowell, James Jackson Lowell, and William Lowell Putnam) were killed during the Civil War. THE BIGLOW PAPERS SECOND SERIES The general facts about the Biglow Papers are given in the notes to the First Series, above, p. 1172. This second series was occasioned by the Civil War, as the first had been by the Mexican. The Courtin' This little romance in the vernacular, a sort of interlude between discussions of politics, proved to be one of Lowell's most popular poems. It originally_appeared, in a shorter form, in the First Series, but was later expanded and inIcluded in the Second. 632. 95. They was cried. The marriage banns were published. Jonathan to John Early in 1862 Lowell voiced this protest against the British policy during the war. The feeling on both sides had been rendered tense by the Mason and Slidell episode, by the conceding of belligerent rights to the Confederacy, and by_the moral support given the South by English cotton interests. This support, Lowell said, was worth an army of two hundred thousand men. 25. Vattel. A Swiss statesman and jurist (1714-1767), best known, for his Droit des Gens (1758). 633. 64. We give the critters back. Mason and Slidell, Confederate agents, had been removed from a British vessel by a United States man-of-war. The British protest against this violation of their sovereignty resulted in the release of the two men. Sunthin in the Pastoral Line 634. No. VI of the second series of Biglow Papers, published 1862. COMMEMORATION ODE 639. When Harvard University planned a commemoration service in honor of her sons killed in the war, Lowell was asked to write a poem for the occasion. He accepted the commission, but found it far more difficult to execute than he had anticipated. After a long period of hesitation, he finally composed the Ode in the two days preceding the exercises, but found himself exhausted by the ordeal. Witnesses testify to the fact that his reading, before the great audience, was effective; it is clear, however, that much of it must inevitably have been perplexing to any audience which was listening to it for the first time. Fully to appreciate it, one must make it the object of careful study. For detailed information concerning both the occasion and the poem, see Scudder's life of Lowell, II, 63f. 640. 37. The Veritas. The Harvard motto, "Truth:" 641, 150. Our martyr chief. The stanza on Lincoln was not part of the original poem, but was added immediately afterwards. 643. 246. Dear ones. His three nephews (see note on line 107 of The Washers of the Shroud) and several other relatives were were among the dead. 253. The grapes of Canaan. Carrying out the reference of line 232 to "the Promised Land," according to the Biblical story told in Numbers, XIII, 17-26. 644. 329. Who now shall sneer? In connection with this whole strophe, Lowell wrote: "I confess I have never got over the feeling of wrath with which (just after the death of my nephew Willie) I read in an English paper that nothing was to be hoped of an army officered by tailors' apprentices and butcher boys." 645. 383. Banners adance. The obvious meaning is "dancing with triumph," but many texts have incorrectly printed ad vance. AFTER THE BURIAL 646. Six stanzas of this poem were written in 1850, after the death of Lowell's daughter Rose. It was completed in 1868, when his first wife and three of their four children were dead. DEMOCRACY This, the best known of Lowell's English addresses, was delivered on October 6, 1884, at his inauguration as president of the Birmingham and Midland Institute. Despite the limitations imposed by his official position as American Minister-perhaps because of them -he discussed the broad principles of democratic government with an incisive wisdom that has not been surpassed. The first two paragraphs are of no lasting significance, but the personal note in such an introduction was doubtless useful in catchi- g the attention of the audience. b. 30. Forgetting Purke's admonition. In his Speech on Conciliation with the American Colonies. b. 2. A Father of the Church. St. Ambrose (?340-397), Bishop of Milan. b. 4. Proudhon. Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) made famous the doctrine that "property is theft." See the first paragraph of his essay What is Property? b. 36. The sores of Lazarus. The story of the rich man and Lazarus is to be found in Luke, XVI, 19-31. a. 29. Polonius. See Hamlet, II, 2. a. 37. The wicked and the weak. Slightly misquoted from Coleridge's France: an Ode; stanza 5: The sensual and the dark rebel in vain, Slaves by their own compulsion. b. 43. The Thane of Cawdor. See Macbeth, II, 2. a. 10. Ichabod. A common term of regret, from the Biblical use in connection with the loss of the ark. See I Samuel, IV, 21. a. 40. Priestley. Joseph Priestley (1733-❘ 1804), an English scientist and prominent Unitarian. Because he sympathized with the French Revolution, his house was wrecked by a Birmingham mob. Later he came to the United States. a. 21. Jellaladeen. Jelál-ed-din, a Persian poet of the middle of the thirteenth century. b. 44. The Rights of Man. A political treatise by Thomas Paine. See the note on Paine, p. 1120, above. b. 6. That white-haired king of Browning's. The quotation is from one of the songs in Pippa Passes. b. 9. Those who have the divine right to govern. Such a sentence as this shows how close Lowell was, in some respects, to Carlyle's position half a cen tury before. On many matters, however, the two men would have been in sharp disagreement. 656. a. 38. Hudson, the railway king. The statue was not erected because Hudson's dishonorable business methods were brought to light. The facts were well known to Lowell's audience. 657. b. 3. A very sagacious person. Dogberry, the rustic constable in Much Ado about Nothing. See Act III, 5. b. 11. Mr. George. Henry George (18391897), best known for his Progress and Poverty. