James Russell Lowell (1819-1891).

James Russell Lowell, the youngest of the New England group and the most versatile, was born in Cambridge, February 22, 1819.

In his choice of a profession, Lowell selected the law; and in 1840 was admitted to the bar. Lowell's verse received its first potent impulse in his love for Maria White, the sister of one of his classmates, a girl of remarkable beauty and rare mental gifts, herself a poet by nature, and an enthusiast in various humanitarian reforms. Their engagement began in 1840. Before the twelvemonth ended, Lowell published his first volume, a collection of poems with the title “A Year's Life”. During the next three years he wrote busily. Meanwhile the young lawyer had not found the legal profession much to his taste; and after three years' waiting for the "First Client," of whom he wrote humorously, Lowell abandoned law and elected literature. In January, 1843, he started a magazine of his own.

The new magazine was an ambitious enterprise. The first number contained contributions by Lowell, Poe, Hawthorne, and Elizabeth Barrett (afterward Mrs. Browning). At the end of the year, Lowell published a volume of “Poems” which included two or three of marked excellence, “The Shepherd of King Admetus”, “An Incident in a Railway Car”, and “Rhoecus” being among the number. At the close of 1844, Lowell published a volume of essays entitled “Conversations on Some of the Old Poets”. This volume and also the “Poems” of the previous year were republished in London.

The ardor of Lowell in the political movement of these pregnant years must not be overlooked, for it is vitally connected with an important phase of his literary work. In 1843, he became an abolitionist, and an ardent supporter of that movement which had won Whittier as its champion ten years before. In 1843, Lowell wrote and published the “Stanzas on Freedom” and the sonnet “Wendell Phillips”. “The Present Crisis”, that superb climax of lyric eloquence, came in 1845.

In 1848 the author published the work “The Vision of Sir Launfal”. This, the most popular and one of the most brilliant of the poet's compositions, is a bold excursion into the twilight land of Arthurian romance. The exquisite preludes to the two parts of rather slender narrative reveal Lowell's power of lyric description at its best.

Oftener than we are apt to remember, these years of Lowell's early manhood were invaded by sorrow. In 1847, the parents lost their little daughter Blanche, scarce a twelvemonth old; three years later, Rose, their third child, died in infancy. The intimate expression of the poet's grief is given in the affecting lyrics “She Came and Went”, “The Changeling”, and “The First Snowfall”. In 1850, occurred the death of the poet's mother, from whom he had inherited the mystical tendency so clearly felt in his serious work. Meanwhile Mrs. Lowell's health was declining, and soon after the return home, in 1853, the poet buried the wife of his youth. His weight of sorrow is felt in “Palinode”, “After the Burial”, and “The Dead House”.

In the winter of 1854-1855, Lowell gave a course of lectures on Poetry at the Lowell Institute, a course which established the poet's place as an authority and critic of high rank. He also wrote many essays on literary and nature subjects, including those which appeared in the volumes “Among My Books” (two series, 1870, and 1876) and “My Study Windows” (1871). “Fireside Travels”, a volume of reminiscent sketches, among which is the delightfully humorous “Cambridge Thirty Years Ago”, appeared in 1864.

During the years of conflict, Lowell was moved to wield the pen of satire. The series of the “Biglow Papers” appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, beginning in 1862; they were published collectively in 1867. There were some notable examples of Yankee humor and patriotic feeling in this group. The poet exercises the homely dialect upon themes remote from those of war.

Fully in accord with the solemn and ominous spirit of the time are “The Washers of the Shroud”, written in 1861, “On Board the '76”, written for the seventieth birthday of the poet Bryant, in 1864, and the “Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration”, July 21, 1865. Although not without technical defects, this sonorous Ode, which glows with the patriotic fire so characteristic of its author, has come to have a recognized place among the choicest compositions of American verse.

Other poems, the accumulated compositions of these years, were included in a new edition of his poems, published in 1869. A volume, entitled “Under the Willows”, appeared in the same year and also “The Cathedral”, the most important of Lowell's subjective poems. Two historic anniversaries were the inspiration of two more notable odes: that read at the one hundredth anniversary of the fight at Concord bridge, and “Under the Old Elm”, on the centenary of Washington's taking command of the American army. An “Ode for the Fourth of July”, 1876, completed the group published under the title “Three Memorial Poems”, in 1876. These three compositions confirm their author's fame as the foremost of our patriotic poets. Lowell's later compositions were collected in the volume “Heartsease and Rue” (1888). His volume of poems “Heartsease and Rue” was published in 1888, together with a volume of “Political Essays”.

Lowell might, perhaps, have had a higher place among the poets had he been more careful in his art; his composition is often marred by haste; he gave little time to revision, and even the more important poems were put forth rapidly. But the poet was a master of language and of rhythm. In the literary training which helps to artistic expression, Lowell had the advantage over his contemporaries except Poe and Longfellow. The quality which in these two poets has appealed so universally to readers abroad as well as at home is apparently lacking in Lowell; but we feel that there is a masculine strength in his verse which we do not find in Longfellow, and a sincerity of utterance that does not appear in Poe.

A survey of Lowell's work in literature reveals the versatility of his genius as well as the general excellence of his achievement. Not only is he the only American writer who has won high distinction in both prose and verse, -- except Poe, -- but in both verse and prose he has touched so many keys with such precision and such power, that he must be regarded as distinctly the most gifted among American men of letters. He is the only notable critic who has appeared on this side the Atlantic; his literary essays may even outlive his verse. Through his well-known essay on Dante, his name is permanently associated with the critical study of the Italian poet.

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