b'^:^3i!^/ , ^ ^\\. \n\n\n\n,v \'<*^ \n\n\n\n.N^\'" \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\'^r ^ \n\n\n\n"\xe2\x80\xa2/-\xe2\x80\xa2\xe2\x80\xa2\';% \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\'"r \'-^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n*:^^c^\' \n\n\n\ncp-.^ \n\n\n\n/ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n.0 c \n\n\n\n.^\xe2\x80\xa2^ ^*. \n\n\n\n<^. * .. \n\n\n\n\xc2\xab"*-\'. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n.0 \n\n\n\nv\\^^ \'-^ \n\n\n\nv-^\' \n\n\n\n\n\n\n: -r \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n,)*\xe2\x96\xa0 \n\n\n\n^A \n\n\nv^^ \n\n\n\n\nvO \n\n\n^.. \n\n\n?\xc2\xab\xe2\x80\xa2 z: \n\n\n\n\n\n\n.^^ -n^. ^, \n\n\n\n.\xe2\x80\xa2^- \n\n\n\no^" \n\n\n\no>\' \n\n\n\n^^.^* \n\n\n\n^. c^- \n\n\n\n.-cV \n\n\n\n0^ ^ ,*^\'f \xe2\x96\xa0n^^ \n\n\xe2\x80\xa2%. l^ ^^ \n\n\n\n,0 o^ \n\n\n\n>v \n\n\n\n./\\ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n^\' \n\n\n\n\n\n\nr \n\xe2\x80\xa2^ * \n\n\n\n\xe2\x96\xa0?,," \n\n\n\n"^A v^^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\'-!=\xe2\x96\xa0. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n%-^ \n\n\n\n\'i N. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\ni?^\'--;/\'%-^ \n\n\n\n>? \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\'^t \n\n\n\n\n\n\no c \n\n!-\xe2\x96\xa0 *. \n\n\n\n% \n\n\n\n\n\n\nxO\'=<. \n\n\n\n\'^0 \n\n\xc2\xa31 -^ \n\n\n\n\\. .<>^ \n\n\n\n.-^^\\. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nO^ ^ ^ . V \xe2\x96\xa0* \n\n\n\n^ -^jr^/v; \n\n\n\n^\' \n\n\n\n\n\n\nv "^i-t^\' \n\n\n\n\n\n\n^-^ # : \n\n\n\n< \n\n\n\n\'\xe2\x82\xac \n\n\n\ni^ %. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n^^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\xe2\x96\xa0^^( \n\n\n\noS -7-^ \n\n\n\n.^^ \n\n\n\nJames Russell Lowell \nas a critic \n\n\n\nBY \n\nJOSEPH J. REILLY \n\nM.A. (Columbia) ; Ph.D. (Yale) \n\nFormerly Instructor in English at the College of the City of \n\nNew York \n\nSometime Fellow in English at Yale University \n\n\n\nG. P. PUTNAM\'S SONS \n\nNEW YORK AND LONDON \n\nZhc 1kntc??etl)ocF?et press \n1915 \n\n\n\n\n\n\nCopyright, 1915 \n\nBY \n\nJOSEPH J. REILLY \n\n\n\nUbe Vtnicherbocher ptcBS^ l^ew H^orlt \n\nMAR 30 1915 \n\xc2\xa9aA;j!i8i4i \n\n\n\nMY MOTHER \n\nAND THE MEMORY OF \n\nMY FATHER \n\n\n\nPREFACE \n\nWITH the steady growth of interest in Ameri- \ncan literature the position of James Russell \nLowell as the greatest of our men of letters has \nbeen pretty generally conceded. The Vision of \nSir Launfal is regarded as a classic and studied in \nour schools; The First Snowfall, The Dandelion, \nAn Incident in a Railroad Car, typical of Lowell \nthe poet, in his tenderness of sentiment, his appre- \nciation of nature, his didacticism, are household \npoems among us. That sheaf of essays in lighter \nmood which numbers My Garden Acquaintance \nand A Good Word for Winter, wins for Lowell in \nmany minds a place by the side of Thackeray\'s \n* \' Saint Charles . \' \' This same Lowell had thoughtful \nthings to say on public libraries, on democracy, \nand in the heat of the Civil War many other \nthings to say-^some thoughtful, others not. Of \nhis prose his most noteworthy work was devoted \nto criticism. As a man of letters he was poet, \nessayist, student of politics, and critic, and on \neach of these many sides he deserves consideration. \nHis has been regarded as the foremost position \n\n\n\nvi PREFACE \n\nin the history of American criticism and he has \nbeen compared, and sometimes without disparage- \nment, to Matthew Arnold. Rarely in a modem- \nday volume of criticism or literary history does one \nfail to find an apt quotation from Lowell. Obvi- \nously his critical work is known and read. This \nbrilliant versatile Lowell, this college professor, \neditor, poet, etymologist, diplomat, essayist, stu- \ndent of literature and politics, did not for naught \ndon the robes of critic and adventure to sit in the \nSiege Perilous amid that circle which numbers in \nEngHsh Coleridge, Hazlitt, Lamb, Carlyle, and \nMatthew Arnold. \n\nIt is the purpose of this study to weigh the \nmerits of Lowell the critic, to consider dispassion- \nately his gifts and equipment, to ascertain if \npossible his right to a place in the brilliant \ncompany of admitted critics. \n\nIn these days when criticism is in large measure \nmerely a series of personal impressions, one need \nnot perhaps defend the objective method employed \nthroughout this study. For the conclusions pre- \nsented here the writer alone is responsible. \n\nTo Professor Cook of Yale, at whose suggestion \nthis work was imdertaken, my gratitude is due \nfor his unfailing interest and advice, and to Pro- \nfessor Beers of Yale for his kindness on many \noccasions. I wish to acknowledge my obligations \nto my sister. Miss Katherine M. Reilly, for pa- \ntience and care in transcribing, and to Miss Teresa \n\n\n\nPREFACE vii \n\nRyan, whose aid in reading proof and in prepar- \ning the index, has been generously given. \n\n\n\nJ. J. R. \n\n\n\nState House, Boston, \nMarch, 1915. \n\n\n\nCONTENTS \n\nCHAPTER PAGE \n\nI. \xe2\x80\x94 Lowell: The Man and the Writer . i \n\nII. \xe2\x80\x94 The Range of Lowell\'s Knowledge 42 \n\n\n\nIII. \xe2\x80\x94 Lowell\'s Sympathy: Its Breadth \nand Limitations \n\nIV. \xe2\x80\x94 The Judicial Attitude with Lowell \n\nV. \xe2\x80\x94 Penetration : The Ultimate Gift \n\nVI. \xe2\x80\x94 Low^ell\'s Type of Mind \n\nVII. \xe2\x80\x94 Lowell: The Critic and His Criti \nCISM .... \n\nBibliography .... \n\nIndex ....\'. \n\n\n\nn \n106 \n\n136 \n\n173 \n\n200 \n\n215 \n221 \n\n\n\nLOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\n\n\nCHAPTER I \n\nLOWELL : THE MAN AND THE WRITER \n\nTHERE was good stock behind Lowell. His \ngreat-grandfather and his father were clergy- \nmen; his grandfather attained a high position in \nthe judiciary. All three were graduates of Har- \nvard. On his mother\'s side Lowell was descended \nfrom an Orkney family named Spence, whose \nlineage he liked to trace back to the redoubtable \nballad hero, Sir Patrick Spens. \n\nReverend Charles Lowell, Lowell\'s father, had \nbeen trained for the ministry and had sat under \nthe famous Dugald Stewart. In religion he was \nan orthodox Congregationalist, but drifted more \nand more toward Unitarianism with the passing \nyears. As pastor of the West Church in Boston \nhe was zealous in his ministrations to his flock \neven to the point of impairing his health. He was \nremarkable in the pulpit for refinement of manner \nand a certain impressiveness which came not from \n\n\n\n2 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\noriginality of thought but from charm of person- \nahty and a singularly sweet voice. His son wrote \nof him in 1844: "My father is one of the men you \nwould like to know. He is Doctor Primrose in \nthe comparative degree, the very simplest and \ncharmingest of sexagenarians, and not without a \ngreat deal of the truest magnanimity." Doctor \nLowell was not conspicuous for a sense of humor. \' \nHe felt a deep interest and pride in his son\'s \nsuccesses ; he thought the reviews of his poems were \nnot laudatory enough, and professed to believe \nthat he could not understand more than a tithe \nof what young Lowell wrote. \n\nDoctor Lowell had no sympathy with slavery. \nAnd yet like many good men of his time, he shrank \nfrom the thought of an inevitable conflict. Abo- \nlitionism, too often the shibboleth of extremists, \nrepelled him. He was in a word a conservative. \nThe world around him seemed the theatre of \nmuch that was harsh and noisy and uncharitable. \nFor his part he had the manifold duties of his \nparish and the alluring quiet of his library. There \nhe had collected some three or four thousand \nvolumes, among which, however, divinity was by \nno means paramount. A conservative even in \nliteratiu*e, Doctor Lowell owned Pope as his \nfavorite poet. \n\nLowell\'s mother was a woman of romantic \nnature; she was fond of old ballads, which she \n\n^ Letters, i., 82. \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 3 \n\noften sang at twilight, was an omnivorous reader, \nand had a taste for languages. She was said to \nhave the faculty of second sight. \n\nJames Russell Lowell, bom in 18 19, was the \nyoungest of six children. He attended a dame\'s \nschool at Cambridge for the rudiments, and at the \nage of nine was sent to the classical school kept \nby William Wells, an excellent Latinist. Among \nLowell\'s schoolmates were Thomas Went worth \nHigginson and W. W. Story, the "Edelmann \nSt org" of Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, and Leaves \nfrom my Journal. Story became his intimate, \nwith whom he read Spenser\'s Faery Queen. \n\nLowell entered Harvard in 1834. He scribbled \nfor the college magazine Harvardiana, wrote ebul- \nlient letters to "My dearest Shack," and plunged \ninto omnivorous reading. In his senior year he \ncut recitations and chapel in the face of repeated \nwarnings, committed an indiscretion at evening \nprayers, and was sent to rusticate at Concord. \nHere he met Emerson and Thoreau. "I met \nThoreau last night, and it is exquisitely amusing \nto see how he imitates Emerson\'s tone and manner. \nWith my eyes shut, I shouldn\'t know them apart." ^ \nAs for Emerson: \'\'He is a good-natured man in \nspite of his doctrines." Lowell never got into \nsympathy with Thoreau, while for Emerson he \nwas later to conceive an ardent friendship and \nan abiding admiration. \n\n* Letters, i., 27. \n\n\n\n4 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nLowell\'s heritage of conservatism found expres- \nsion in his class poem. \' \' The objects of his satire, \' \' \nsays Greenslet, "were Emerson and Transcen- \ndentalism, Carlyle, Abolitionists, Temperance \nAgitators, Woman\'s Righters, and Vegetarians." \nHere too by the irony of fate his views were to \nencounter a decided change. Transcendentalism \nwas to crop out in his later writings; he was to \nmake some of Carlyle \'s views his own and to \nconfess towards him a secret partiality. The \nwhirligig of time brought other revenges: he was \nto join forces with the Abolitionists and to lecture \non Woman\'s Rights and Temperance. \n\nAfter getting his degree in 1838, Lowell was \nforced to decide on a profession. Literature \nappealed to him but it was a precarious calling, \nwith little or no standing at the time. The \nministry would have given open play to the didac- \ntic strain that was strong in him, but scruples \nheld him back. He enters Dane Law School \nwhere he reads Blackstone "with as good a grace \nand as few wry faces as I may." ^ Within a month \nhe has "renoimced the law" and decided "to \nsettle down into a business man at last."\' About \nthree weeks afterwards he chances to hear Webster, \nthe great Webster, argue a case before the United \nStates Court, and within an hour has "determined \nto continue in my profession and study as well as \nI could." ^ But these were not happy days. Law \n\n\xc2\xbb Letters, i., 32. \xc2\xbb Ibid., i., 33. \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 5 \n\nwas uncongenial. Lowell had been disappointed \nin love and even meditated suicide. In February, \n1839, he wrote: "I have quitted the law forever." \nTen days later: "I am certainly just at present \nin a miserable state." But he thinks that "next \nMonday may see me with Kent\'s Commentaries \nimder my arm." Meanwhile he \'\'sometimes \nactually needs to write somewhat in verse." It \nis not hard to see where all this will finally end. \nIn May, 1839, Lowell resumed his studies in law, \nreceived his degree in the summer of 1840, and a \nfew months later became engaged to Miss Maria \nWhite, " a very pleasant and pleasing young lady," \nwho knows \'\'more about poetry than anyone I \nam acquainted with."\' \n\nFrom the stimulus that came to him from his \nengagement to a woman of beauty, high ideals, \nand poetic sensibility, Lowell profited greatly. \nSomething about the witchery that was Maria \nWhite\'s accentuated those phases of Lowell\'s \ntemperament which were his heritage from a \nmother who was a romantic by nature. He wrote \nverse and, introduced by Miss White to a group of \nher friends known as "The Band," foimd himself \nin an atmosphere electric with abolitionism and \ntranscendentalism. Transcendentalism, so far as \nit followed Emerson, manifested itself in a vague \nmysticism, a pantheistic conception of God, op- \ntimism, and a general idealism. These various \n\n"\xe2\x96\xa0 Letters, i., 51. \n\n\n\n6 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nphases appear now and then through a large part \nof Lowell\'s work, but mostly before 1848. In a \npaper on " Song Writing," to take but one example, \nhe showed unmistakable traces of Emerson : \n\nTrue poetry is but the perfect reflex of true knowl- \nedge, and true knowledge is spiritual knowledge, \nwhich comes only of love, and which when it has \nsolved the mystery of one, even the smallest effluence \nof the eternal beauty, which surrounds us like an \natmosphere, becomes a clue leading to the heart of \nthe seeming labyrinth. . . . Many things unseal the \nsprings of tenderness in us ere the full glory of our \nnature gushes forth to the one benign Spirit which \ninterprets for us all mystery and is the key to unlock \nall the most secret shrines of beauty. ^ \n\nIf the following experience, detailed in a letter \nof September, 1842, could have occurred to a man \nof a temperament impressionable almost to the \ndegree of mysticism, it is also true that the pectd- \niar nature of the experience could only have been \nmet with in an atmosphere surcharged with \ntranscendentalism : \n\nI have got a clue to a whole system of spiritual \nphilosophy. I had a revelation last Friday evening. \nI was at Mary\'s, and happening to say something of \nthe presence of spirits (of whom, I said, I was often \ndimly aware) , Mr. Putnam entered into an argument \nwith me on spiritual matters. As I was speaking, the \n\n\' The Pioneer, Feb., 1843; reprinted in Early Writings, p. yy. \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 7 \n\nwhole system rose up before me like a vague Destiny- \nlooming from the abyss. I never before so clearly \nfelt the spirit of God in me and around me. The \nwhole room seemed to me full of God. The air seemed \nto waver to and fro with the presence of Something \nI knew not what. I spoke with the calmness and \nclearness of a prophet. I cannot yet tell you what \nthis revelation was. I have not yet studied it enough, \nbut I shall perfect it one day and then you shall hear \nit and acknowledge its grandeur. It embraces all \nother systems.^ \n\nOne cannot but note the buoyant enthusiasm \nand self-confidence of the last two sentences. \nLowell never became deeply entangled in the \nexcesses of the movement which he pictured so \nhumorously in Thoreau from the vantage point \nof later years. \n\nAbolitionism was by no means the fashion in \nthe early \'40\'s, but this was nothing to an enthusi- \nast, and before the year was out Lowell was heart \nand soul in the movement. Writing to his class- \nmate Heath, a Virginian, he says: \'\'I cannot \nreason on the subject. A man who is in the right \ncan never reason. He can only affirm." Further: \n"My heart whirls and tosses like a maelstrom \nwhen I think of it [slavery]." His letters during \nthese years are fiUed with such phrases as **the \nfreedom of 5,000,000 of men," the "curse of \nslavery," and the like. \n\n^ Letters, i., 69 ff. \n\n\n\n8 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nThe stimulus of love and friendships, the need \nof success, and the new enthusiasm bom of his \ninterest in abolitionism, while they brought no \nclients to Lowell the lawyer, furnished forceful \nimpulse to Lowell the poet. In the fall of 1840 \nappeared A Year\'s Life, a volume of poems, a \nfew of which were of high quality. All told they \nwere rather vague, but marked a poet to whom \nlove and human brotherhood were topics of vital \ninterest. \n\nTo the Boston Miscellany, edited by his friend \nHale, Lowell contributed a sheaf of prose essays \nduring 1842. The most ambitious of them were \npapers on Elizabethan dramatists, Chapman, \nWebster, Ford, and Massinger. They are im- \nportant as Lowell\'s first ventures in criticism. \nNot that they are seriously to be regarded as \ncritical, for their aim was to set out beautiful pas- \nsages from the old plays with comments \xe2\x80\x94 ^sign- \nposts for admiration \xe2\x80\x94 rather than to investigate \ndramatical construction or character develop- \nment. In tone we find an odd blend of sophomo- \nricism which believes itself knowledge of the world ; \nan air of superiority none the less present because \nentirely tmconscious; a tendency to preach which \nmay have been a heritage but was to remain an \nabiding possession. \'\'We have grown too polite \nfor what is holiest, noblest, and kindest in the \nsocial relations of life; but alas! to lie, to blush, \nto conceal, to envy, to sneer, to be illiberal, \xe2\x80\x94 \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 9 \n\nthese trench not on the bounds of any modesty, \nhuman or divine." ^ One thing about these papers \nis immistakable : Lowell had thus early an excellent \ntaste which led him to recognize real poetry when \nhe saw it. Not a single selection from the drama- \ntists \xe2\x80\x94 and he gives many \xe2\x80\x94 ^fails to justify itself \nfor beauty of phrasing or imaginative quality. \n\nA fifth paper of the series on the Elizabethans \nappeared in The Pioneer for January, 1843, a \nmagazine which Lowell himself launched with \nhigh hopes of success. It was hardly started \nwhen a serious trouble with his eyes sent him to \nNew York for medical treatment. Three numbers \nof the new magazine appeared; the project was \nthen abandoned. It may be seriously questioned \nhow wide a patronage an editor was to command \nwho assumed in his prospectus the position of \narbiter elegantice : \n\nThe object of the subscribers in establishing The \nPioneer is to furnish the intelligent and reflecting \nportion of the reading public with a rational substi- \ntute for the enormous quantity of thrice diluted \ntrash in the shape of namby-pamby love tales and \nsketches which is monthly poured out to them by \nmany of our popular magazines, and to offer instead \nthereof a healthy and manly Periodical Literature, \nwhose perusal will not necessarily involve a loss of \ntime and a deterioration of every moral and intellec- \ntual faculty. \n\n^ Early Writings, p. 124. \n\n\n\n10 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nReturning from New York where he had be- \ncome acquainted with WiUis and other literati of \nthe metropoHs, Lowell established himself at his \nfather\'s home at Elmwood and prepared for the \npress a volume of poems which was issued late \nin the year 1843. He worked under depressing \nconditions, for his mother\'s mind had given way \nand that of his sister Rebecca betrayed signs of \ndisorder. The White home was easily accessible \nand Lowell found solace in the company of his \nfuture wife. His volume received a gratifying \nreception and marked indeed, in sureness of tone \nand interest in the questions of the hour, a distinct \nadvance over A Year\'s Life. In the success which \nattended the publication of these poems was \nmingled an ounce of bitter. Margaret Fuller, in \nher Review of American Literature, said of Lowell: \n"His interest in the moral questions of the day \nhas supplied the want of vitality in himself." \nLowell repaid the score in A Fable for Critics; \nhe was hurt. Could it be that he felt some \nessential truth in the charge? \n\nOn the literary work in which he was now en- \ngaged, Lowell could spend his imdivided energies. \nFor although he wrote in March, 1841, "I am \ngetting quite in love with the law," he confessed \nfourteen months later that it was a calling "which \nI hate, and for which I am not well fitted, to say \nthe least." Six months later he abandoned it \nforever. "I cannot write well here in this cramped \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER ii \n\nup lawyer\'s office feeling all the time that I am \ngiving the lie to my destiny." To that destiny \nas a man of letters he yielded himself, and with a \nsense of freedom, the first in years, he plunged \ninto writing with a will. \n\nLate in the following year Lowell was married \nto Maria White, whose influence remained a domi- \nnant factor during her life. That same month \nappeared his first volume of prose. Conversations \non Some of the Old Poets. The first half of the \nvolume is given over to Chaucer; the second half \nto the old dramatists, Chapman and Ford. These \npapers are more ambitious than those published \nin the Boston Miscellany. There is about them \na greater sureness, one might almost say cock- \nsureness, which suggests a kinship between Lowell \nand Macaulay. They are lengthy, with frequent \nand by no means brief digressions, with far- \nfetched introductions and spots of fervid rhetoric \nwhich dangerously approach the purple patch. \nSpeaking of the prophet who bears a message to \nthe world, he says: "In most cases men do not \nrecognize him, till the disgtiise of flesh has fallen \noff, and the white wings of the angel are seen \nglancing in the full sunshine of that peace, back into \nwhose welcoming bosom their flight is turned."