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (1807-1892) The three periods into which Whittier's life naturally falls have much in common, respectively, with certain phases in the lives of Burns, Milton, and Longfellow. During his youth he struggled against the hardships of living on a Massachusetts farm, hampered by poverty and frail health, much as Burns had struggled in Scotland, yet finding time, like him, for occasional bursts of song. Throughout the second part of his life he put his able pen at the service of the cause of abolition, and, like Milton in support of the Puritan movement, sacrificed art to duty. After the fight against slavery had been won, he entered, like Longfellow, upon a peaceful old age devoted to the pursuit of literature and to the enjoyment of those honors which sometimes come towards the close of life to a great and good man. Descended from a long line of Massachusetts Quakers, Whittier was born at Haverhill in 1807. The farm on which he spent his early years was so isolated that no other dwelling was in sight, and the drive to the Friends' Meeting at Amesbury, which the Whittiers attended twice each week, was eight miles. The books that he read in his own home were the Bible and some thirty other volumes-chiefly Quaker journals. The suffering from cold, from poverty, and from overwork, which was the common lot of the whole family, is reflected in the pages of Snow-Bound; but the mist of years had softened the harsh tones of the picture for the poet, much as it had done for Burns when he wrote The Cotter's Saturday Night. There was much of farming, much of Quaker discipline, little of schooling and little of pleasure; yet these early years prepared the way for a long life of unusual spirituality and self-sacrifice. At the age of fourteen Whittier came for the first time to know the songs of the Scottish poet to whom he has so often been compared, and within a few years his own youthful verses, obviously imitated from Burns and Byron, were being published by William Lloyd Garrison in the Newburyport Free Press. How he divided his time for the next few years among shoe-making, studying, farming, teaching, and editing, is well known. The friendship of Garrison was a constant stimulus to his literary efforts, but still more of an influence in making him an active abolitionist. By the age of twenty-five he had shown some promise as a poet, but had published nothing of great merit. Despite his two youthful ambitions, to be a successful poet and a successful politician, Whittier was so thoroughgoing a Quaker that he followed the "inner light" along paths which made the middle period of his life one of singular difficulty. A consistent pacifist, he was bound to find some of his views unpopular, as the issues between North and South became increasingly clear. By deliberately choosing the rôle of an abolitionist of the non-militant type he cut himself off from all hope of a successful political career, and at the same time brought into his life elements of discord which were almost incompatible wtih the writing of poetry. In spite of this handicap, however, he produced between 1833 and 1865 several of his best narrative poems and a quantity of anti-slavery verse, of which some has permanent value; but during these years he was for the most part one Who, with a mission to fulfil, His varied and consistently unselfish political activities throughout this period of his life moulded and deepened his character much as the character of Milton was affected by the turmoil of the Civil War in England. His persistence in attending anti-slavery conventions despite the mob-violence suffered at Philadelphia and Concord, N. H., and his ceaseless editorial efforts to spread abolitionist propaganda, can only be suggested in so brief a survey as this; yet in taking account of his influence on the thought of his country, they must not be forgotten. By 1857 he had come to occupy a position of such respect as thinker and writer that he became one of the contributors to the new Atlantic Monthly, where he had for the first time a worthy medium of publicity. With the ratification of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery in 1865, he published his triumphant hymn of praise, Laus Deo, and thus brought to a close the period of dedication to national service which had begun more than thirty years before with his public tribute To William Lloyd Garrison. At the close of the Civil War Whittier found himself at length free to turn from propaganda to poetry, and, like Longfellow, he lived to enjoy to the full "the last of life, for which the first was made." Despite the depth of his grief at the death of his sister, Elizabeth, who, as Whittier never married, had been a singularly close companion, he was serene in his peaceful happiness. Almost immediately he took a high place among the poets of America by writing, before the end of 1868, five of his masterpieces: The Eternal Goodness, Snow-Bound, Our Master, The Tent on the Beach, and Among the Hills. The profits from the sale of Snow-Bound were enough to make him financially independent, and the degree of LL.D., conferred upon him by Harvard in 1866, was only a formal recognition of the esteem in which he had already come to be held throughout New England. Though he did not mingle in metropolitan society to the extent that Longfellow did, he counted among his friends many of the leading writers of the timeamong others, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Stedman, and Bayard Taylor. From his own home in Amesbury, he made frequent visits to relatives in other parts of New England, and in summer he enjoyed to the full the peace of the hills of New Hampshire and of the coast between Portsmouth and Newburyport. Wherever he went he was loved, and was honored quite as much for the dignity and spirituality of his life as for the poetic ability which each new volume of poetry made manifest. These later volumes contain, happily, much of his autobiography and of his personality. They have served from SnowBound to the last, privately-printed collection, At Sundown-as a revelation of character so intimate as to be the best record of his life. His death, in 1892, was an experience for which he was prepared, and which he anticipated in a mood perfectly expressed in one of his last poems, Burning Drift-Wood: I know the solemn monotone I know from whence the airs have blown As low my fires of drift-wood burn, Before attempting a criticism of Whittier's poetry, it is well to clarify a certain vagueness in the popular conception of his views on war and on religion. Although SnowBound and the historical ballads speak for themselves, the religious poems and those against slavery require a sympathetic understanding. It must always be borne in mind that Whittier was a pacifist of the best Quaker type; if his blood sometimes ran warm (as it unquestionably did) at a story of military prowess, he nevertheless felt about war much as the rest of the world has already come to feel about duelling-that of all methods of trying to decide questions of right and wrong, the use of weapons is the worst. He was not, however, one to let such questions go undecided. On the contrary, he felt |