\' \nHere is all the vagueness of transcendentalism \nwithout anything of that prophetic tone which \nmarked the utterances of its protagonist. The \n\n^ Conversations, p. 222. \n\n\n\n12 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nold poets get no lion\'s share of attention; Lowell \nempties his mind of his ideas on poetry, on love, \non abolitionism, and politics; on every topic he \nundisguisedly assumes a didactic attitude. That \nbent of his mind which one might call puritanism \nappears when he says of Pope\'s poetry: "Show me \na line that makes you love God and your neigh- \nbour better, that inclines you to meekness, charity, \nand forbearance, and I will show you a himdred \nthat make it easier for you to be the odious reverse \nof all these."\' \n\nEssentially the Conversations, so far as they \nconcerned the Elizabethan dramatists, were the \nearlier papers in the Boston Miscellany, with the \naddition of numerous digressions on such topics \nas appealed to Lowell for an expression of opinion. \nPassages are transferred verbatim; often whole \npages appear in Conversations with scarcely any \nchange. On the whole the changes are away from \nsimplicity towards a more expansive diction. In \nthe Miscellany, for example, we find, "Nature is \nnever afraid to reason in a circle." This becomes \nin Conversations: "Nature is never afraid to reason \nin a circle; we must let her assume her premises \nand make our deductions logical accordingly." \n\nIn Conversations Lowell attempts to do more \nthan state appreciative dicta; he seems desirous \nof getting at ultimate principles. "Shakespeare\'s \ncharacters," he says in Early Writings, "modify his \n\n\xc2\xbb Conversations, p. 149. \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 13 \n\nplots as much as his plots modify his characters." \nAfter expanding this sentence slightly in Conver- \nsations, he adds: "This may be the result of his \nunapproachable art ; for art in him is but the trac- \ning of nature to her primordial laws ; is but nature \nprecipitated as it were by the infallible test of \nphilosophy." The figurative mode of expression \nis worthy of notice. Wordsworth\'s Excursion is \nreferred to and a discussion follows regarding the \npeddler-poet and the poetic element in man in \ngeneral. This discussion betrays gaps in Lowell\'s \nmental processes and is phrased in figurative \nlanguage; the sureness of statement is at variance \nwith the uncertainty in thought. Opening to a \npage at random we come upon mention of Isaac \nWalton, Herbert, Cowper, Mrs. Unwin, Gold- \nsmith, Collins, Mme. De Stael, Dwight, Milton. \nA motley array for a single page ! Lowell, twenty- \nfive years of age, has been a hard reader, and has \nmade himself acquainted with the great names of \nliterature. Shakespeare we come upon constantly; \nalready he was deus certe to Lowell. As in the \nearly papers in the Boston Miscellany and the \nPioneer, Lowell selects excerpts from his poets \nwith a fine and discriminating taste. ^ \n\nAfter his marriage in December, 1843, Lowell \nwent to Philadelphia with his young bride, as \nan editorial writer for the Pennsylvania Freeman. \n\n^ Most of the excerpts from the dramatic poets were iden- \ntical with those given in the earlier papers. \n\n\n\n14 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nBoth the Lowells contributed frequent verse to \nthe Broadway Journal^ then edited by their friend \nBriggs. The Freeman\'s anti-slavery policy was \nnot assertive enough to suit the views of Lowell, \nwho besides found it \'\'hard to write when one is \nfirst married." His connection with the Freeman j \none is not surprised to find, came to an end in May, \nand he returned with his wife to Elmwood. \n\nIn spite of the happiness of married life and the \ndemands of literattire, Lowell was not able entirely \nto dominate his adverse moods. \n\nMy sorrows [he writes] are not literary ones, but \nthose of daily life. I pass through the world and \nmeet with scarcely a response to the affectionateness \nof my nature. I believe Maria only knows how loving \nI am truly. Brought up in a very reserved and con- \nventional family, I cannot in society appear what I \nreally am. I go out sometimes with my heart so \nfull of yearning towards my fellows that the indifferent \nlook with which even entire strangers pass me brings \ntears into my eyes. And then to be looked upon \nby those who do know me (externally) as * \' Lowell the \nPoet" \xe2\x80\x94 ^it makes me sick. Why not Lowell the man, \n\xe2\x80\x94 the boy rather, \xe2\x80\x94 as Jemmy Lowell, as I was at \nschool?^ \n\nIt was fortunate that he soon found in the birth \nof a child, Blanche, bom December 31, 1845, \nand in the increasing demands of literature, im- \n\n^ Letter s^ i., loi. \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 15 \n\npulses away from such morbid yielding to mood. \nHis ardor nms high and his keen interest in reform \nin general leads him to reproach Holmes, ten years \nhis senior, whom he scarcely knew, with indiffer- \nence. Meantime he receives a transatlantic hear- \ning for abolitionism by contributing four papers \nearly in 1846 to the London Daily News. But he \nwas to be known in England and indeed in America \nmore by his next venture than by anything he \nhad yet achieved. \n\nIn the Boston Courier for June 17, 1846, ap- \npeared the first of the Biglow Papers. Three \nmore numbers followed during the next year, a \nyear when the indolence of which Lowell all his \nlife complained, was in his blood. But he awoke \nin 1848, issued a second volume of poems, a rapid \nseries of articles for the Anti-Slavery Standard, \nseven more numbers while indignation over the \nMexican War knocked at his heart, and most \nimportant of all from our present point of view, \nA Fable for Critics. \n\nAlthough the Fable for Critics is frankly a jeu \nd\' esprit, bristling with whimsicalities of tone and \nmanner, it contains many keen characterizations \nof American writers of the time. It was a distinct \nadvance over Margaret Fuller\'s Review of American \nLiterature, which contained some good things, \nbut was more notable for erratic than for good \njudgment. Lowell, who put no uncertain finger \non the soimd and the weak spots of the author \n\n\n\ni6 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\ndiscussed, did not show himself infallible. He \nfailed to do adequate justice to Poe, Bryant, and \nThoreau. But the deeper qualities of Holmes, \nCooper, Hawthorne, Whittier, and Emerson, \nLowell undoubtedly did suggest. He constantly \ntranslates his characterizations into figurative \nlanguage, a tendency which he never abandoned. \nSpeaking of Hawthorne and his \'\'genius so shrink- \ning and rare," he goes on : \n\nA frame so robust with a nature so sweet, \n\nSo earnest, so graceful, so lithe, and so fleet, \n\nIs worth a descent from Olympus to meet ; \n\n\'Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood \n\nWith his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood, \n\nShould bloom after cycles of struggle and scathe. \n\nWith a single anemone trembly and rathe. \n\nThere is little or no attempt to go into principles ; \nin the last analysis the poem is a series of lightning- \nflash characterizations which are soimd on the \nwhole because Lowell\'s intuitive perception was \nclear. \n\nAs a wit and humorist, Lowell assumed a high \nrank after the publication of the Fahle and the \nBiglow Papers. The latter work was pirated in \nEngland in 1859, ^\'^^ ^^^ vndcn. who was afterwards \nto be Ambassador at the Court of St. James and \nto be regarded as the foremost of American men \nof letters, was first known only as a writer of \njingling verses in Yankee dialect. The enthusi- \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 17 \n\nasm with which Lowell regarded reform in general \nand abolitionism in particular fired him with \nindignation over the prosecution of a war which \nto him represented jingoism and the lust of slavery \nfor aggrandizement. \n\nReform in politics was always to be an absorb- \ning topic with Lowell, but now that the war was \nended his interest flagged for a time. In the new \npoem he is projecting, The Nooning, he disclaims \nany intention of giving \'\'even a glance towards \nreform." He is feeling perhaps the reaction from \nthe tense enthusiasm which his wife aroused and \nwith her friends of "The Band" kept stimulated. \nBut with the years he has drifted away from "The \nBand" and drawn near to the coterie of friends \nwho made Boston a centre of thought and letters. \nAnd the keen impulse which his wife furnished was \nbecoming dulled with her steady decline in health. \nLowell himself was eager to take her to Europe \nthat they both might enjoy a long holiday in the \nmidst of "new faces, other minds." In July, \n1 85 1, he sailed with his wife and two children for \nthe Mediterranean. \n\nMost of the first year abroad was spent in \nItaly. In November, 1852, Lowell wrote to \nBriggs: "I have written nothing since I left home \nexcept a few letters and a journal now and then. \nI have been absorbing. I have studied Art to some \npurpose." His tendency to indolence afilicts his \nconscience at times. He writes: "I am beginning, \n\n\n\n!8 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nI hope, to find out that I can work. Laziness has \nruined me hitherto." From Italy the Lowells \npassed through Switzerland, Germany, and \nFrance and spent some time in England. Lowell \nis in a depressed mood which is evident in all his \nletters. His little son has died and is buried at \nRome; his wife is steadily declining in health. \nBack in America among the beloved surround- \nings of Cambridge, Maria Lowell dies (October 27, \n1853) and Lowell has to summon up all the re- \nserves of a natiire "sloping to the southern side" \nin order to battle against the feeling of desolation \nwhich threatened to overwhelm him. \n\nIf that reserve and self-control at crises which \ncame to LoweU from the paternal side stood him \nin good stead at this time, the maternal heritage \nof sensitiveness to impressions made his faculty \nof vision especially acute. He saw his wife in \ndreams, now alone, now with her child on her knee, \nand again he sees \'*a crescent of angels standing \nand shining silently."^ \n\nBut the world of matter-of-fact surrounds him \nand he finally gets his grip on things again. Some \ntime before he was asked to deliver a course of \nlectures at Lowell Institute and was paid in ad- \nvance. The labor of preparing the series of twelve, \nwhich he purposed giving, furnished him with \nan outlet for his mental activities. The course \nbegan January 7, 1855. Two days later he writes \n\n\xc2\xbb Scudder, i., 358. \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 19 \n\nto W. J. Stillman: "I delivered my first lecture to \na crowded hall on Tuesday night and I believe \nI have succeeded. The lecture was somewhat \nabstract, but I kept the audience perfectly still \nfor an hour and a quarter." This first lecture \n\nwas occupied with definitions, and in a familiar way \nLowell set about distinguishing poetry from prose. \n. . . Having cleared the way, he took up the con- \nsideration of English poetry in the historical order, \ndealing with the forerunners, Piers Ploughman\'s \nVision, the Metrical Romances, and the Ballads; \nand then devoting one lecture each to Chaucer, \nSpenser, Milton, Butler, and Pope. ^ \n\nIn the next discourse he took up the subject of \npoetic diction; in the eleventh, he dealt with \nWordsworth; in the twelfth, with "The Func- \ntion of the Poet." The series proved a decided \nsuccess. ^ This is not hard to tmderstand. They \nwere popular in form, free from abstruse discus- \nsion, rich in illustration, in citation from the \nauthors under discussion, and sparkling in humor. \nIn breadth of treatment, grace of diction, and \nfreedom from didacticism they mark a distinct \nadvance over the Conversations. Incomplete as \nthey are it is difficult to estimate them justly. \n\n^ Scudder, i., 374. \n\n\xc2\xbb These lectures were printed in more or less abridged form \nin the Boston Advertiser, whence they were reprinted in 1897, \ny the Rowfant Club of Cleveland, Ohio. \n\n\n\n20 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nBut whatever was good in them reappeared in the \nlater critical essays. Lowell was not the man to \nwaste an epigrammatic sentence, a comprehensive \nparagraph, or a striking figure.\' The following \nsentence is typical; it shows Lowell\'s irony, his \nhumor, his poetry, and that tendency already \nnoted which was ever a prime characteristic of \nhis criticism, \xe2\x80\x94 interpretation by means of figures: \n\nIn our New England especially, where May-day \nis a mere superstition and the Maypole a poor half- \nhardy exotic which shivers in an east wind almost as \nsharp as Endicott\'s axe, \xe2\x80\x94 where frozen children, in \nunseasonable muslin, celebrate the floral games with \nnosegays from the milliner\'s, and winter reels back, \nlike shattered Lear, bringing the dead spring in his \narms, her budding breast and wan dislustered cheeks \nall overblown with the drifts and frosty streaks of his \nwhite beard, \xe2\x80\x94 where even Chanticleer, whose sap \nmounts earliest in that dawn of the year, stands \ndumb beneath the dripping eaves of his harem, with \nhis melancholy tail at half-mast, \xe2\x80\x94 one has only to \ntake down a volume of Chaucer, and forthwith he \ncan scarce step without crushing a daisy, and the \n\n^ On this point compare the quotation in the text with the \nfollowing from "Under the Willows" (1868), Poetical Works, \niii., 151. \n\n"And Winter suddenly, like crazy Lear, \nReels back, and brings the dead May in his arms. \nHer budding breasts and wan dislustered front \nWith frosty streaks and drifts of his white beard \nAll overblown." \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 21 \n\nsunshine flickers on small new leaves that throb thick \nwith song of merle and mavis. ^ \n\nIt is not hard to understand why this course \nappealed to a popular audience. \n\nA speedy and important result followed these \nlectures: Lowell received the appointment to \nsucceed Longfellow as Professor of Belles- Lettres \nat Harvard. He accepted and went abroad for \na year spending most of the time in Germany \nstudying the language diligently and attending \nlectures in German literature and aesthetics. "^ "I \nhave made some headway," he writes in January, \n1856, "can read German almost as easily as French. \nThat is already something. Meanwhile, my \nstudies do me good. My brain is clear and my \noutlook over life seems to broaden." Again: \n"My study of German widens so before me \xe2\x80\x94 the \nhistory of the literature is so interesting and, by \nits harmonies and discords with our own, sets so \nmany things in a white light for me, that I see \n\n^ Lectures on English Poets (Rowfant Club), p. 80. \n\n* He writes from Dresden in October, 1855: "I am reading \nfor my own amusement (du Hebe Gott!) the aesthetische For- \nschungen von Adolf Zeising, pp. 568, large octavo! Then I \noverset something aus German into English. . . . Nachmittag \nI study Spanish with a nice young Spaniard who is in the house, \nto whom I teach English in return. Um seeks Uhr ich \nspazieren gehe, and at 7 come home and Dr. R. dictates and I \nwrite. . . . Then, after tea, we sit and talk German \xe2\x80\x94 or what \nsome of us take to be such \xe2\x80\x94 and which I speak like a native \xe2\x80\x94 \nof some other country." Letters, i., 241 ff. \n\n\n\n22 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\ninfinite work and satisfaction ahead. I have \nlearned a httle of the German thoroughness of \ninvestigation." He is eager to go to Italy: "Any \ntrifle is enough to whirl my thoughts in that \ndirection." And he soothes his scruples over this \nvagrant desire by exclaiming: "It would freshen \nup my Italian, which has fallen frightfully into \nabeyance here." He rims away to Italy for a \nfew months and returns to Dresden in Jime. He \nhas not outgrown his moods. His holiday across \nthe Alps recalls the gloomy winter in Germany, \nand he wonders how he succeeded in learning so \nmuch of the language "when I think what a restive \ncreature I was all last winter." \n\nIn the autumn (1856), he imdertook his duties \nas professor and remained in harness for sixteen \nconsecutive years. The continuity of his life, \nrudely broken by the death of his first wife, was \nrenewed by his marriage in 1857, to Miss Frances \nDunlop, the governess of his daughter. He could \nnow without domestic anxiety concentrate on his \nprofessorial work. This he carried on in no \nstrict fashion. His method of conducting class \nvaried with his mood. He entertained the students \nat his home but was not certain to recall their \nfaces when next he met them. Although freed \nfrom most of the drudgery of teaching languages, \nLowell never quite reconciled himself to the class- \nroom. "What can a man do in a treadmill?" \nhe asks, writing to Fields in 1864. Again: "If I \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 23 \n\ncan sell some of my land and slip my neck out of \nthis collar that galls me so I should be a man \nagain. I am not the stuff that professors are \nmade of. . . . My professorship is wearing me \nout." His moods pursued him always. He gives \nwarning to Ho wells in 1882, regarding the accep- \ntance of a professorship: \'\'If you are a systematic \nworker, independent of moods, and sure of your \ngenius whenever you want it, there might be no \nrisk in accepting." \n\nLowell worked hard, not infrequently poring \nover his books till early morning. Among his \ncourses at various times during his professorship \nwere those in German, Spanish (especially Don \nQuixote), Italian (concentrating on Dante), and \nOld French, the last becoming his special field. \n\nIn the meantime his labors were not confined \nto the classroom and its concerns. He accepted \nthe editorship of the newly established Atlantic \nMonthly, and with such contributors as Emerson, \nHolmes, Longfellow, Whittier, and Thoreau, an \nexcellent literary taste of his own, and a capacity \nfor hard work which outer influence had forced to \nbecome fairly consistent, he achieved a distinct \nsuccess in the imdertaking. Most of the best- \nknown contributors to the Atlantic formed the \nSaturday Club whose monthly dinners became \nfamous. Here Lowell met in intimacy minds \nat once cultured and acute and the contact gave \nhim much of that stimulus which he craved. \n\n\n\n24 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nTo the Atlantic Lowell contributed freely \xe2\x80\x94 \nreviews, poems, and political papers. Politics \nengaged his attention again with the outbreak of \nthe Civil War, and he even revived the Biglow \nPapers to furnish a vent for his ardent opinions. \nFive young relatives died in the Federal service; \nLowell\'s white-hot patriotism was not an abstract \nmatter, merely a phase of his philosophy of life; \nit was vibrant with that emotion which love must \nfeel when its dear ones taste the bitterness of \ndeath. That is why several of the second series \nof the Biglow Papers glow with a passion quite \nunknown to the earlier set. Lowell however \ndid not retain his editorial position through the \ntroublous days of the Civil War: he yielded his \nchair to James T. Fields in 1861, and in January, \n1864, undertook the editorship of the North Ameri- \ncan Review jointly with Charles Eliot Norton. \n\nIn the North American most of Lowell\'s sub- \nsequent papers on politics and criticism were to \nappear. His political essays evidence his un- \nfailing brilHance, but they are often charged with \nliterary allusions which make one doubt their \nappeal to any but the highly educated few: "In \nthis late advertising tour of a policy in want of a \nparty, Cleon and Agoracritus seem to have joined \npartnership and the manners of the man match \nthose of the master."\' These essays are clearly \nthe work of one who writes from the sanctum in \n\n^ Works, v., 296. \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 25 \n\nan appeal to what must prove a limited circle. \nAt times they show breadth of view and such \nwisdom as could say, as early as 1866: [The South- \nern people] \'\'have won our respect, the people of \nVirginia especially, by their devotion ... in \nsustaining what they believed to be their righteous \nquarrel."^ But one finds at other times a con- \nfusion of expression as well as of thought, a tend- \nency to let argument gyrate instead of advance, an \nindulgence in sophomoric humor and even personal- \nities: \'\'We remember seeing the prodigious nose of \nMr. Tyler (for the person behind it had been added \nby nature merely as the handle to so fine a hatchet) \ndrawn by six white horses through the streets."^ \nThere is no mistaking Lowell in these papers ; he is \nthe enthusiast of 1840 grown older, confident in \nhis point of view, impatient towards a difference \nof opinion, inclined to cocksureness in tone. \n\nLowell\'s best work in the North American was \nnot concerned with politics but with literature. \nFrom 1865 till 1876 he published there all those \ncritical essays which were later to be issued as My \nStudy Windows and as the two volumes of Among \nMy Books. Written as they were at the height of \nhis powers, they furnished the basis on which his \nreputation as a critic largely rests. ^ \n\n^ Works, v., 325. Cf., also, v., 152, 227. \n\n2 Ibid., v., 296. Cf., also, v., 214, 250, 253. \n\n3 Numerous book reviews in various magazines, especially \nin the Atlantic and North American, have not been reprinted. \n\n\n\n26 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nThe years from 1865 to 1872 saw the he^^day of \nLowell\'s achievement, nearly all his best prose \nwritings, many of his finest poems, and his most \nsustained efforts in sanctum and classroom. Feel- \ning the need of a rest after sixteen years of teach- \ning, he resigned his places both as editor and \nprofessor in 1872, and spent the following two years \nin Etirope. The reaction from the labor of teach- \ning and editing brought about a fall in spirits. \n"The prevailing tone of his letters during these \nyears was, as always, cheerful; but reading be- \ntween the lines we can see that his mood partook \nmore and more of a sombre melancholy."^ Some \nmonths were spent in England, a winter in Paris, \nwhere Lowell worked hard at Old French, the \nsummer following in Switzerland and Germany, \nand the winter in Italy. From Naples he writes \nthat he has been "twice to the incomparable \nmuseum which is to me the most interesting in \nthe world." But on the whole his Italian letters \nmake almost no mention of the art treasures which \nsurround him. Remembering this same lack in \nhis letters diuing his earlier jotuneyings, one is \nnot surprised. He received academic honors \nfrom Oxford and Cambridge and returned home \nto America in July, 1874, resolved, as he wrote \nhumorously to Hughes, to try "to be as good as \n\n\xc2\xab Greenslet, p. 174. Lowell writes to Norton, February, \n1874: [I am] "happy for the first time (I mean consciously \nhappy) since I came over here." \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 27 \n\nthe orator [at Cambridge University] said I was." \nHe resumed his teaching at Harvard, being \npersuaded to accept the chair which he had re- \nsigned on going abroad, read incredibly long hours \nevery day, and in his poetry showed a revival of \nhis old-time interest in political reform. Sent \nto the Republican National Convention of 1876, \nhe opposed Blaine, and as a Presidential Elector \nhe voted for Hayes against Tilden in the contested \nelection of that year. \n\nEminent men of letters like Irving and Motley \nhad been sent on diplomatic missions in the past, \nand talk of Lowell for a similar appointment \nbegan to appear in the press. He declined the \npost at Vienna, but later accepted that at Madrid. \nHe dislikes leaving Elmwood, he writes his daugh- \nter, especially \'\'while it is looking so lovely." \nBut the appointment to Madrid \'\'will be of some \nuse to me in my studies." \n\nLowell\'s career as Minister to Spain was success- \nful, but as he wrote almost nothing except what \nhis office demanded, the years 1877 to 1880 have \nlittle bearing on him as a man of letters. He \nbecomes proficient in Spanish, picks up rare edi- \ntions of Don Quixote and the Cronica of the Cid, \nand complains of the lack of scientific booksellers. \nHe was obviously Lowell the man of letters despite \nthe requirements of diplomacy, and it is interesting \nto note that in his dispatches to the State Depart- \nment at Washington he could record that the \n\n\n\n28 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nprettiest women at a great public function were \nthose from Andalusia, and that in writing of the \ndeath of the young Queen Mercedes, he should \nquote a \'\'familiar stanza of Malherbe." \n\nIn the late spring he went on an excursion to \nGreece. Writing to his daughter from Athens, he \nsays he found the town "shabby" and "modem" \nand "was for turning about and going straight \nback again." He visits the Acropolis and the \nParthenon, which do not seem to make any notable \nimpression. His holiday over, he returns to Madrid \nto resume his work. \n\nOne day in January, 1880, he receives notice \nof his transference to the Court of St. James. \nProbably no part of Lowell\'s career gave him \nmore satisfaction than the five years he spent as \nAmerican Minister to England. A notable man \nof letters, a brilliant conversationalist, a ready \nspeaker, the accredited representative of a great \nnation, he had every reason to receive kindly \ntreatment in England. There can be no doubt \nbut that in an important sense Lowell\'s career was \na distinct success. It has been pointed out that \nhis social affiliations centred in the two classes, \nliterary and aristocratic, whose opposition had \nbeen directed against the North in the Civil War. ^ \nOne remembers Lowell\'s bitter attacks upon \nEngland\'s pro-Southern attitude during those \ntense years, and recalls too that the irony of fate \n\n^ Vide Literary World, vol. xvi., 222 fl. \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 29 \n\nhad played other and earlier pranks with him. \nHe seems to have been quite out of touch with \nmen like Bright and Dilke and Chamberlain. \nWas it true that his indolence of temperament led \nhim to \'\'seek the line of least resistance," and that \n"this was for him in England the line of aristocratic \nassociation?"\' \n\nThere was talk of making him Lord Rector of \nSt. Andrews, and before returning to America \nhe refused a nomination to a professorship at \nOxford. But most important for our purpose \nare his literary utterances, especially those on \nFielding, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Cervantes\' \nDon Quixote, which he delivered on various occa- \nsions during his English mission. These critiques \nare not Lowell\'s best work. They are rather \nfragmentary, more like notes hastily assembled \nthan like finished products. He himself was \nconscious of their defects and regretted that his \nofficial duties kept him at the beck of every chance \ninterruption. For one thing especially we may \nnotice them here: the tone is more nearly that of a \nman writing \'\' at the centre" than that of any other \nof his works. He was in London, not in Cambridge, \nMassachussetts, and he recognized that indefin- \nable something which marks the atmosphere of \na cosmopolis. It was a good thing for Lowell to \nbe at the centre and to feel the critical eyes of a \nselect audience in Westminster Abbey leveled \n\n^ Vide Literary World, vol. xvi., 223. \n\n\n\n30 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nupon him. It was unfortunate that cosmopolitan \ninfluence came so late. \n\nSuperseded by Mr. Phelps in his diplomatic \nmission, Lowell returned to America in June, 1885. \nHe had six years still to live, during which the \nlove of friends and wide recognition as the leading \nfigure in American letters were unquestioningly his. \nHe contributed poems now and then to various pub- \nlications, especially to the Atlantic, gave occasional \naddresses, and wrote a few critical essays. This \ncomprised, with one exception, his original work. \nHe looked after the collection and publication of \nvarious of his writings, in prose and verse, which \nhad already reached the public either as addresses \nor in the pages of magazines and reviews. \n\nIt was a remarkable coincidence that Lowell\'s \nlast sustained effort in the field of criticism should, \nlike his earliest one, have to do with the Eliza- \nbethan dramatists; that his last conspicuous ap- \npearance as a lecturer should be, like his first one, \nunder the auspices of the Lowell Institute. It is \ninteresting to compare the thin volume called \nOld English Dramatists, published after Lowell\'s \ndeath, with the earlier papers on the same subject \nin the Boston Miscellany in 1842, and in Conversa- \ntions published two years later. These lectiires \nof 1887, like the early papers, comprise excerpts \nfrom the dramatists, with appreciative comment, \nrather than a body of formal criticism. Like the \nConversations they furnish Lowell a medium for \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 31 \n\nthe expression of his views on various matters: \nthe need of a National Capital ; the value of biog- \nraphy in the appreciation of an author ; the place \nof imagination in life. But Lowell does not \nwander far afield. He comes back to a discus- \nsion of form, of plot, of the refinement of language, \nquestions which were beyond his power adequately \nto treat in Conversations. His tone has the easy \ncertainty born of ripe years given to a study ol the \nsubject; it is the tone of a man who looks at his \naudience from the eminence which belongs to a \nlong life and knowledge of the world and an estab- \nlished reputation in the field of letters. There is \nno striking shift of opinion between the early and \nthe final discussion of the old dramatists, except \nin one instance. To the Lowell of the Boston \nMiscellany and Conversations, Ford is a prime \nfavorite. Said the Lowell of 1 844 : \n\nSet beside almost any of our modern dramatists, \nthere is certainly something grand and free about him \n[Ford] ; and though he has not that * \' large utterance \' \' \nwhich belonged to Shakespeare, and perhaps one or two \nothers of his contemporaries, he sometimes rises into a \nfiery earnestness which falls little short of sublimity. ^ \n\nSays the Lowell of 1887 : \n\nIn reading him [Ford] again after a long interval, \nwith elements of wider comparison, and provided \n\n* Conversations, p. 238. \n\n\n\n32 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nwith more trustworthy tests, I find that the greater \npart of what I once took on trust as precious is really \npaste and pinchbeck. . . . He abounds especially \nin mock pathos. . . . Having once come to know the \njealous secretiveness of real sorrow, we resent these \nconspiracies to waylay our sympathy. ^ \n\nOne can explain and to some extent appreciate \nLowell\'s resentment over what he deems mock \npathos, if one remembers that this is the Lowell \nwho but two short years before had seen his wife \nlaid to rest in an English grave. \n\nIt was to miscellaneous literary work that \nLowell devoted these last years. But he did not \nforget the friends across the Atlantic. He sailed \nto England to spend there the summer of 1886 and \nmade the voyage again in the spring of 1887. He \nsoon found himself, he writes, "trotting around \nin the old vicious circle of dinners and receptions." \nLondon stimulated him. "It amuses and interests \nme. My own vitality seems to reinforce itself \nas if by some unconscious transfusion of blood \nfrom these ever throbbing arteries of life into my \nown." But he was steadily getting to the point \nwhere such stimulus was becoming ineffectual, \nfor his physical vitality was on the wane. He \nspent the two following summers in England,^ \nand on returning devoted himself to revising the \n\n\' Old English Dramatists, p. 128 ff. \n\n\' In June, 1888, Lowell received the degree of Doctor of Letters \nfrom the University of Bologna. \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 33 \n\nfinal edition of his works. Unable to get about \nexcept with great pain, he reads Scott and Boswell\'s \nJohnson and "Kipling\'s stories . . . with real \npleasure." He was a reader to the end. \n\nJames Russell Lowell died at Elmwood in \nCambridge, August 12, 1891. \n\nWhat now is one to keep in mind about Lowell.^ \nHis father was a man of charming manner, ardent \npiety, but of little originality. His mother was \naccredited with second sight. She had a romantic \nnature and was a great reader. In Lowell him- \nself were blended the strong common-sense and \nconservatism of New England forebears and the \ntendency to romance and mysticism which was \nhis maternal heritage. As early as 1840 he has \nvisions; after his first wife\'s death he sees her in \ndreams; as late as 1889 he tells Dr. Mitchell that \n\'\'commonly he saw a figure in medieval costume \nwhich kept on one side of him."\' The world \nthat eludes mortal eyes seems always ready to \nbecome palpable to his vision. This mystic strain \nin him does not always conjure up pleasant or \neven neutral imaginings. "I remember," he \nwrites in 1884, "I remember the ugly fancy I had \nsometimes that I was another person, and used \nto hesitate at the door [of my study] when I came \nback from my late night walks, lest I should find \nthe real owner of the room sitting in my chair \nbefore the fire." \n\n^ Letters^ ii., 371 (note). \n3 \n\n\n\n34 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nIt is obvious that such a man will be to a con- \nsiderable extent the creature of moods. He says \nof himself: \n\nFor me Fate gave, whate\'er she else denied, \nA nature sloping to the southern side; \nI thank her for it, though when clouds arise \nSuch natures double-darken gloomy skies. \n\nThe pleasant moods were ebullient. "I am sure \nthat for my single self, I always am a fool when \nI am happy."\' His letters at such a time sparkle \nwith quips and cranks and puns; one cannot but \nwonder how such a buoyant creature could ever \nknow depression. But the depression comes. \nHe writes in 1884: \'\'Every now and then my good \nspirits carry me away and people find me amusing, \nbut reaction always sets in the moment I am left \nto myself." We shall return to this last sentence \nagain. \n\nLowell frequently accuses himself of dilatoriness \nand indolence, "constitutional indolence," he \ncalls it. In moments of depression he thinks of \nthis weakness as almost fatal: "I have thrown \naway hours enough to have made a handsome \nreputation out of."^ In 1878 he speaks of willing \nhis books to the Harvard Library, "whither they \nwill go when I am in Mount Auburn, with so much \nundone that I might have done. I hope my grand- \n\n^ Letters, i., 45. * Ibid., ii., 179. \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 35 \n\nsons will have some of the method I have always \nlacked." He finds it depressing (in 1889) "to \nbe reminded that one has lived so long and done \nso little."^ These are the regrets of a man suffer- \ning not merely from a mood of depression, but \nfrom the consciousness of a fatal defect within \nhimself which robbed his accomplishment of its \nbest vitality. What this defect was will be evident \nlater on. \n\nAt least once Lowell\'s mood carried him, as \nwe have seen, close to sentimentality.^ But \nwhile the temperament of his fathers and his own \nsense of htimor kept him from such an extreme \nthereafter, his vein of sentiment lay ever near the \nsurface. At eighteen he likes *\'the poetry that \nsends a cold thrill through one . . . and brings \ntears into one\'s eyes." He says he could never \nread the bibhcal passage, "Bless me, even me also, \nmy Father!" without tears in his eyes. Love, \nthe greatest of sentiments, affected him deeply. \nWe are not surprised at his youthful susceptibility, \nand are prepared to find that \'\'in common with \nPetrarch, Dante, Tasso, and Byron, I was desper- \nately in love before I was ten years oJd."^ At \neighteen he writes: \'\'Shack, pity me! I am in \nlove \xe2\x80\x94 and have been so for some time, hopelessly \n\n^ Letters, ii., 367. \n\n\xe2\x80\xa2 Vide Letters^ i., loi. Cf. "I do abhor sentimentality from \nthe bottom of my soul." \xe2\x80\x94 Ihid., i., 205. \nJ Ihid., i., 18. \n\n\n\n36 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nin love." One day at Allston\'s gallery, "I saw \nsomething that drove me almost crazy with de- \nlight. You know how beauty always affects me. \nWell, yesterday I saw the most beautiful creature \nI ever set these eyes upon ! \'Twere vain to attempt \nto describe her," etc\' One must note how ebul- \nliently enthusiastic he is when pleased. Shake- \nspeare awoke in him a not utterly dissimilar \nenthusiasm. To the attraction of feminine influ- \nence Lowell was always open. Engaged to Maria \nWhite, he responded for years to the powerful \nstimulus which her temperament and nature \nexerted upon his. At a later period, Frances \nDunlop, a woman ot fine distinction of mind, \ncame into his life to fill that void which the death of \nhis first wile had left. Many of his most delightful \nletters were written to women. One notices that \nduring his last years his correspondence is more \nand more devoted to his feminine friends, the \ndelicate responsiveness of whose sympathy he \ndoubtless felt answered to his needs. "I always \nthirst after affection, and depend more on the \nexpression of it than is altogether wise."^ \n\nThis dependence, it is fair to suggest, seems not \nto be a necessity to Lowell in this direction alone. \nOne remembers his letter quoted above: "People \nfind me amusing but the reaction always sets in \nthe moment I am left to myself." These confes- \nsions suggest an important question : Was Lowell \n\n\' Letters, i., 40. \' Ibid., ii., 76. \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 37 \n\nsufficient unto himself? Did he stand in need of \nimpulses from without in order not merely to \nmaintain an equable mood but to awaken that \nactivity within him which found expression in his \nmore important literary work? Whichever way \nwe answer this question it is certain that influences \nquite outside himself played a notably large part \nin Lowell\'s life. His first poem of any worth is \nevoked by his position as class poet. He abandons \nthe law only to resume it because he is impelled \nto emulation by the oratory of Webster. He falls \nimder the spell of Maria White and her ideas \nbecome his. Her pet interest, abolitionism, be- \ncomes his pet interest, until with her declining \nhealth he is thrown more into contact with his \ncircle of acquaintances in Cambridge. His ardor \ncools and he decides in 1850 not to \'\'glance towards \nreform" in his new poem, The Nooning. The \nMexican War evokes his first popular poetic \nwork, the Biglow Papers, just as the Civil War, by \ndemanding the lives of some dear ones among his \nkin, furnishes the impulse for the second series of \nthe same work. His first effective criticism he \nprepares to fulfill his obligations to the Lowell \nInstitute, and he studies hard in the field of lin- \nguistics in his capacity of professor at Harvard. \nThe Atlantic Monthly stimulates him to hard work \nand to some production, and it is while editor of \nthe North American that he writes the most of his \ncritical essays and political papers. The demands \n\n\n\n38 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nof occasion produce nearly all the remaining prose \nwritings which are now among his published works. \nIn poetry, those three odes which may be con- \nsidered his opera magna are the fruit of occasion. \nIs it too much to conclude that Lowell showed a \nmarked dependence on stimuli outside of himself \nand that such dependence points to a source of \nweakness?^ \n\nIt has already been pointed out that Lowell was \nan enthusiast. Men and things that he likes, he \nlikes superlatively. When he changes his opin- \nions, he becomes as enthusiastic on the new side \nas on the old. He sneers at Emerson and then \nworships him; laughs at abolitionism, then makes \nit a fetish for years ; attacks the Confederate States \nbitterly for treachery, =^ and then compliments \nthem for their devotion to the cause they believed \nright; flings sarcasm at the English aristocracy^ \nand then pays them charming compliments in his \naddress on Democracy. There is no purgatory \nwith Lowell. Perhaps there was more than a \ngrain of truth in Poe\'s declaration that Lowell was \na "fanatic in whatever circumstances you place \nhim." 4 \n\nThis enthusiasm of Lowell\'s did not destroy \n\n^Lowell ** liked to have some one help him idle the time \naway, and keep him as long as possible from his work," How- \nells, Literary Friends and Acquaintance, p. 213. \n\n^ Works, Y.,^0. 3 Ibid., v., 214. \n\n^ Poe\'s Works (Stoddard\'s Edition), vi., 240. \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 39 \n\nthat basic conservatism which was his heritage \nfrom his New England ancestry. "Lowell was \nat heart, as by temperament, a conservative," \nsays his friend Ciirtis. "I was always a natiiral \nTory," Lowell himself confesses. In his yotmger \ndays he attended an anti-slavery convention in \nBoston (May, 1844), in which a vote for disunion \nwas carried. Enthusiastic abolitionist though he \nwas, Lowell voted against the measiu\'e. He did \nnot want secession nor did he want war, and as \nlate as January, 1861, his tone is that of a man \nwho cannot convince himself that the govern- \nment he has known and always taken for granted \nis on the eve of a mortal struggle. Devoted \nthough he was to Emerson personally, he never \nbecame deeply impregnated with transcendental- \nism and pictured it with broad humor in his essay \non Thoreau. He was a friend and admirer of \nAgassiz, but that phase of nineteenth century \nscience which we call evolutionism awakened his \ndistrust. He feared it might usurp the place of \n\'\'that set of higher instincts which mankind have \nfound solid under their feet in all weathers."^ \nHis address on Democracy is essentially a plea for \nconservatism. Accept yotu* government as it is, he \nadvises ; make it a good government by being your- \nselves as individuals honest, unselfish, and patriotic. \n\n^Letters, ii., 245. Cf. ihid., ii., 168. Cf. also, ibid., ii., \n325: "I am a conservative (warranted to wash), and keep on \nthe safe side \xe2\x80\x94 with God as against Evolution." \n\n\n\n40 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nInterested as Lowell was in politics, he showed \nhis interest by active participation on only one \noccasion. He wrote numerous political papeis \nwhose appeal could be only to the cultured elect. \nHis political ideas were all in the large. They were \nthe ideas of a man who loves, \n\n"Walled with silent books, \nTo hear nor heed the world\'s unmeaning noise, \nSafe in my fortress stored with lifelong joys." \n\nLowell knew men, in fact, far less from personal \ncontact than from commune with those same \n"silent books." When he starts a magazine he \nwants to educate the public by telling it that all \nthe other magazines serve up "thrice-diluted \ntrash" which tends to the \'\'deterioration of every \nmoral and intellectual faculty." One would \nhardly regard this as the attitude of a man who \nunderstood human natiu-e. When he attempts \nto write a serio-comic poem called Our Own (1853) \nfor Putnam\'s, he heads it with quotations from the \nGreek, Latin, and English, has a digression in \nimitation of Spenser, ambles carelessly along at \nhis own sweet will, and then feels hurt when the \npoem fails. "I doubt if your magazine," he \nwrites the editor, "will become really popular if \nyou edit it for the mob." The implication is too \nevident to be missed. His letters, delightful \nthough^ they are, give us no penetrating psycho- \n\n\n\nLOWELL: THE MAN AND THE WRITER 41 \n\nlogical glimpses of men or women he knew. Even \nwhen writing of his father, of whom his knowledge \nmust have been the most intimate, he gets no \ndeeper than his simplicity and magnanimity. It \nwill be interesting to keep all this in mind when \nstudying Lowell\'s critical essays. \n\nHere is Lowell then, with his moods, grave or \ngay; his sensitiveness to impressions, which be- \ncame at times so acute as to objectify his imagin- \nings; a susceptibility to the beauty of women and \nto the responsive sympathy of their nature; a \nneed of stimulation from outside himself; an \nenthusiasm which was not dampened even with \nchanges of opinion; abiding conservatism and a \nknowledge of human nature which was limited \xe2\x80\x94 \nthe offspring of multitudinous books rather than \nof contact with men. \n\n\n\nCHAPTER II \n\nTHE RANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE \n\nALL his life Lowell was a voluminous reader. \nIn college he \'\'made friendships" with books \n*\'that have lasted me for life." He covered \n"such diverse works as Terence, Hume, Smollett, \nthe Anthologia Graeca, Hakluyt, Boileau, Scott, \nand Southey. "\' This bent for reading continued \nall his life. He wrote in 1854: "I am one of \nthe last of the great readers," and adds that he \nstudied "an incredible number of hours" every \nday. He had a large fund of intellectual curiosity, \nfor as early as 1836 he said: "Milton has excited \nmy ambition to read all the Greek and Latin \nclassics which he did." \n\nIn Greek and Latin he received a good training \nat Mr. Wells\' school and he continued these \nstudies all through college. In fact, Latin, Greek, \nand mathematics were the chief studies in the \ncurriculimi at Harvard in Lowell\'s time. He \nseems to have had a good command of these lan- \nguages although he protested strongly that the \n\n^ Scudder, i., 32 \n\n42 \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 43 \n\ngreat authors of antiquity should not be "degraded \nfrom teachers of thinking to drillers in grammar, \nand made the ruthless pedagogues of root and \ninflection, instead of companions for whose society \nthe mind must put on her highest mood. . . . \nWhat concern have we with the shades of dialect \nin Homer or Theocritus, provided they speak the \nspiritual lingua franca that abolishes all alienage of \nrace, and makes whatever shore of time we land \non hospitable and homelike?"^ This last sen- \ntence throws light on Lowell\'s attitude towards \nall literatures: they are great in so far as they \nappeal to what is universal in men by transcending \nthe bounds of time and place and circumstance. \nThe classic tongues are not dead, since in them so \nmuch that is hving has been written.^ They \nare surcharged with life as \'\'perhaps no other \nwriting, except Shakespeare\'s, ever was or will be." \nHow great are Plato and Aristotle ! They are the \nmasters of those who know. Greek literature \nis "the most fruitful comment on oiu* own." \nTranslation from the Greek into English, he says, \nis invaluable for securing a mastery of our own \ntongue, and he inquires what great mind since \nthe Renaissance has failed to be satiu-ated with \nGreek literature. \n\nThe Greeks, he asserts, "must furnish us with \nour standard of comparison," and from their \nliterature more clearly than from any other source \n\n* Works, iii., 33. ^ Ihid., vi., 165. \n\n\n\n44 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nare to be deduced "the laws of proportion, of \ndesign." He maintains that the persistence of \npoets in endeavoring to reproduce Greek tragedy \nis owing to a superstition regarding Greek and \nLatin which is a heritage from the revival of \nlearning. The \'\'simple and downright way of \nthinking" of the Greeks, "loses all its savor when \nwe assume it to ourselves by an effort of thought. " ^ \n\nLowell would not be understood as denying the \nvalue or the beauty of Greek tragedy. His \ninsistence was on our making literature the \nimmediate reflex of a civilization in which, with \nits manifold phases, we have a share and in which, \nultimately, we put our faith. There is no art \nwithout life; no life without a simple faith in the \ntimes of which it is the expression. Greek drama \nwas "primarily Greek and secondarily human," \nand though it makes a steady appeal yields an \neven wider dominion to Shakespearean tragedy.^ \n"There is nothing in ancient art to match Shake- \nspeare." ^ \n\nLowell finds Aristophanes to be "beyond ques- \ntion the highest type of pure comedy, " and brings \nhome his contention about the perennially human \nin Greek literature, by declaring that he is "by \nthe vital and essential qualities of his humorous \nsatire . . . more nearly our contemporary than \nMoli^re. "4 Por ^schylus he has intense regard, \n\n* Works, ii,, 136. =\xc2\xbb Ibid., iv., 232, and iii., 65. \n\n3 Ibid., i., 212. 4 Ibid., iii., 64. \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 45 \n\ndeclaring that he "soars over the other Greek \ntragedians Hke an eagle."\' Nearly all the refer- \nences in Lowell to Greek literature are concerned \nwith ^schylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aris- \ntophanes. His intimacy with thece appears in his \nessay on Shakespeare, where he points out similari- \nties between their dramas and Shakespeare\'s, and \ncites parallel passages, quoting from the original \nGreek. Lowell gives frequent mention to Homer, \nand tells us that he prefers the Odyssey to the Iliad; \nbut he goes into no serious discussion as to the \nsotu*ces of Homer\'s power. \n\nLowell evidently did not get to feel that final \nintimacy with Greek which makes a language part \nof oneself; for he speaks of divining a certain \nresemblance between Shakespeare and ^schylus \n"through the mists of a language which will not \nlet me be sure of what I see. "^ \n\nWhile Lowell praised highly the study of Latin \nas well as of Greek, he expresses no uncertain \nopinion about Latin literature in his essay on \nChaucer : \n\nIt may well be doubted whether Roman literature, \nalways a half-hardy exotic, could ripen the seeds \nof living reproduction. The Roman genius was \neminently practical and far more apt for the triumphs \nof politics and jurisprudence than of art. Supreme \nelegance it could and did arrive at in Virgil, but ... \n\n^ WorkSf ii., 126. * Ibid., iii., 45. \n\n\n\n46 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nit produced but one original poet . . . Horace . . . \nThere are a half dozen pieces of Catullus unsurpassed \n... for lyric grace and fanciful tenderness . . . \nOne profound imagination, one man, who with a \nmore prosperous subject might have been a great poet, \nlifted Roman literature above its ordinary level of \ntasteful common-sense.^ \n\nThis poet was Lucretius. Horace was the "poet \nof social life," whose best work had point, com- \npactness, and urbane tone. He pierces through \nthe hedge of language and, a cosmopolitan, makes \na wide appeal.^ Virgil had art and power "not \nonly of being strong in parts, but of making those \nparts coherent in an harmonious whole and tribu- \ntary to it." Tacitus is mentioned several times \nin a way that suggests how intimate was Lowell\'s \nknowledge of his work. Ovid was apparently not \na favorite with the critic, who declared that if the \npoet "instead of sentimentalizing in the Tristia \nhad left behind him a treatise on the language of \nthe Getae ... we should have thanked him for \nsomething more truly valuable than all his poems."\' \nBut he is alive to Ovid\'s influence: "The only \nLatin poet who can be supposed to have influenced \nthe spirit of medieval literature is Ovid."^ In a \nletter to C. E. Norton, he expressed satisfaction on \nstudying Lucan again, "since I bethought me for \n\n^ Works, iii., 305 ff. \' Ibid., il, 252; iv., 282; 266. \n\ni Ibid., i., 121. * Ibid., iii., $01. \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 47 \n\nthe first time that Lucan was the true protoge- \nnist of the concettisti.\'\'^ In much the same way, \nwhen speaking of modem sentiment aHsm, Lowell \nsuggests that a tendency towards it began with \nEuripides and Ovid. As in the case of the Greek \nwriters, so too with the Latins : Lowell always has \nthem within ready reach of his retentive memory. \nThis fine memory of Lowell\'s was indeed a sine \nqua non for one who was to acquire a knowledge of \nlanguages as wide as his. His acquaintance with \nFrench, German, Italian, and Spanish, he perfected \nby residence in Europe which extended in all over \nmany years. He gave courses at various times \nduring his professorship in German, Spanish, Old \nFrench, and in Dante. He went thoroughly into \nthe Early English Text Society\'s series and wrote \nin 1874: \n\nI have now reached the point where I feel sure enough \nof myself in Old French and Old English to make my \ncorrections with a pen instead of a pencil as I go \nalong. Ten hours a day, on an average, I have been \nat it for the last two months, and get so absorbed \nthat I turn grudgingly to anything else. \n\nGerman, Lowell wrote in 1875, "^^ the open \nsesame to a large culture. " It made many things \nin English literature clearer to him and was very \ninteresting for its own sake. To only one German \n\n* Letters, ii., 333. Allusions like those in Letters, i., 14, 367, \n377, and 396 are eloquent of Lowell\'s intimacy with the classics. \n\n\n\n48 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nwriter, however, did Lowell devote a literary study : \nhe contributed an article on Lessing to the North \nAmerican Review for April, 1867. Goethe he \nalludes to frequently and in a way which shows a \nclose knowledge and a deep admiration. Lowell \ncalls him \'\'the last of the great poets,*\' and the \n"most widely receptive of critics"; but he "often \nfails in giving artistic coherence to his longer \nworks. \' \' \' Though the \' \' figtire of Goethe is grand \' \' \nand "rightfully preeminent," Lowell gives us no \nstudy of him \xe2\x80\x94 only obiter dicta. The occasional \nreference to Schiller or Richter or Heine, with his \n"airy humor \' \' and * \' sense of form \' \' and \' * profound \npathos," only surprises one the more at the com- \nparatively slight impression which German liter- \nature seems to have made on Lowell.^ \n\nGerman scholarship he regarded with divided \nfeelings. He acknowledged the " admirable thor- \noughness of the German intellect," which has \n"supplied the raw material in almost every branch \nof science for the defter wits of other nations to \nwork on . " But German criticism, * \' by way of being \nprofound, too often burrows in delighted darkness \nquite beneath its subject, till the reader feels the \nground hollow beneath him, and is fearful of cav- \ning into unknown depths of stagnant metaphysic \nair at every step. \' \' ^ Yet he finds German criticism \n\n^ Works, ii., 167. \n\n* Cf. Publications of the Mod. Lang. Ass\'n of America, vol. vii., \np. 25 ff. 3 Works, ii., 163. \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 49 \n\npreeminent in penetration though \'\'seldom lucid \nand never entertaining. It may turn its light, if we \nhave patience, into every obscurest cranny of its \nsubject . . . but it never flashes light out of the \nsubject itself, as Sainte-Beuve ... so often does, \nand with such unexpected charm."\' \n\nIn the field of French literature, Rousseau repre- \nsents Lowell\'s only essay. But his work neverthe- \nless is rich in allusions and comparisons such as \nwotild be possible only to one to whom French \nliterature was an intimate possession. This is \nespecially true in his essay on Dryden where in dis- \ncussing French versification he points out defects \nin lines from Comeille\'s Cinna, which \'\'Voltaire \n. . . does not notice ... in his minute comment \non this play"; in his essay on Pope and in that on \nChaucer, where his knowledge of Old French liter- \nature is made to throw light upon the interesting \nquestion of Chaucer\'s indebtedness "for poetical \nsuggestion or literary culture." When he comes \nto discuss the sounding of final and medial e in \nChaucer, he at once appeals to Marie de France \nand Wace and the Roman de la Rose. \n\nOf his Da7ite, his longest and most ambitious \nessay in criticism, Lowell said it was the result \nof twenty years of study. On reading the essay \none cannot but be impressed with the amount of \nmatter he has accumulated. One begins to under- \nstand why his Dante classes at college were his \n\n^ Works, ii., 166. \n\n4 \n\n\n\n50 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nbest. He has left no point iintouched, from a \nconsideration of German, French, and English \nstudies of Dante, down to a suggestion that Dante \nmay have been influenced by the doctrine of the \nOriental Sufis. Lowell\'s admiration for the great \npoet is eloquent throughout the essay. As for \nPetrarch, poet and humanist, the critic concedes \nto him a wide influence on modem literature, due \nto the "charm of elegance," but finds his famous \nsonnets inferior to those of Michael Angelo. \nPetrarch he calls the first great sentimentalist, \nwhose emotion demands of us to shiver before a \npainted flame. ^ Boccaccio receives scarcely a \nmention save as the biographer of Dante. But in \na letter to Norton, Lowell says : \n\nI have read Boccaccio nearly through since commence- \nment \xe2\x80\x94 I mean the Decameron, in order to appreciate \nhis style. I find it very charming, and him clearly \nthe forerunner of modern prose. A singular sweet- \nness, ease, and grace. Nothing came near it for \ncenturies. \n\nJust as in Italian literature Lowell was con- \ncerned with the great figures, so too in the liter- \natiu-e of Spain. His Spanish course at Harvard \nwas concerned mostly with Don Quixote. He \ndevoted, strange to say, none of his essays to \nSpanish literature, and the address on Don Quixote \nat the Working Men\'s College, London, is little \n\n* Works, ii., 253 ff. passim. \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\xc2\xbbS KNOWLEDGE 51 \n\nmore than a \'\'few illustrative comments on his one \nimmortal book." If Lowell knew his Cervantes \nmore minutely than his Calderon, the dramatist is \ncloser to his heart. ^ As a dramatist: "For fasci- \nnation of style and profound suggestion, it would \nbe hard to name another author superior to Cal- \nderon, if indeed equal to him."* He writes in one \nof his letters: \'\'Calderon is surely one of the most \nmarvelous of poets," and again as late as 1890: \n"There are greater poets, but none so constantly \ndelightful." That Spanish dramatist whose fec- \nundity has always been a marvel, is passed over \nin all but utter silence. The most Lowell has to \nsay about him occurs in a letter written in 1889: \n"I have done some reading in Lope de Vega, but \nam not drawn to him or by him as to and by Cal- \nderon. Yet he is wonderful too in his way. " \n\nThere can be no doubt about the advantages \nwhich a knowledge of many literatures brought to \nLowell.^ It gave him an opportunity to secure \nstandards for judgment and bases for comparison. \nBut the comparisons are seldom expressed except \nin ohiter fashion. Shakespeare\'s use of language is \ncompared with that of the Greek tragedians; \nGreek drama with the modem; Shakespeare with \n\n^ Vide "Nightingale in the Study," Poetical Works, iii., 282. \n\n2 Works, vi., 116. \n\n3 " I think that to know the Hterature of another language . . . \ngives us the prime benefits of foreign travel." \xe2\x80\x94 Latest Literary \nEssays, p. 139. \n\n\n\n52 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nDante as to preeminent qualities; Voltaire with \nPope \'\'as an author with whom the gift of writing \nwas primary and that of verse secondary"; Chau- \ncer and Dante are compared and contrasted \xe2\x80\x94 the \nmost ambitious of these ventures. But these and \nsimilar instances by their very infrequency only \nimpress one with what might be and is not. For \nthe most part Lowell\'s comparisons are of writers \nwithin the same literature and that in English, \nas Milton with Shakespeare, Dry den with Pope, \nByron with Wordsworth and Keats. He wearies \nquickly of sustained comparison and seems eager \nto have done with it. Usually the reference to a \nsecond literature is to furnish either an illustration \nof a single quality in the writer under discussion or \na quotation bearing on the point at issue. He \nsays for example : Dryden\'s ^\'obiter dicta have often \nthe penetration, and always more than the equity, \nof Voltaire\'s, for Dry den never loses temper, and \nnever altogether qualifies his judgment by his self- \nlove. "\' Lowell, like Goethe, regards Samson \nAgonistes as the "most successful attempt at \nreproducing the Greek tragedy." He adds: \n"Goethe admits that it alone, among modem \nworks, has caught life from the breath of the \nantique spirit."\'\' The I phi genie, Lowell implies, \nis a failure. But he does not compare Milton\'s \ndrama directly with Goethe\'s to show the reason \nwhy, although such a comparison would have \n\n* Works, iii., 179. \' Ibid., ii., 133. \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 53 \n\ntended to bring out clearly the reasons for Milton\'s \nsuccess and Goethe\'s failure, and to lend more \ncolor to the critic\'s contention that the employ- \nment of essentially Greek subjects or the imitation \nof Greek forms is foredoomed to failure. With \nsuch exceptional equipment as Lowell possessed, \nit seems strange that he did not venture further \nthan the mere confines of comparative criticism. \nIt may be that he deliberately held back. \n\nOutside of English literatirre, his allusions to \nimportant figures of the nineteenth century are \nmostly confined to the French, and these are scant \nenough: Victor Hugo is the \'\'greatest living \nrepresentative" of sentiment alism, and, \'\'con- \nvinced that, as founder of the French Romantic \nSchool, there is a kind of family likeness between \nhimself and Shakespeare, stands boldly forth to \nprove the father as extravagant as the son. "^ \nSainte-Beuve makes his subject luminous^; Balzac \n(who gets no mention in his works) is said in his \nletters to yield "to the temptation of melodrama" \nand to be inferior to Charles de Bernard in knowl- \nedge of the great world. ^ \n\nIn English literature Lowell has turned his \nattention somewhat to the nineteenth century and \nhas come down beyond Keats and Wordsworth to \nconsider a few of his contemporaries. But Carlyle, \nThoreau, Swinburne, and Landor were by no means \nhis most important essays either in length or in \n\n^ Works, iii., 63. \' Ibid., ii., 166. 3 Letters^ ii., 429. \n\n\n\n54 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nsoundness of judgment. His attention was cen- \ntred upon established classics and that atten- \ntion, as shown in his essays, was for the most \npart devoted to the classics of English literature in \nthe domain of poetry. \n\nFrom Chaucer down his essays on the great poets \nform a history of English poetical literattire. \nBeginning with Chaucer he has sketched that \npoet\'s sources "for poetical suggestion or literary \nculture: the Latins, the Troubadours, the Trou- \nv^res, and the Italians," and in the course of the \nessay touches on Gower and Langland. In \nSpenser he goes into a consideration of English \npoetry from the death of Chaucer to the rise of \nSpenser. The fifteenth century is a barren waste \nto Lowell\'s mind. " On the whole, Scottish poetry \nof the fifteenth century has more meat in it than \nthe English," and he pauses to consider Dunbar, \nBarbour, and Gawain Douglas. He then takes \nup Skelton, Gascoigne, Wyatt, and Siurey, whose \nverse is "fiat, thin, and regular," touches on the \nballad, discusses Sidney, bestows considerable \nspace and praise on Drayton and Daniel, and then, \nafter this rapid survey in twenty pages, is ready for \na lengthy consideration of Spenser. Taking up \nnext the study of Shakespeare, Lowell touches \nupon the condition of things in the poet\'s time : the \nexhilaration which followed the Reformation, \nthe dissemination of knowledge through printing, \nthe stimulus of discovery across the virgin seas, \xe2\x80\x94 \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 55 \n\nthose influences, in a word, which went to make \nthe English nation vibrant with energy. The \nlanguage was vital, the medium of expression for \nbig hearts and keen brains ; and in London among \nthe set that created on the stage of the metropolis \na new world of Fancy, Shakespeare got to know \nthe very wellsprings of speech. ^ The moment was \nauspicious, says Lowell, and the greatest of poets \ncame as the culmination of one of the greatest of \nhterary eras. Milton follows and bridges over \nthe seventeenth century between Shakespeare and \nDry den. Lowell, with his eye on Masson, pays \nless attention than in the essays on Chaucer, \nSpenser, and Shakespeare to connecting his poet \nwith the preceding era. In Dryden he returns to \nthe breadth of view of the literary historian. He \npoints out that the author of Absalom and Achito- \nphel had fallen upon an age when that moral dis- \nintegration was in process which was to result in \nscepticism; that Dryden was the \'\'first of the \nmodems"; that he recognized the Time-Spirit \nand to a great extent worshipped at its shrine. \nIn Pope the critic goes back to the Restoration, \npointing out the imitation of "French manners, \nFrench morals, and, above all, French taste. "^ \nFrench taste and French principles of criticism \ntritmiphed in England, he declares, chiefly through \nthe championship of Dryden. ^ But the upheaval \nof allegiance and political ideas had left English \n\n^ Works, iii., 7 ff. ^ Jbid., iv., 11. 3 Ibid., iv., 16. \n\n\n\n56 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nminds open to the influx of new \xe2\x80\x94 and French \xe2\x80\x94 \nideas. Precision and finesse usurped the place \nof imagination. ReHgion became a badge of \nparty; scepticism lay at the root of faith.\' We \nnow have the age of Pope. Thus far, among \nthe great English poets who preceded him, we \nhave seen \'\'actual life represented by Chaucer, \nimaginative life by Spenser, ideal life by Shake- \nspeare, the interior life by Milton; . . . conven- \ntional life . . . found or made a most fitting \n[poet] in Pope."^\' \n\nIn Gray, Lowell gives a backward glance at \nMilton and at Dryden who, though only twenty- \nthree years yotinger than Milton, \'\'belongs to \nanother world." Dryden, already the subject of \nan earlier essay, is too interesting a figure in \nLowell\'s eyes to be passed over in silence, and \nafter touching on his style and his manner, the \ncritic points out the self-satisfaction, the moral \nelbowroom, the acceptance of things as they are, \nwhich belonged to the eighteenth century. With \nall its supposed lack of inspiration, the century \nproduced Addison and Pope, Fielding and Sterne, \nGoldsmith and Gray. "Toward the middle of \nthe century . . . two books were published . . . \nDodsley\'s Old Plays (1744) ^^nd Percy\'s Ballads \n(1765)," which "gave the first impulse to the \nromantic reaction against a miscalled classicism, \nand were the seed of the literary renaissance."^ \n\n^ Works ^ iv., 19. 2 Ibid,^ iv., 25. 3 Latest Literary Essays, p. 1 2 . \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 57 \n\nWordsworth and Keats bring the history of EngHsh \npoetic literature into the nineteenth century. \n\nAll this is of value and one gets from a study of \nthese essays a wide general view of the history \nof English poetical literature from Chaucer down. \nOne feels throughout that Lowell has read every \npoet he discusses, however far he may be from \nthe main highway of poetry. But one may charge \nthe critic with vagueness of expression if not of \nthought, with lack of consecuity in arrangement \nof matter, with contradictions, omissions, and \nerrors which one finds it sometimes difficult to \ndistinguish as of fact or of judgment. He speaks, \nfor example, of the "amalgamation of the Saxon, \nNorman, and scholarly elements of English" \nbeing brought about by the Elizabethan stage, \nand declares that Shakespeare was "doubly for- \nttinate" in being "Saxon by the father and Nor- \nman by the mother."\' One draws the inference \nthat there still existed about the last quarter of the \nsixteenth century a divorce between the Saxon \nand Norman elements in blood and speech. One \nfeels awakened in one\'s mind an lui comfortable \ndoubt about Lowell\'s historical accuracy; a con- \nviction that he had forgotten Chaucer, in whom \n"we see the first result of the Norman yeast upon \nthe home-baked Saxon loaf, " and who "found his \nnative tongue a dialect and left it a language."^ \nIn Dryden, the critic gives a false impression of the \n\n^ WorkSf iii., 7. \' Ibid., iii.,321 and 329. \n\n\n\n58 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nfacts of literary history when he says: "In 1678, \nthe public mind had so far recovered its [moral] \ntone that Dryden\'s comedy of Limberham was \nbarely tolerated for three nights." To leave this \nstatement uncircumstanced is to make it almost \nimpossible to imderstand how Vanbrugh\'s Relapse \ncould have triumphed on the London stage in 1696. \nIn Pope Lowell first discusses the Romantic move- \nment of the eighteenth century; then turns for \na page to Pope who was lauded by Voltaire and \nwhose fame was European; then refers to conti- \nnental Romanticism; next discusses the school of \nBoileau, a topic which reminds him that "a \ncentury earlier the School of Cultists had estab- \nlished a dominion." The Cultists next engage \nhis attention; they had their day and "went down \nbefore the implacable good sense of French criti- \ncism"; an analogy exists between cultism and \nthe style of Pope, for whose arrival "circumstances \nhad prepared the way." Then follows a dis- \ncussion of the Restoration, of English sensitiveness \nto ridicule as shown even in Shakespeare\'s time, \nand of Caroline licentiousness. Next Dryden \nis taken up and the sceptical turn of the later \nseventeenth century; the influence of French \ncriticism on the English literature of the day is \ngone into, correctness is touched on, and at last, \nafter twenty-four pages, we come to the main \npoint \xe2\x80\x94 a consideration of Pope. Such lack of \nconsecuity does not impugn Lowell\'s knowledge, \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 59 \n\nwhich in its important phases is sound ; but it does \ntend to lessen its value to the reader, who not \nunnaturally comes to suspect as but partially \nassimilated that knowledge which is presented in \nso confused a way. \n\nSins of omission and errors of fact are not want- \ning in Lowell. The importance of the Lyrical \nBallads is passed over with the remark that they \nattempted a reform in poetry.^ The famous \nPrefaces gain no consideration beyond the state- \nment that Wordsworth shifted his ground some- \nwhat in theory and notably in practice. ^^ Lowell \nsays nothing about Wordsworth\'s place in that \nRomantic Movement which, taking its rise during \nthe eighteenth century, tiurned to the full tide \nat the beginning of the nineteenth. The place \nwhich belongs to Wordsworth in the forefront of \nthe movement is given to Keats, who is called "the \nfirst resolute and wilful heretic, the true founder \nof the modern school, which admits no cis-Eliza- \nbethan authority save Milton. "^ it would be \ninteresting to know on what grounds Lowell would \ndefend this concession to Keats to the exclusion of \nColeridge and Wordsworth. He is constantly \nexpressing opinions which he lays down with a \nfinality as of fact. When he says, "Dryden was \nthe first Englishman who wrote perfectly easy \n\n^ Works, iv., 302. * Ihid., i., 245. \n\n3 Ihid., iii.,98. In Works, {., 245, he says that Keats\' reaction \nwas an "unconscious expression." \n\n\n\n6o LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nprose, "^ one wonders why he ignored Cowley. \nBut such lapses belong properly to another chapter. \nThey are valuable in this place only as showing \nthat Lowell\'s knowledge \xe2\x80\x94 and there can be no \nquestion of its amplitude \xe2\x80\x94 did not save him from \nerror. \n\nErrors of fact or of judgment did not come \nfrom ignorance of other critical dicta than his own. \nOne finds echoes of De Quincey, of Lamb, and of \nHazlitt, and so many of Coleridge as to convince \none that Lowell had steeped his mind in the work \nof that master of criticism. Sometimes it is a \nhint of Coleridge\'s which Lowell uses, as when he \ncompares Spenser and Bimyan in their allegories. \nColeridge, in speaking of Spenser, refers to Bimyan \nand says that "in the Pilgrim\'s Progress . . . the \ncharacters are real persons with nicknames."^ \nSays Lowell: "The vast superiority of Bunyan \nover Spenser lies in the fact that we help make \nhis allegory out of our own experience. " ^ The \nessays on Wordsworth and Shakespeare are \nxmder constant obligation to Coleridge. Cole- \nridge speaks of the "frequent curiosa felicitas \nof his (Wordsworth\'s) diction," as a "beauty . . . \neminently characteristic of his poetry.""* Says \nLowell: Wordsworth\'s work is endowed "with \nan unexpectedness and impressiveness of origi- \nnality such as we feel in the presence of Nature \n\n^ Works, ii., 221. 2 Coleridge\'s Works, iv., 247 and 248. \n\n3 Lowell\'s Works, iv., 322. " Coleridge\'s Works, iii.,491. \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 6i \n\nherself \' \' ; this is \' \' a pecuHarity of his. " \' Speaking \nof Wordsworth in another place Coleridge says: \nHe uses \'\'thoughts and images too great for the \nsubject."* Says Lowell, after quoting from Peter \nBell: "One cannot help thinking that the similes \nof the huge stone, the sea beast, and the cloud, . . . \nare somewhat too lofty for the service to which \nthey are put. "3 In Shakespeare, howelVs indebt- \nedness is none the less evident. Coleridge calls \nProspero \'\'the very Shakespeare himself, of the \ntempest. ""* Lowell asks: "In Prospero shall we \nnot recognize the Artist himself [Shakespeare] ?" ^ \nSays Coleridge: "In other writers we find the \nparticular opinions of the individual; . . . but \nShakespeare never promulgates any party tenets. \nHe is always the philosopher and the moralist."^ \nSays Lowell: "In estimating Shakespeare, it \nshotdd never be forgotten, that ... he was \nessentially observer and artist, and incapable of \npartisanship. " 7 \n\nTo consider but one more critic to whom Lowell \nis under obligation. His declaration regarding \ncharacter as "the only soil in which real mental \npower can root itself and find sustenance," recalls \nCarlyle\'s: "Who ever saw, or will see, any true \ntalent, not to speak of genius, the foundation of \n\n^ Lowell\'s Works, iv., 407. ^ Coleridge\'s Works, iii., 478. \n\n3 Lowell\'s Works, iv., 410. 4 Coleridge\'s Works, iv., 75. \n\ns Lowell\'s Works, iii., 61. ^ Coleridge\'s Works, iv., 78. \n7 Lowell\'s Works, iii., 2. \n\n\n\n62 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nwhich is not goodness, love?"\' Says Carlyle: \n"Johnson\'s opinions are fast becoming obsolete: \nbut his style of thinking and of living, we may \nhope, will never become obsolete."^ Lowell prob- \nably had that in mind when he wrote: "It is as a \nnobly original man, even more than as an original \nthinker, that Lessing is precious to us, and that \nhe is so considerable in German literature. In a \nhigher sense, but in the same kind, he is to Ger- \nmans what Dr. Johnson is to us, \xe2\x80\x94 admirable for \nwhat he was."^ Considering Rousseau the senti- \nmentalist and finding it difficult to accoimt for \nhis imdeniable influence, Lowell exclaims: "Surely \nthere must have been a basis of sincerity in this \nman seldom matched. ""* Says Carlyle: "With all \nhis drawbacks . . . [Rousseau] has the first and \nchief characteristic of a hero: he is heartily in \nearnest. \'\'^ And so one might go on. \n\nOne would hesitate to draw the conclusion that \nLowell consciously borrowed/ He was, as a \nmatter of fact, scrupulous about literary borrowing \nalthough it was a favorite belief of his that an \nidea belonged to him who expressed it best. His \nreading was enormous and he doubtless imcon- \nsciously assimilated phrases and dicta and com- \n\n^ Carlyle\'s Works, xvi., 467. ^ Ihid., xiv., 404. \n\n3 Lowell\'s Works, ii., 229. \xe2\x80\xa2\xe2\x99\xa6 Ibid., ii., 237. \n\n5 Carlyle\'s Works, xiv., 406. \n\n^ He is charged with plagiarism in an article in Lippincott\'s, \nvol. vii., p. 641 ff. \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 63 \n\nparisons which grew into his consciousness as his \nown possessions. For borrowings however on \nthe part of others, especially of words and turns \nof phrase, Lowell had a sense so keen as to amount \nalmost to an obsession. The following is typical; \nhe quotes Dryden\'s lines : \n\n"And threatening France, placed like a painted Jove. \nKept idle thunder in his lifted hand," \n\nand adds in a footnote : \n\nPerhaps the hint was given by a phrase of Corneille, \nmo7tarque en peinture. Dryden . . . borrowed a great \ndeal. Thus in Don Sebastian (of suicide) : \n\n"Brutus and Cato might discharge their souls. \nAnd give them furloughs for the other world; \nBut we, like sentries, are obliged to stand \nIn starless nights and wait the appointed hour." \n\nThe thought is Cicero\'s, but how it is intensified by \nthe \'\'starless nights"! Dryden, I suspect, got it \nfrom his favorite, Montaigne, who says, "Que nous \nne pouvons abandonner cette garnison du monde, sans \nle commandement exprez de celuy qui nous y a mis." \n(L. ii.. Chap. 3,) In the same play, by a very Dryden- \nish verse, he gives new force to an old comparison : \n\n"And I should break through laws divine and human, \nAnd think \'em cobwebs spread for little man, \nWhich all the bulky herd of Nature breaks."^ \n\n^ Works, iii., 141. \n\n\n\n64 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nThere is an interesting and tempting play for the \nanalogical side of memory in this sort of "hunting \nof the letter," but the genuine value of it is more \nthan doubtful. Its absurdity becomes apparent \nin such a case as that where Lowell, referring to \nDryden\'s "painted Jove," suspects "that this \nnoble image was suggested by a verse in The \nDouble Marriage [of Beaumont and Fletcher] \xe2\x80\x94 \n\'Thou woven Worthy in a piece of arras.\' "\' \nThis tendency of Lowell\'s adds new proof \xe2\x80\x94 if \nany were wanting \xe2\x80\x94 of the range of his reading \nand of his keen sense for the "minutiae of verbal \ncriticism." \n\nThis sense found a more profitable channel \nwhen, supported by his intimate and wide ac- \nquaintance with languages and by his remarkable \nmemory, it was directed into the field of linguistics. \nLowell\'s knowledge of linguistics was derived \nfrom diligent reading in the classics of language. \nTo him language was nothing if not intensely \nalive. And a "living language" with Lowell \nmeant one "that is still hot from the hearts and \nbrains of a people, not hardened yet, but moltenly \nductile to new shapes of sharp and clean relief \nin the moulds of new thought."^ As a student of \nlinguistics, his most thorough-going efforts appear \nin Library of Old Authors and in the introduction \nto Part II of the Biglow Papers. There is no call \nto go into a minute examination of the etymolo- \n\n^ Latest Literary Essays, p. i8 (note). \' Works, iii., 6. \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 65 \n\ngies which Lowell discusses. What most con- \ncerns our present study is that he grasped some \nimportant principles which lie at the root of the \nscience of language and that he applied them in \nan illuminating way in many of his essays. \n\nIt is only from its roots in the living generations \nof men that a language can be reinforced with fresh \nvigor for its needs. . . . No language after it has \nfaded into diction, none that cannot suck up the feed- \ning juices secreted for it in the rich mother-earth of \ncommon folk, can bring forth a sound and lusty book. \nTrue vigor and heartiness of phrase do not pass from \npage to page, but from man to man, where the brain \nis kindled and the lips suppled by downright living \ninterests and by passion in its very throe. ^ \n\nAnother principle which he has applied in tracing \netymology, is a regard for exact chronology; a \nthird, the value of comparing later forms in order \nto infer earlier ones. It is the first principle with \nwhich Lowell was most concerned and on which \nhe was never tired of insisting. Of Dry den, to \nwhose prose he gives unfailing praise, he says: \n"What he did in his best writing was to use the \nEnglish as if it were a spoken, and not merely an \ninkhorn language."^ Again: \'\'[Language\'s] being \nalive is all that gives it poetic value. We do not \nmean what is technically called a living language, \n. . . but one that is still hot from the hearts and \n\n^Poetical Works, ii., 159. ^ Works^ iii., 185. \n\n5 \n\n\n\n66 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nbrains of a people."\' The motto of poets should \nbe, he adds, "The tongue of the people in the \nmouth of the scholar." With this principle in \nmind, he never fails to discuss in an illuminating \nway the diction of poets and the growth of his \nmother tongue. His knowledge of words enabled \nhim to take issue with Masson regarding several \npoints in Milton\'s versification and to invoke in \nsupport of his contentions Shakespeare, Dekker, \nDonne, Italian usage, and Milton himself. His \ninterest is not due to a desire to quibble, but \nrather to defend Milton and the Elizabethans and \nespecially Shakespeare from the charge of faulty \nversification. Chaucer as well as Shakespeare \nwas too genuine a poet, to Lowell\'s mind, to have \nleft his prosody in a chaotic condition. In Chau- \ncer \'s case he discusses final and medial e, the \nrestoration of final n in the infinitive and third \nperson pliural of verbs, and plays the part of \neditor in scattered passages in a way to convince \none of his judgment and his knowledge of versi- \nfication. * \n\nWith commentators or editors who brought \nonly imperfect qualifications to their task, he had \nlittle patience. Carelessness he regards, if possible, \nas even more inexcusable. After pointing out in \nLibrary of Old Authors various errors of W. C. \n\n* Works, iii., 6. \n\n\xe2\x80\xa2 Lowell edited the texjt of Donne\'s poems, published by the \nRowfant Club in 1895. \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 67 \n\nHazlitt, he adds: "Where there is blundering to \nbe done, one stone often serves Mr. Hazlitt for \ntwo birds," an amenity which is typical of his \nattitude throughout the paper. And yet Lowell \nhimself, like Homer, som.e times nods. It is \npointed out that he attributes to Shakespeare the \nlines of Richard Bamfield: \n\n** King Pandion he is dead; \nAll thy friends are lapt in lead."^ \n\nDevotee of Shakespeare as he was, such a slip is \nall the more surprising.^ He speaks of our being \n"the miserable forked radish, to which the bitter \nscorn of Lear degraded every child of Adam,"^ \nwhereas even Macaulay\'s schoolboy knows it is \nhonest Jack Falstaff, not Lear, who may claim \nthe phrase. He misquotes Prior\'s Abra^ and \nDaniel, xii., 3. s These last three lapses occur in \naddresses, which, however, must have been revised \nbefore publication. In essays written directly \nfor the press he sometimes misquotes,^ and by a \n\n^ Greenslet, p. 291. \n\n2 Commenting on the American slang "to let slide," Lowell \npoints out that it occurs in Heywood\'s Edward IV., etc., but \nsays nothing about its occurrence in Shakespeare\'s Taming of \nthe Shrew. Vide Introduction to Biglow Papers, p. 188. \n\n3 Works,, vi., 80. 4 Ihid., vi., 72. s Ihid., vi., 98. \n\n^For misquotations of Goldsmith, Wordsworth, and Shake- \nspeare, vide A Free Lance, p. 150 ff. Lowell misquotes Bums in \nConversations, p. 174, and assigns a quotation from Dekker to \nMiddleton in Early Writings^ p. 244. \n\n\n\n68 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nstrange irony he is guilty of two slips in the case \nof final e in quoting Chaucer and that after demand- \ning careful consideration for e as important in \ndetermining versification. His fondness for minute \ncriticism gets to some extent its revenge. Slips \nin the vernacular were pet objects of his attack; \nhe corrects Masson\'s "dislike to " ; sneers at Hazlitt \nfor speaking of the \'\'delineation of a point"; \nquestions Halliwell about a relative whose ante- \ncedent is vague. ^ \n\nWhen the question concerned literature, Lowell \ncould be insistent on minute points with better \ngrace than when history or science or art was under \ndiscussion. His interest was vastly more devoted \nto letters than to kindred subjects and the result \nwas imfortunate. One thinks how effective his \nShakespeare might have been made, if Elizabethan \nEngland with its splendid vigor had been boldly \ndrawn, that England when men fltmg velvet \ncloaks before the feet of their Virgin Queen ; when \nlusty mariners, who might have dared the terrors \nof strange seas with Drake or Frobisher, thronged \nthe Globe to see old Shylock rage or Romeo die; \nwhen the wits of Oxford and Cambridge could \nlive their dissolute lives, write masterpieces, and \nmeet death in a brothel. Knowing history, he \nmight have pictured the England of Elizabeth or \nof Chaucer or of the Restoration with that vivid- \n\n^ Sentences occur in Lowell not uncommonly, whose syntax is \nbaffling if not quite indefensible. \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 69 \n\nness so gripping in the studies of Macaulay. His \nChaucer, his Shakespeare, his Dry den, and the rest \nleave the poets too far aloof from their times; or \nrather to Lowell their existence in literattire and \nin history are things apart. One recalls such an \nessay as Macaulay\'s on the Dramatists of the Res- \ntoration and at once that society which Dryden \nknew, dissolute, voluptuous, debonair, flashes on \none\'s mind and makes the literature of the reign \nof the second Charles clear in a way which shames \nLowell\'s mere statement: "Charles II. had brought \nback with him from exile French manners, French \nmorals, and above all French taste." And Milton\'s \nEngland ! Lowell must devote over a third of his \nessay on Milton to flaying Masson \xe2\x80\x94 too easy \nprey \xe2\x80\x94 while those pregnant days when King and \nParliament grew tense for the death-grapple; \nand a great nation was rent with Civil War; and \nPuritan prayed and Cavalier sang; and Falkland \nand Montrose fought and died the death; and \nOliver won Marston Moor and Dunbar and came \nto dominate England for a generation \xe2\x80\x94 those \ngreat days when John Milton\'s blood tingled \nthrough his veins, seem to have lain, as far as \nLowell was concerned, hidden in the dust of the \npast. A knowledge of history would have given \nhis critical essays a far greater value ; they would \nhave been more consecutive in tracing literary \nmovements, more convincing and clear because \nshowing the interactions of literary with his- \n\n\n\n70 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\ntorical changes; and finally more vital, because \nthe author discussed would appear as a part of \nhis age and not merely as a superman set against \na nebulous background. \n\nAt the age of twenty-six, writing to a friend, \nLowell speaks of having gone into many out-of- \nthe-way books, without having glanced at others \nwhich every one had read. \'\'For example,. I \nhave read books on magic and astrology and yet \nnever looked into a History of England."\' It \nhas already been suggested that one gets from \nLowell\'s treatment of literary development the \nimpression that his ideas of history were vague. \nHe seems to believe, for instance, that the gallicism \nof the Restoration impregnated the English \nnation, instead of making it clear that its influence \ncentred in the capital, the court, and such liter- \nary men as came within the sphere of court \ninfluence.^ In speaking of the low standards of \nmorality and honor which prevailed in England \nin the age which was supplanting Milton\'s, he \nsays : It was an age \n\nwhen men could . . . swear one allegiance and keep \non safe terms with the other, when prime-ministers \nand commanders-in-chief could be intelligencers of \nthe Pretender, nay, when even Algernon Sidney him- \nself could be a pensioner of France. ^ \n\n^ Letter s^ i., 90. \n\n2 Works, iv., Essay on Pope. 3 Ibid., iv., 19. \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 71 \n\nWhile Lowell has not made here any positive \nmisstatement, the confusion in the implication is \ngreat. He has started out to speak of the age \nwhich was supplanting Milton\'s. The introduc- \ntion of the Pretender shifts the focus from the \nRestoration to the age of Anne, and the reader \nrecalls with a shock of surprise that Sidney, in- \ntroduced on the heels of the "intelligencers of the \nPretender," was dead five years before James \nStuart was bom.\' One reads with similar feel- \nings, \'\'For Italy Dante is the thirteenth centtuy."^ \nIt is a question how much Italian history must \nhave gone im written if Innocent III. and St. \nFrancis of Assisi had not impregnated their \ngeneration with their ideas. \n\nIn his essay on Carlyle, LoweU goes into German \nhistory in discussing Frederick the Great; he does \nnot persuade one of the accuracy of his knowledge \nor of the justice of his opinions. His attitude \ntoward Frederick may be gathered from one \nsentence which bears eloquent testimony that the \ncritic\'s view of history was that of the mere man \nof letters : \n\n\n\nFrederick had certainly more of the temperament \nof genius than Marlborough or Wellington; but, not \nto go beyond modern instances, he does not impress \n\n^Sidney, 1 622-1 683; James Francis Edward Stuart, the Pre- \ntender, bom 1688. 2 Works, iv., 237. \n\n\n\n72 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nus with the massive breadth of Napoleon, or attract \nus with the climbing ardor of Turenne. ^ \n\nIn the matter of science, Lowell was even farther \nafield. He writes in 1878 : \'\'Not that I like science \nany better than I ever did. I hate it as a savage \ndoes writing, because he fears it will hurt him \nsomehow."^ Eight years later he wrote a paper \ncalled The Progress of the World, to introduce a \nwork \'\'in which the advance in various depart- \nments of intellectual and material activity was \ndescribed and illustrated." Here if anywhere \none would expect something approaching the \nscientific, something concrete and specific. Lowell \nrecognized his limitations and felt amused at \nhaving been asked to contribute an introduction \nto such a work. Speaking of the earth he writes : \n\nBeginning as a nebulous nucleus of fiery gases, a \nluminous thistle-down blown about the barren wastes \nof space, then slowly shrinking, compacting, growing \nsolid, and cooling at the rind, our planet was forced \ninto a system with others like it, some smaller, some \n\n^ Works, ii., 114. Vide an article in Lippincotfs, vol. vii., \nprobably by John Forster Kirke, who takes issue with Lowell on \nhis views of Frederick, \n\n^Letters, ii., 230. Science to Lowell\'s mind seems the foe of \nreligion: "I think the evolutionists will have to make a fetich \nof their protoplasm before long. Such a mush seems to me a \npoor substitute for the Rock of Ages." Letters, ii., 245. Cf. \nCredidimus Jovem Regnare and Turner\'s Old Timer aire, Poetical \nWorks, iv. \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 73 \n\nvastly greater, than itself, and, in its struggle with \novermastering forces, having the moon wrenched \nfrom it to be its night-lamp and the timer of its tides." \n\nThis is the expression of a man standing poles \napart from science, from scientific knowledge, and \nthe scientific point of view. ^ \n\nAlthough, as has been pointed out, Lowell knew \nhis classics and was a believer in their cultural \nvalue, he was strangely imimpressed by the beauty \nof Greek art. While on an exciu-sion to Greece \nin the spring of 1878, he wrote that the town was \n\'\'shabby" and "modem" and that he was "for \nturning about and going straight back again." \nThough he pays a visit to the Parthenon and to \nthe Acropolis he is interested for the most part in \nnoting that the Grecian coast is "even grimmer" \nthan that of New England ; that it seemed odd for \nthe newsboys to cry the newspapers in Greek; \nthat the Thessalian insurgents "reminded him of \nMacaulay\'s Highlanders." He wrote home to \nNorton, "I prefer Gothic to Grecian architecture." \nHe had already confessed in the Cathedral, \n\nThe Grecian gluts me with its perfectness. \n\nHis preference for Gothic over Greek art was \nnothing new or sudden, for back in 1854 ^^ wrote, \n\n^ It is interesting to note that Lowell attended lectures in \nDresden on the natural sciences and even assisted at the ana- \ntomical classes. Vide Scudder, i., 382. \n\n\n\n74 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\n\'\'There is nothing in ancient art to match Shake- \nspeare or a Gothic minster."^ \n\nSculpture Lowell scared}\'- mentions. In his \nessay on Dante, he says of Florence, *\'For her the \nPisani [wrought] who divined . . . the Greek \nsupremacy in sculpture." With what seems like \nhalf-hearted interest he says, "In art . . . Rome \nis wondrously rich especially in sculpture. \' \' Paint- \ning interests him more, =" though his taste and opin- \nions are often surprising. He wonders if Michael \nAngelo has not ** cocked his hat a little wee bit \ntoo much " ; "Claude is great, but he had no imagi- \nnation"; "to me he (Titian) is the greatest of the \npainters." His fondness for Titian leads him into \namusing superlatives; "I think . . . [Titian\'s \nAssumption] the most splendid piece of color in \nthe world"; "Titian\'s Tribute Money is marvel- \nously great"; "I made up my mind that I would \nrather have it (a portrait by Titian) than any \nother picture in the world \xe2\x80\x94 ^yes, rather than my \nfavorite Presentation of the Virgin in Venice."^ \nSeeing Albert Durer\'s portrait of the Emperor \n\n^ Works, i., 212. In Works, iv., 233, he says: " The Greek temple \n. . . leaves nothing to hope for in unity and perfection of design, \nin harmony and subordination of parts, and in entireness of \nimpression. But in this aesthetic completeness it ends. It rests \nsolidly and complacently on the earth and the mind rests there \nwith it." \n\n"In 1852, after returning from Italy, Lowell writes, "I have \nstudied Art to some purpose." Letters, i., 195. \n\n3 Letters t i., 234. \n\n\n\nRANGE OF LOWELL\'S KNOWLEDGE 75 \n\nMaximilian at three, he is interested because the \nchild has "an apple in his hand instead of the globe \nof empire." At the Louvre, his attention is \ncaught by a portrait of Lady Venetia Digby by \nVan Dyke, because it is \'\'the likeness of a woman \nwho had inspired so noble and enduring a love in \nso remarkable a man as Sir Kenelm."\' Lowell \nwas obviously alive to the plastic arts merely as \na man of letters; he travelled, observed, and \nread, but failed to regard other arts than liter- \nature from the point of view which belonged to \nthem. \n\nIn trying to penetrate Turner and Frederick \nthe Great, he looked at them from the same point \nof view as that from which he regarded Shakespeare \nand demanded of the painter and the soldier the \npossession of such imaginative powers as he dis- \ncovered in the poet. His superlative admiration \nfor Titian with his wonderful command of color, \nhis depreciation of Greek architecture with its \nperfection of form, betray weaknesses in himself. \nHis critical essays are not perfect units like the \nGreek temple; and though they possess the super- \nabundant ornament of the Gothic Cathedral they \nlack its fundamental unity of design. Lowell \nexecutes his gargoyles and flying buttresses, but \nforgets the unified body to which these are merely \nornaments or supports. The glowing colors of \nTitian which captivate his fancies recall those \n\n^ Letters, i.,h235. \n\n\n\n76 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\npurple patches of his own which sometimes dazzle \nus and make us forgetful of defects. \n\nThese deficiencies of Lowell were unfortunate. \nA knowledge of art and science and history would \nhave served to crystallize many of his vague \nnotions ; to send the current of his literary knowl- \nedge into parallel channels with other phases of \nmen\'s interests and endeavors, and so made that \ncurrent deeper and broader and clearer. \n\n\n\nCHAPTER III \n\nLowell\'s sympathy: its breadth and \nlimitations \n\nLOWELL\'S chief interest, as has been pointed \nout, centred in the classics of language \xe2\x80\x94 \nin those works which the consensus of opinion had \npassed upon as having been tried and not found \nwanting. It almost never came into Lowell\'s \nmind \xe2\x80\x94 one must remember that he was a conser- \nvative \xe2\x80\x94 to challenge their possession of the prime \nqualities. It was enough for him that they had \nsurvived by possessing elements of lastingness \nwhich all men conceded to them. His keenest \ninterest concerned the greater rather than the \nlesser classics, Dante rather than Petrarch or \nBoccaccio, Shakespeare rather than Pope. It is \ntrue that Homer appears in his works far less than \nthe Greek dramatists. But Homer offered no \nopportunity for direct comparison with any poet \nwhom Lowell treated except Milton. Such a \ncomparison would necessarily be limited and \nwould make prominent the virtues of Homer \nrather than those of Milton. The Greek drama- \n\n77 \n\n\n\n78 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\ntists Lowell could set over against Shakespeare, \nemphasizing the differences and suggesting con- \nclusions in favor of the English poet. The critic\'s \nattitude of appreciation of the beauties of Greek \nliterature cannot be doubted, but nothing in \nGreek appealed to him with the force of Shake- \nspeare or Dante or Chaucer or Cervantes or \nCalderon. His interest in these latter poets was \nnothing short of enthusiastic devotion. Latin \nliterature he regarded from the popular point of \nview, that is, as largely derivative; \'\'always a \nhalf-hardy exotic," he calls it. Though he con- \ncedes medieval influence to Ovid, originality to \nHorace, a profound imagination to Lucretius, \nand supreme elegance to Virgil, his attitude toward \nLatin literature is summed up in his declaration \nthat it maintained an \'\'ordinary level of tasteful \ncommon-sense. \' \' ^ \n\nIn the field of those literatures which were \nwritten in living languages and those languages \nthe media of expression for some of the greatest of \nworld poets, Lowell\'s interest becomes deep. To \nhim Dante is "the founder of modem literature." \nThe great Italian appealed to him powerfully just \nas he did to Lowell\'s friends, Longfellow and \nNorton. The Dante was written only after twenty \nyears of study. In seriousness, comprehensive- \nness, and devotion to minute detail it is Lowell\'s \nmost important work in criticism. It would \n\n\' Works t iii., 306. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S SYMPATHY 79 \n\nseem as if Dante absorbed his intellectual energies \nto so supreme a degree that he had little left to \nbestow on the other important figures of Italian \nliterattire. In the critic\'s mind Dante probably- \nmade Petrarch and Boccaccio, Ariosto and Tasso, \nappear dwarfed in comparison. In his single \nexcursion into the field of French liter attue, Lowell \nconcerned himself with Rousseau. He thought \nof the works of Comeille and of Racine as "sham- \nclassic pastures . . . where a colonnade supplies \nthe dearth of herbage." \' To Lessing alone among \nthe Germans he devoted an essay. Whether the \ncritic\'s avoidance of Goethe were deliberate or \nnot, one cannot asstmie to say. But his election \nof the secondary author was not tmfortunate. \nGoethe, imlike Lessing, did not present to the \ncritic a comparatively simple study, but one of \nmany complexities. How adequate might have \nbeen Lowell\'s treatment of Goethe may be later \napparent when the question of his methods of \nhandling such complex problems has been dis- \ncussed. \n\nAlthough to LoweU, Shakespeare was emphati- \ncally the dominant figure in English literature^ \nhe did not on that account exclude the lesser \npoets from studious consideration. English was, \nafter aU, the language of Lowell\'s most intimate \nknowledge, a heritage, not an acquirement, and \nin devoting study to the great figures of its litera- \n\n* Letter Sf ii., 46. \n\n\n\n80 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nture, he found place for such secondary writers \nas Pope and Dry den. \n\nIn giving attention chiefly to English writers, \nLowell concentrated on the poets. He always \nheld the poetic calling sacred. The poet\'s ought \nto be \n\n"the song, which, in its metre holy. \nChimes with the music of the eternal stars, \nHumbling the tyrant, lifting up the lowly. \n\nAnd sending sun through the soul\'s prison-bars."* \n\nAs his letters attest, it was with his own poetry \nrather than with his prose that Lowell was most \nconcerned. A poet himself, it was but natural \nthat he should study the greatest names of a \nbrotherhood of which he could reckon himself a \nmember. His studies of prose writers are less \nhappy than those of poets, and his phrasing of \ndicta frequently persuades the reader that he is \nregarding the author discussed as poet rather \nthan as prose writer. He says of Carlyle, to \ntake but one example : \n\nWith a conceptive imagination vigorous beyond \nany in his generation, with a mastery of language \nequalled only by the greatest poets, he wants alto- \ngether the plastic imagination, the shaping faculty, \nwhich would have made him a poet in the highest \nsense. ^ \n\n^Poetical Works, i., 34. Cf. Letters, i., 104; Works, iv., 357, \n262 ff. a Works, ii., 90. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S SYMPATHY 8i \n\nDealing with Shakespeare and Dante and \nChaucer, and even with Lessing and Rousseau \nand Dry den, Lowell was treating in every case a \nman whose position as a great fact in the history \nof his national literature stood beyond cavil. \nWith such men in mind, Lowell cotild give his \ndefinition of a classic : \n\nA classic is properly a book which maintains itself \nby virtue of that happy coalescence of matter and \nstyle, that innate and exquisite sympathy between \nthe thought that gives life and the form that consents \nto every mood of grace and dignity, which can be \nsimple without being vulgar, elevated without being \ndistant, and which is something neither ancient nor \nmodern, always new and incapable of growing old. ^ \n\nWhat attitude will Lowell maintain towards \nthese classics of language? To "measure an \nauthor fairly," he holds, one must take him on the \nstrongest side, \'\'for the higher wisdom of criticism \nlies in the capacity to admire." ^ Reading Lowell\'s \nessays on the classics, one can doubt neither his \ncapacity to admire nor his possession of that sym- \npathy without which such capacity were impossi- \nble. Of Dante the man he can say, "Dante is the \nhighest spiritual nature that has expressed itself \nin rhythmical form."^ Reviewing the Italian \npoet\'s works, he can study all with keen interest \nand bestow on them the ample praise of a sym- \n\n* Works, iv., 266. 2 ihid.y iii., 140. * Ihid. iv., 263. \n\n\n\n82 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\npathetic mind. The Canzoni he finds admirable \nfor "elegance, variety of rhythm, and fervor of \nsentiment"\'; the Vita Nuova is incomparable "as \na contribution to the physiology of genius"^; \nthe Convito "is an epitome of the learning of that \nage, philosophical, theological, and scientific"^; \nDe Vulgari Eloquio is incomplete but is of "great \nglossological value" and "conveys the opinions \nof Dante"; De Monarchia is valuable for helping \nus towards a "broader view of him as a poet," \nthough compared with the political treatises of \nAristotle and Spinoza, it shows the "limitations of \nthe age in which he lived." ^ The Commedia \n"remains one of the three or four universal books \nthat have ever been written." ^ \n\nFor the age as well as for Dante and his works \nLowell seems to have no difBculty in getting the \npoint of view of appreciative understanding: "I \nam not ashamed to confess a singular sympathy \nwith what are known as the Middle Ages. I \ncannot help thinking that few periods have left \nbehind them such traces of inventiveness and \npower." ^ Lowell was keenly alive to the good \nas well as to the evil of the Middle Ages. Dante\'s \nwas a "time of fierce passions and sudden trage- \ndies, of picturesque transitions and contrasts." \nIn that era "a whole century seems like a mere \nwild chaos. Yet during a couple of such centuries \n\n^ Works, iv., 229. ^ Ibid., iv., 148. 3 Ibid., iv., 154. \n\n*Ibid., iv., 153 (note). s Ibid., iv., 165. ^ Ibid.^ i., 212. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S SYMPATHY 83 \n\nthe cathedrals of Florence, Pisa, and Sienna got \nbuilt; Cimabue, Giotto, Amolfo, the Pisani, Briinel- \nleschi, and Ghiberti gave the impulse to modern \nart . . . ; modem literature took its rise ; commerce \nbecame a science, and the middle class came into \nbeing." ^ However general all this may be, it at least \nproves Lowell\'s sympathetic attitude towards me- \ndieval times. The man Dante as well as his age \nand his works meets with a like sympathy on \nLowell\'s part: \'*In all literary history there is no \nsuch figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of \nlife and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime \nirrecognition of the imessential."^ \n\nWith a sympathy broad enough to extend from \nShakespeare to Dante and his age, it seems sur- \nprising that Lowell should say: "The whole of \nEiu-ope during the fifteenth centiuy produced no \nbook which has continued readable, or has become \nin any sense of the word, a classic."^ Not only \nin this century but in the sixteenth century as \nwell, England was to Lowell a literary desert. \nYet his sympathy was warm for those two great \npoets between whose lofty genius those two \ncenturies stretched. Indeed Lowell\'s attitude of \nappreciative understanding, so marked in the \ncase of Dante, could hardly fail when he came to \nconsider the great figures of his own language. \nChaucer\'s is a "pervading wholesomeness " ; a \nhumor which "pervades his comic tales like stm- \n\n^ WorkSf iv., 126, 127. 2 Ibid., iv., 162. 3 Ibid., iv., 266. \n\n\n\n84 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nshine"; and a "gracious worldliness."^ Spenser\'s \nstyle is "costly"; on reading him one passes \n"through emotion into revery"; for "to read him \nis like dreaming awake," and he knew "how to \ncolor his dreams like life and make them move \nbefore you in music."* Shakespeare was great \nin imagination and fancy, in perspicacity and \nartistic discretion ; in judgment and poise of char- \nacter he was "the greatest of poets." ^ Milton, who \nlike Dante "believed himself divinely inspired," \nreflects in his matiurer poems "a sublime inde- \npendence of human sympathy," a phase of \nstrength which Lowell could admire the more \nbecause conscious of its lack in himself. Behind \nthe critic\'s sympathetic understanding of these \npoets was not only that conservatism on his part \nwhich tended to make him take the classics for \ngranted, but a perception of qualities on their \npart which appealed to him strongly. Such were \n"gracious worldliness " ; a style which wafted one \n"through emotion into revery"; powerful imagi- \nnation not divorced from "poise of character"; \nsuch lofty ethical purpose and idealization of the \npoetic calling as characterized Dante and Milton. \nTowards the secondary English poets, Lowell \ndoes not fail in appreciation. Although Dry den \nto his mind "wanted that inspiration which comes \nof belief in and devotion to something nobler and \n\n^ Works, iii., 291 ff. \n\n\xc2\xbb Ibid.f iv., 334 flf. (passim). 3 Ibid., iii., 92. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S SYMPATHY 85 \n\nmore abiding than the present moment," a type \nof inspiration which the critic found in Dante and \nSpenser and Milton and which he could read \nreadily into Chaucer and Shakespeare, still Lowell \nconcedes him \'\'the next best thing to that \xe2\x80\x94 a \nthorough faith in himself,"\' While admitting \nthe slight value and the great immorality of \nDryden\'s comedies, Lowell suggests palliations: \nhe was "imder contract to deliver three plays a \nyear," and the age was dissolute. =^ Dryden\'s \nprose was admirable and possessed of suppleness \nand grace and familiar dignity. ^ The poet was \n"thoroughly manly," a fact which gives Lowell \nwarrant for admiring him aside from his position \nas a classic. \'\'Amid the rickety sentiment loom- \ning big through misty phrase which marks so \nmuch of modem literature, to read him is as \nbracing as a northwest wind."^ Lowell would \nnot suggest that Dryden had a place in the first \nrank of English poets. "Certainly he was not, \nlike Spenser, the poets\' poet, but other men have \nalso their rights." ^ This last clause suggests \naptly Lowell\'s gift of sympathy. \n\nIn Pope we find a frank avowal of Lowell\'s \nearly attitude: "There was a time when I could \nnot read Pope but disliked him on principle."^ \nOne recalls his youthful declaration: "When you \n\n\n\n^ Works, iii., 103. 2 lUd., iii., 151. 3 Ihid., iii., 129. \n\n4 Ihid., iii., 189. s Ihid., iii., 189. ^ Ibid., iv., 26. \n\n\n\n86 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\ncall him poet, you insult the buried majesty of all \nearth\'s noblest and choicest spirits."\' One has \na feeling that this utterance, though expressed \nwhen Lowell was but twenty-five, discloses an \nopinion which he never entirely abandoned. By \n1855, there had crystallized to a considerable \ndegree, that conservatism in Lowell which ex- \npressed itself towards literature as an acceptance \nof great writers in the light of general opinion. \nThe views he held in 1855 regarding Pope were \nessentially those of his essay in the North American \nReview for January, 1871. He would not have \nus believe him prejudiced against Pope; since the \nearly days of his dislike he has read the poet \n** carefully more than once. ... If I have not \ncome to the conclusion that he was the greatest \nof poets, I believe that I am at least in a condition \nto allow him every merit that is fairly his."^ He \ncondemns the Dunciad and finds that the Essay \non Man is \'\'shallow and contradictory." He \npraises the Essay on Criticism, declares that in his \nMoral Essays and parts of his Satires, \'\'Pope must \nbe allowed to have established a style of his own, \nin which he is without a rival," ^ and grants that \nthe Rape of the Lock is the "most perfect poem" \nof its kind "in the language." ^ But it must be \nconfessed that one does not find in Lowell\'s essay \n\n^ Conversations y p. 5 ff. ^ Works, iv., 26. \n\n3 IHd., iv., 44. \xe2\x80\xa2\xe2\x99\xa6 Ihid., iv., 56. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S SYMPATHY 87 \n\nthat ready sympathy for Pope which glows for \nthe subjects of the studies which have just been \nconsidered. Pope in his eyes was the exemplar of \nan age which he calls "filthy" and \'\'an age of \nsham."^ \n\nWhile there is no evidence that Lowell felt a \nlike antagonism towards the nineteenth century \nand its writers, his sympathy for them seems to \nhave been imperfect. None of his longer or more \ncarefully done critical essays concerned writers \nof his own century with the exception of Keats \nand Wordsworth. ^ The Keats is rather biographic- \nal than critical. The Wordsworth concerns a poet \nwho had done his best work in the decade fol- \nlowing 1797 and whose qualities of genius had \nbeen pointed out in masterly chapters of the \nBiographia Liter aria. Lowell\'s other studies of \nnineteenth-century writers cannot be classed \namong his best critical work. They are fragmen- \ntary and inadequate. It would seem as if the \nliterature of the century had no very genuine \ninterest for him. This is all the more remarkable \nwhen one recalls his interest in poetry and brings \nto mind the brilliant array of poets extending \nfrom Wordsworth and Coleridge down. In his \nyouth, Lowell foimd that some parts of Byron \nbrought tears to his eyes. But by 1843 he could \n\n^ Works, iv., 48, 19. \n\n2 Keats was published as an introduction to an edition of his \npoems. Lowell first wrote on Wordsworth for a similar purpose. \n\n\n\n88 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nspeak disparagingly of him in Conversations. \nByron\'s feeling for nature marks him, says Lowell, \nas a child of Rousseau, who seems to have had a \nshare in the English poet\'s tendency to sentimen- \ntalism. Byron made \' \' motiveless despair \' \' fashion- \nable.^ It is conceded by the critic that he was \none of the \'\'great names of the last generation," \nand that his "real strength lay in his sincerity." =* \nThere can be little doubt however that Lowell\'s \nlast utterance on Byron was indicative of his real \nfeehngs: he confesses in 1889 to "an odd feeling \nof surprise that the framework of the fireworks \n. . . which so dazzled my youth should look so \nbare." 3 \n\nIt was as early as 1812 that Byron awoke to \nfind himself famous; Shelley\'s reputation on the \nother hand gathered force with stu-prising slow- \nness. To Lowell\'s mind Shelley is stilted. ^ He \nis a "mere poet," whose genius was a "St. Elmo\'s \nfire . . . playing in ineffectual flame about the \npoints of his thought." s Though he has caught \nsome of the pathos of the Elizabethans and has a \nfine feminine organization, he has a "fatal copi- \nousness which is his vice."^ Lowell mentions \nShelley in a letter written in 1877 ^o deny him a \nshare in restoring to the ode its harmony and \nshapeliness. At best he seems to have felt only \n\nI Works, iv., 371. ^ Ihid., ii., 120; i., 100. \n\n3 Letters, ii., 386. \xe2\x80\xa2\xc2\xab Works, ii., 145. \n\n5 Ibid., ii., 229. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S SYMPATHY 89 \n\nan imperfect interest in that elusive spirit whose \ngift made him one of the supreme lyrists in the \nlanguage. ^ \n\nOf Clough, whom he came to know intimately, \nLowell wrote: "He is a man of genius. . . . His \nBothie is a rare and original poem."^ He thinks \nClough \'\'imperfect ... in many respects," but \nbelieves that his poetry "will one of these days, \nperhaps, be found to have been the best utterance \nin verse of this generation." ^ To the mind of a \nday some forty years later than Lowell\'s expres- \nsion of opinion, several other Victorian poets seem \nto have a less imcertain claim on the attention of \nthe next generation than Clough. \n\nLowell\'s early opinion of Tennyson was highly \ncomplimentary. He wrote a review of the Prin- \ncess in 1848 in which he expressed his unqualified \nadmiration. 4 The tone of the review may be \ngathered from the following sentences : \n\nWe read the book through with a pleasure which \nheightened to unqualified delight, and ended in \nadmiration. The poem is unique in conception and \nexecution. It is one of those few instances in litera- \nture where a book is so true to the idiosyncrasy of \nits author that we cannot conceive of the possibility \n\n^ Lowell wrote (1857) on Shelley as an introduction to an edi- \ntion of his poems. The essay is slight and biographical with no \nattempt at criticism. ^ Letters, i., 201 and 202. \n\n3 Works, ii., 121, and iii., 243. \n\n4 Massachusetts Quarterly Review for March, 1 848. \n\n\n\n90 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nof its being written by any other person, no matter \nhow gifted.\' \n\nIn 1855 ^6 writes that Maud is \'\'wonderfully \nfine."^\' But his early enthusiasm seems to cool \nas his conservatism hardens with the years. \nThough he finds that Tennyson has caught some \nof the simple pathos of the Elizabethans\' music, \nand has been "the greatest artist in words . . . \nsince Gray,"^ his "dainty trick . . . cloys when \ncaught by a whole generation of versifiers as the \nstyle of a great poet never can be." ^ The knights \nof the Idylls are "cloudy, gigantic, of no age or \ncountry." s The Idylls themselves are imitative, \nnot "reality . . . but a masquerade."^ These \nmature dicta are noticeably different in tone from \nthe earlier judgments: it is not Lowell\'s enthusi- \nasm for literature which has cooled, but his \nsympathy for the literary output of his own day- \nAs with Tennyson, so with Browning. In 1848 \nLowell, while finding Sordello "totally incompre- \nhensible as a connected whole," declared that the \npieces in Bells and Pomegranates were "works of \n\n^"The design of the Princess,\'" he says, "is novel. The \nmovement of the poem is epic, yet it is redolent, not of Homer \nand Milton, but of the busy nineteenth century." These are \ncuriously like his words on Clough\'s Bothie {Letters, i., 202). \nCf. the above quoted judgment on the Princess with that on \nShakespeare in Works, iii., 36. \n\n2 Letters, i., 235. 3 Ihid., ii., 86. \n\n4 Works, ii., 121. 5 Ihid., v., 242. Cf. Letters, ii., 85 ff. \n\n^Letters, ii., 85. Cf. Works, ii., 132. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S SYMPATHY 91 \n\nart in the truest sense," that the author\'s dramatic \npower was "rare," and that he had "in him the \nelements of greatness."^ Lowell\'s subsequent \nindifference seems strange when we read: "To us \nhe appears to have wider range and greater free- \ndom of movement than any other of the yoimger \nEnglish poets." Later, in 1866, the critic de- \nclared that Browning, "by far the richest nature \nof his time, . . . becomes more difficult, draws \nnearer to the all-for-point fashion of the concettisti, \nwith every poem he writes."^ In one of his \nEnglish addresses, delivered in 1883, Lowell re- \nferred to him as "a great living poet who has \nin his own work illustrated every form of imagina- \ntion." ^ Six years later in an American address \nhis tone seems to be one of impatience. He quotes \nBrowning as saying in the Preface to his transla- \ntion of the Agamemnon, "Learning Greek teaches \nGreek and nothing else." The critic comments: \n"One is sometimes tempted to think that it \nteaches some other language far harder than \nGreek when one tries to read his translation. "^ \n\nWilliam Morris is unmentioned in Lowell\'s \nworks, although he may lay claim to consideration \n\n^ Vide North American Review, April, 1848. \n\n2 Works, ii., 121. 3 Ihid., vi., 54. \n\n^Latest Literary Essays, p. 145. That Lowell\'s interest \nflagged in the maturer years following his warmly appreciative \narticle in the North American Review gains color from the experi- \nence of Mr. Moncure Conway who writes that Lowell (in 1858) \n"showed no interest in Browning." Vide Greenslet, p. 107. \n\n\n\n92 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nas a descendant by no means unworthy of the \ngreatest of English narrative poets. Rossetti \nthe critic praises for his translations from the \nearly Italian poets. One suspects the source of \nLowell\'s interest on reading: "Mr. Rossetti would \ndo a real and lasting service to literature by em- \nploying his singular gift in putting Dante\'s minor \npoems into English." \' True he mentions Rossetti \nin a letter written in 1858, but adds that he has \n"not yet made up his mind" about the poet. \nWith Swinburne, to whose tragedies he devoted a \npaper in 1866, he was quite out of sympathy. \nChastelard "is at best but the school exercise of a \nyoung poet learning to write. "^ Atalanta he \nconcedes "is a true poem," but it is "a world of \nshadows," and betrays "a poverty of thought and \nconfusion of imagery." All things considered, \n"it gives promise of rare achievement hereafter. "^ \nBut an ohiter dictum which one finds in an article \nby Lowell somewhat more than a year later, lets \nus into the secret of his real attitude. Speaking \nof indifferent critics, he says: "Their . . . univer- \nsal solvent serves equally for the lead of Tupper \nor the brass of Swinbtune."^ It is worth noting \nthat after five years spent in the great cosmopolis \n\n^ Works, iv., 229 (note). * Ihid., ii., 122. \n\n3 Works, ii., 123, 126. \n\n4 Vide North American Review for October, 1867, article \n"Winthrop Papers." Cf. Among My Books (i., 273) with Works* \nii., 56. \n\n\n\nLOWELL^S SYMPATHY 93 \n\nof London, Lowell in the revised edition of his \nworks omitted that sentence. One may be per- \nmitted to suspect that tact rather than sympathy- \nsuggested the omission. \n\n.On Matthew Arnold as a poet there is little in \nLowell. While declaring that he sets \' \' a high value \non Mr. Arnold and his poetic gift," he finds Merope \n\'\'without color, without harmonious rhythm of \nmovement, \' \' passionless and dull. \' It is a question \nwhether Lowell would have said that *\'a hundred \nyears hence" Clough would be thought *\'to have \nbeen the truest expression in verse of the moral \nand intellectual tendencies of his period," had \nMatthew Arnold instead of Clough been his intimate \nfriend. "" \n\nAs on Tennyson and on Browning, so also \nLowell wrote on Landor and at about the same \ntime. 3 Again he wrote on him many years later, \nafter having met him personally, in order to intro- \nduce a sheaf of his letters published in the Century \nMagazine. With Lowell\'s admiration for Emer- \nson in mind, it is interesting to note the intro- \nductory sentence of the later study: \'\'I was first \ndirected to Landor\'s works by hearing how much \nstore Emerson set by them."^ Lowell came to \nadmire Landor for himself, though not without \n\n* Works, ii., 134. \n\n2 Vide Letters, ii., 17, for the probable answer to this question. \n\n3 Massachusetts Quarterly Review for December, 1848. \n\n4 Latest Literary Essays, p. 43. \n\n\n\n94 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nreservations. He says: "I can think of no author \nwho has oftener brimmed my eyes with tears of \nadmiration and sympathy." And yet the judg- \nment of the earHer article \xe2\x80\x94 and Lowell had not \nforgotten it ^ \xe2\x80\x94 is by no means reversed in the later \none: "We consider Landor as eminently a poet \xe2\x80\x94 \nthough not in verse." \n\nThe nineteenth century itself is \'\'a self -exploit- \ning one"^ and the poetry of the modem style is \n"highfaluting . . . since poets have got hold of a \ntheory that imagination is common-sense turned \ninside out."^ So constantly does this attitude \ncrop out in his works that it cannot be considered \nthe result of a moment\'s mood. He returns to \nthe attack when he declares : \n\nA sceptic might say, I think, with some justice, that \npoetry in England was passing now, if it have not \nalready passed, into one of those periods of mere art \nwithout any intense convictions to back it, which lead \ninevitably, and by no long gradation, to the mannered \nand artificial."* \n\nLowell\'s appreciation, rising in some instances to \nenthusiasm, for most of the English poets of \n\n^Compare, for example: "We cannot so properly call Landor \na great thinker, as a man who has great thoughts " (Mass. Q. R., \nii., 65) with: "One would scruple to call him a great thinker, yet \nsurely he was a man who had great thoughts" (Latest Literary \nEssays, p. 48). \n\n^ Works, iii., 94. Cf. Ibid., ii., 158; ii., 212; English Poets, \np. 49, p. 66, p. 71. 3 Works, iii., 270. * Ibid., ii., 121. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S SYMPATHY 95 \n\nwhom he wrote, and his own poetical claims, make \nthis lack of sympathy the more apparent. \n\nThis imperfect sympathy was not limited to \npoetry; fiction and the drama have scant interest \nfor him. To his mind the drama appears to have \ndied with the last of the Elizabethans. In Dry den \nit is true he discusses the poet\'s plays, but he \nignores Restoration drama as a whole. He tells \nus that Wycherly corresponded with Pope; that \nCongreve\'s " shamelessness is refreshing in that \nage of sham"; but there is no word about the \nPlain Dealer or the Way of the World. Lowell \nseems not to have suspected any connection be- \ntween the later Elizabethans and Restoration \n, comedy: Beaumont and Fletcher in his eyes left \nno heritage which found expression in the Maiden \nQueen or through Congreve, in Sheridan. In \nShakespeare, he points out parallel passages in the \nEnglish poet and the Greek dramatists, but there \nis no hint that Shakespearean influence survived \nin Venice Preserved or Jane Shore. So intently \ndid he keep his eyes fixed upon the Tempest and \nMidsummer NigMs Dream that the School for \nScandal and She Stoops to Conquer seem not to \nhave come within his line of vision. When he \ndiscusses the difference in motive between the \nancient and modem drama it is notable that by \nmodem he means Shakespearean.^ His letters, \nso rich in references to poetic literature, are all \n\n\xc2\xab Works t iii., 57. \n\n\n\n96 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nbut silent on the drama. If he ever attended the \ntheatre when in Dresden or Paris or London one \nfinds no mention of it, although he records going \n"down to Cambridge to see the Birds of Aris- \ntophanes."^ \n\nWhen we consider Lowell\'s attitude toward the \nnovel we find in his work surprising silences. In \nRousseau and the Sentimentalists occiu- references \nto Euripides and Ovid and Petrarch; but of \nRichardson (whose Pamela was translated into \nFrench in 1741) there is never a word. And yet: \nRichardson\'s \n\ninfluence was at once felt on the literature of the \nContinent; his novels as a whole or in part were \ntranslated into French, Italian, German, and Dutch. \n. . . The tremendous latent force which lay hidden \nin his emotionalism, when cut loose from moral and \nreligious restraint, was made manifest in Rousseau.* \n\nThis omission, by no means owing to a lack of \nknowledge on Lowell\'s part, seems ascribable in \nfairness to want of interest in that literary type \nin which Richardson was eminent. In his address \non Fielding, Lowell speaks of Homer and ^schylus, \nof Dante and Shakespeare, but is silent about \nFielding\'s work as a reaction from Richardson. \nHe tells us that Fielding\'s genius was incapable \nof "ecstasy of conception"; that in "grossness his \n\n^ Letters, ii., 274. * Cross, The English Novell p. 41. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S SYMPATHY 97 \n\nplays could not outdo those of Dry den" ; but there \nis nothing beyond a brief generality about his \ninfluence on the novel. Lowell had a personal \nacquaintance with Thackeray, at the time of the \nFielding (1883) twenty years in his grave, but it \nseems not to have entered his mind to compare \nhim with Fielding with whom he had so much in \ncommon. In an address on Books and Libraries \n(1885) he "can conceive no healthier reading for \na boy or girl either, than Scott\'s novels, or Cooper\'s, \nto speak only of the dead." One remembers that \nthe authors of Copperfield and of Henry Esmond \nhad died several years before, and wonders why \nPride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park should \nreceive no mention. \n\nLowell of course read Dickens and Thackeray. \nHe is much pleased with Vanity Fair; Thackeray \n\'\'has not Dickens\' talents as a caricaturist but he \ndraws with more truth."\' \n\n\n\nIn Dickens, the lower part of "the World" is \nbrought into the Police Court, as it were, and there, \nafter cross-examination, discharged or committed as \nthe case may be. The characters are real and low, \nbut they are facts. That is one way. Thackeray\'s \nis another and better. One of his books is like a \nDionysius ear, through which you hear the World \ntalking, entirely unconscious of being overheard.^ \n\n^ Scudder, i., 297. =* Letters, i., 211. \n\n7 \n\n\n\n98 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nHe is pleased to attend a reading by Dickens in \n1868, but in 1887 \'\'is trying to get rested by read- \ning Dickens" whose David Copperfield he has \nnever read. \n\nOf George Eliot we look for mention in vain. \nJane Eyre was "very pleasant" to him and he \n"liked Wuthering Heights.\'\' Having nothing to \ndo, he tries George Meredith, behind whose \n"briery intricacies" he gets occasional glimpses \nof a "consummate flower hidden somewhere."^ \nHe reads "Harry James\'s and Howells\'s stories," \nand gives us the key to his interest in the novels \nof his protege Ho wells by writing him: "I am as \nweak as Falstaff and can\'t help liking whatever \nyou do, whatever it may be." ^ Howells published \nan article in the North American Review on Re- \ncent Italian Comedy, Lowell writes him to \nsend in "another on Modern Italian Literature or \nanything you like," his interest being "in your \ngenius," it is evident, and not in modern Italian \nliterature for its own sake. In Spain he is chiefly \ninterested in old editions of Don Quixote and The \nCid. \n\nLowell\'s preference for Thackeray over Dick- \nens may have been due to the latter\'s more \nobvious realism. He remarks that no one nowa- \n\n^ Letters t ii., 358. \n\n* Ibid., ii., 297. Of. ibid., ii., 17: "When my heart is warm \ntowards anyone, I like all about him, and this is why I am so \nbad (or so good) a critic." \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S SYMPATHY 99 \n\ndays would have the courage to paint a man as \nFielding dared to do.^ But it may be suspected \nthat Lowell would not have read Tom Jones had \nit appeared a century after 1749. For we have \nHowells\' word for it that Lowell "would not \nsuffer realism in any but a friend." He could \nnot be persuaded even to read the great Russian \nnovelists. \'\'Ibsen," continues Howells, \'\'with \nall the Norwegians, he put far from him ; he would \nno more know them than the Russians ; the French \nnatirralists he abhorred."^ For the same reason \nhe ignored the claims of Valdes, of whom he says: \nHe was "practically impervious to the germinal \nideas which . . . give the writings of Balzac et \nCie. a pressing claim upon the best attention of \nany serious modern critic. "^ He thinks Charles \nde Bernard "knew the Great World far better \nthan Balzac knew it" and has been saved by a \n"gentlemanly humor" from "yielding ... to \nmelodrama as Balzac so often did.""* Lowell\'s \n\n\n\n^ Works, vi., 63. \n\n* Howells, Literary Friends and Acquaintance, p. 245. Cf. \nWorks, vi., 85: "Among books . . . there is much variety of \ncompany, ranging from the best to the worst, from Plato to \nZola." Cf. Works, vi., 60 for an attack on French reaUsts. \n\n3 Greenslet, p. 292. \n\n4 Letters, ii., 429. Vide Saintsbury, Essays on French Novelists, \np. 165: "Charles de Bernard cannot be called a great novelist. \n... But for the actual amusement of the time occupied in \nreading him, and in the character of time-killer, he may challenge \ncomparison with almost any artist in fiction." \n\n\n\n100 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\npreference for the Odyssey over the Iliad, his fond- \nness for Euripides and Calderon, point towards \nhis romantic interests, interests which account to \nsome extent for his lack of sympathy for reaHsm. \n"Fielding," he says, \'\'has the merit, whatever it \nmay be, of inventing the realistic novel as it is \ncalled."^ In poetry he found that realism which \nbelonged to the \'\'physically intense school," \ndecidedly intolerable. Of this school "Mrs. \nBrowning\'s Aurora Leigh is the worst example, \nwhose muse is a fast young woman ... of the \ndemi-monde.\'\'\'^ He places Swinburne in this \nschool, "the worst school of modem poetry. "^ \nRealism become coarseness, offended him in \nSwift and Pope. He confesses to a hearty dislike \nof Dean Swift, regrets that his "smutchy verses \nare not even yet excluded from the collections," \nand accuses him of "filthy cynicism. "^ As for \nPope, "No poet could write a Dunciad,\'" he said \nin 1844, a declaration which he repeated twenty- \nseven years later. \n\nPope he found guilty of insincerity \xe2\x80\x94 a weakness \nhe could not brook. \' \' Without earnest conviction, \' \' \nhe declared, "no great or sotind literature is con- \nceivable." Waller, insincere and mean, supplied \nby his verses a constant target for Lowell, who \n\n^ Works, vi., 64. The italics are mine. \n\n^ Ihid., ii., 122. Cf. Letters, i., 365. \n\n3 Cf. Letters, i., 377, and Works, ii., 122. \n\n^Letters,!., 76; Conversations, p. 7; Works, iii., 153, and iv., 18. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S SYMPATHY loi \n\nconceded to him only two good lines in all his \npoetry.^ Strong as was Lowell\'s antipathy to \ninsincerity it was even stronger towards sentimen- \ntality. **I do abhor sentimentality from the \nbottom of my soul."^ Perhaps the consciousness \nof a tendency to this weakness in himself, kept \nin check however by a sense of humor, made Lowell \nespecially hard on the sentimentalists. Petrarch \nhe regarded as \'\'the first choragus of that senti- \nmental dance which so long led young folks away \nfrom the realities of life . . . and whose succession \nended, let us hope, with Chateaubriand." ^ Pe- \ntrarch was an "intellectual voluptuary " ; Chateau- \nbriand was "the arch sentimentalist of these latter \ndays," and with Lamartine is called "the mere \nlackey of fine phrases." ^ Rousseau "the modem \nfounder of the sect" is a "quack of genius." ^ \nMoore, accused of living "in sham" and of "cloy- \ning sentimentalism," was the object of the critic\'s \nhearty dislike.^ Percival, whom Lowell crushed \nin a paper which has been likened to Macaulay\'s \nMontgomery y was a sentimentalist, a fact which with \nLowell puts his poetical mediocrity beyond all \ntoleration. In this same essay the critic takes \n\n^ Among My Books (i.), p. 51. A slightly larger claim is \nallowed in Works, iii., 156. * Letters, i., 205. \n\n5 Works, i., 100; Cf. ibid., ii., 253. \n< Ihid., ii., 253; 160; 271. \ns Ihid., i., 376; Latest Literary Essays, p. 165. \n^ Ibid.y ii., 240, 145. Cf. ihid., iv., 391 (note). \n\n\n\nI02 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\noccasion to express an opinion which shows a \nwholesome view of genius : \n\nThe theory that the poet is a being above the world \nand apart from it is true of him as an observer only \nwho applies to the phenomena about him the test of a \nfiner and more spiritual sense. That he is a creature \ndivinely set apart from his fellow men by a mental \norganization that makes them mutually unintelligible \nto each other, is in flat contradiction with the lives \nof those poets universally acknowledged as greatest.^ \n\nHis paper on Thoreau proves him quite out of \nsympathy with the author of Walden, under whose \n"surly and stoic garb," he now and then detects \n*\' something of the sophist and sentimentalizer." \nWhy a man should be eager for the wilderness \nexcept "for a mood or a vacation," he cannot \nunderstand. He continues : \n\nThose who have most loudly advertised their passion \nfor seclusion and their intimacy with nature, from \nPetrarch down, have been mostly sentimentalists, \nunreal men, misanthropes on the spindle side, solacing \nan uneasy suspicion of themselves by professing \ncontempt for their kind. ^ \n\nIt was the discovery of what he considered senti- \nmentalism which brought about a change in \nLowell\'s opinion of the Elizabethan dramatist \n\nI Works, ii., 156. Cf. Letters, i., 366. \n\xc2\xbb Works, i,, 376. Cf. ibid., iv., 412. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S SYMPATHY 103 \n\nFord. So strong was his aversion to this weak- \nness, that in two notable instances his accusation \nof something close to sentimentality has the air \nof being introduced as a final justification of his \nunsympathetic attitude. He attacks Burke for \nattacking Rousseau and declares: ** Burke was \nhimself also, in the subtler sense of the word, a \nsentimentalist."^ As to Carlyle he speaks of \n"his innate love of the picturesque (which is \nonly another form of the sentimentalism he so \nscoffs at, perhaps as feeling it a weakness in him- \nself)."^ Realizing probably that this insinuation \nwas scarcely warranted by the premise, Lowell \nadded a footnote in 1888: "Thirty years ago, \nwhen this was written, I ventured only a hint \nthat Carlyle was essentially a sentimentalist. \nIn what has been published since his death I find \nproof of what I had divined rather than definitely \nformulated. "3 \n\nAlthough Lowell employed a medieval setting \nin Sir Launfal and A Legend of Brittany, and \nalthough he used a familiar Greek theme in En- \ndymion, he inveighs against this search for subjects \nin the medieval or classical ages. He says frankly : \n"I don\'t believe in these modem antiques \xe2\x80\x94 ^no, \nnot in Landor, not in Swinburne, not in any of \n\nI Works, ii., 233. \' Ibid., ii., 92. \n\n3 Cf. Letters, ii., 282, and Letters, ii., 320; "[Carlyle\'s] is a fine \ncharacter to my thinking, especially manly and helpful to the \ncore." \n\n\n\n104 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\n\'em. They are all wrong."\' He complains that \n\'\'Longfellow is driven to take refuge among the \nred men, and Tennyson in the Cambro-Breton \ncyclus of Arthur." ^ He reads the Idylls, but while \nhe sees \n\nvery fine childish things in Tennyson\'s poem and fine \nmanly things, too, ... I conceive the theory to be \nwrong. I have the same feeling (I am not wholly \nsure of its justice) that I have when I see these modern- \nmediaeval pictures. I am defrauded; I do not see \nreality, but a masquerade. ^ \n\nOne finds Lowell\'s theory difficult on remembering \nhow much that was eminent in nineteenth-century \npoetry, from Laodamia and Isabella and The Cenci \ndown, is drawn from fountain-heads either medi- \neval or classic. \n\nLowell never pardoned didlness in a work of \nliterature; that was the irrevocable condemnation. \nTo be interesting, he maintained, was "the first \nduty of every artistic production." ^ He finds \nWordsworth dull at times, though he offers \n"extenuating circumstances." But when dealing \nwith early poets in whom present-day interest is \nnot keen, he could indulge his impatience of dull- \nness without stint. \'\'We have Gascoigne, Surrey, \nWyatt, stiff, pedantic, artificial, systematic as a \n\n^ Letters, i., 357. ^ Works, ii., 132. \n\n3 Letters, ii., 85. cf. infra, p. 170 and note. \n\n4 Works^ ii., 142. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S SYMPATHY 105 \n\ncountry cemetery . . . Stemhold and Hopkins \nare inspired men in comparison with them. "^ \nBut of the author of Confessio Amantis, he has \nharder things to say: "Gower has positively \nraised tediousness to the precision of a science . . . \nYou slip to and fro on the frozen levels of his \nverse which give no foothold to the mind . . . \nThere is nothing beyond his powers to disen- \nchant."\'\' This attitude is not unintelligible. \nBut it is not so easy to understand how on grounds \nof dullness he could condemn Peele and Greene. \nHe thanks Greene "for the word \'brightsome\' \nand for two lines" of a song. "Otherwise he is \nnaught."^ Peele, he says, like Greene, "defied \nthe inspiring influence of the air he breathed . . . \nBut he had not that genius for being dull all the \ntime that Greene had. ""* One cannot hesitate \nto believe that against dullness the stars in their \ncourses fight in vain. Recalling, however, Old \nWives\' Tale and especially James IV., one hesitates \nto accept the critic\'s condemnation on the score of \ndullness. A more plausible reason for his quarrel \nwith Greene and Peele may later be apparent. \n\n^ Works, iv., 274. \xc2\xbb Ibid., iii., 329 and 330. \n\n3 Old English Dramatists, p. 19. ^ Ibid., p. 20. \n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV \n\nTHE JUDICIAL ATTITUDE WITH LOWELL \n\nLOWELL\'S sympathy with nineteenth-century \nliterature, at least in some of its phases, \nwould probably have been less imperfect but for \nqualities in himself which may be called provincial- \nism and Puritanism. Living in a cosmopolis, he \nwould have touched elbows with men who were in \nthe full ciurent of their day in poetry, in drama, \nin the novel. Belles-lettres and the literature of an \nearlier time engaged his attention too absorbingly, \nand that myriad-mindedness which he could have \nfound and to some degree did find late in life in \nLondon, was not discoverable in Cambridge or \neven in Boston.^ Lowell himself was awake to \nthe difference. He writes to Norton in 1883: \n\nI like London, and have learned to see as I never \nsaw before the advantage of a great capital. It \nestablishes one set of weights and measures, moral \nand intellectual, for the whole country. It is, I \n\n^ Cf . To 0. W. H. in Poetical Works, iv., 120, where Lowell says \nthey have always found Cambridge good enough for them. \n\n106 \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE 107 \n\nthink, a great drawback for us that we have as many \nas we have States.^ \n\nLowell has caught in his English addresses some- \nthing of the cosmopolitan tone whose presence \nhe had so quickly perceived. One cannot but \nnotice, however, that the moderation of tone sits \na bit awkwardly on his sentences : \n\nBut what I think constitutes his (Coleridge\'s) \ngreat power ... is the perpetual presence of \nimagination ... It was she who gave him that \npower of sympathy which made his Wallenstein \nwhat I may call the most original translation in \nour language, unless some of the late Mr. Fitzgerald^ s \nhe reckoned such.^ \n\nThis effort to avoid superlatives, to express \nopinions more as opinions and less as facts beyond \ncavil, is conscious. But it never became deep- \nrooted and Lowell, home again in Massachusetts \nwhere he was free from the challenging eyes of a \nBritish audience, slipped back into broad super- \nlative: "It is no sentimental argument for this \nstudy [Greek], that the most justly balanced, the \nmost serene, and the most fecimdating minds since \nthe revival of learning have been steeped in and \nsaturated with Greek literatiu-e. " ^ Again : Sterne \n\n^ Letters, ii., 273. \n\n\xc2\xbb Works, vi., 72. The italics are mine. This address was \ndelivered in Westminster Abbey, May 7, 1885. Vide infra, p. \n186. a Ibid., vi., 166. \n\n\n\nio8 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nis "the most subtle humorist since Shakespeare, " \' \nand Milton " is the most eloquent of Englishmen." ^^ \n\nBut if Lowell\'s English experience did not leave \nhim permanently wary of the allurements of super- \nlative, it doubtless conspired, with the staidness \nwhich came with years, to keep him from more \nobvious sins of provincialism. He is thereafter \nfairly on his guard against those hourgeoiseries \nwhich jar one frequently in his work.^ In his \nEnglish addresses he slips only twice, once in an \naddress not published till after his death, ^ once \nwhen speaking at the Workingmen\'s College, \nLondon, s \n\nSuch hourgeoiseries are common enough in \nLowell but by no means more common than \nebullitions of a humor which is delightful at times \nbut which often becomes sophomoric. Writing \nat the centre, Lowell would not have said: "It \nalmost takes one\'s breath away to think that \nHamlet and the Novum Organon were at the risk of \nteething and measles at the same time."^ Nor \nwould he have let his provincialism carry him into \nsins against that taste which recognizes an instinc- \n\n^ Latest Literary Essays, p. 12. \' Ibid., p. 107. \n\n3 In Dante (1872) Lowell is careful to avoid these lapses. But \nin Spenser (1875) he returns to them again, though by no means \nwith his old-time frequency. \n\n4 On Richard III., delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophi- \ncal Institution, published in Latest Literary Essays. \n\n5 Works, vi., 131. \n\n^ Works, iii., 16. Cf. also ibid.^ i., 271 ; ibid., iv., 38. \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE 109 \n\ntive propriety not only of subject but of treatment. \nWriting at the centre, he would hardly have said : \n"During his (Petrarch\'s) retreat at Vaucluse, in \nthe very height of that divine sonneteering love \nof Laura, of that sensitive purity which called \nAvignon Babylon ... he was himself begetting \nthat kind of children which we spell with a 6."\' \nThis particular weakness of Lowell\'s led him astray \nmore than once. The finer propriety which he \nwould have acquired if writing at the centre \nwould have kept him from more notable faults \nagainst taste. He would not have devoted twenty- \none out of fifty-nine pages to an attack upon the \nweak points of an editor so vulnerable as Mr. \nMasson. He would have found a different text \nfor a preachment on modem-day sentimentalism \nthan the disappointed life and mediocre verse of \na man already eleven years in his grave. ^ He \nwould not have so completely lost his temper as \nhe did in Library of Old Authors. "The old \nmaidenly genius of antiquarianism seems to have \npresided over the editing of the Library," he \nexclaims. Towards the chief editor of the Library, \nhe betrays a special animus: "It might ... be \n\n\' Works, ii., 255. Cf. also ihid., iii., 284; Latest Literary \nEssays, p. 9, etc. The classic case of Lowell\'s weakness for \npunning and bad taste occurs in Fireside Travels, p. 189, regarding \nthe cataract and Milton. It is omitted from the final edition of \nLowell\'s works. \n\n2 Percival died in 1856; his poems were published in 1859; \nLowell\'s article appeared in 1867 in North American Review. \n\n\n\nno LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nas easy to perform the miracle on the blind man \nas on Mr. Hazlitt."\' One recalls the slashing \nstyle of the old reviewers, happily extinct with an \nearlier generation, in place of which came such a \nmethod as that of Arnold in Lowell\'s own day, \nwhich lost none of its force by preserving all of its \ntirbanity. But Arnold was not provincial. \n\nProvincialism, it is safe to say, tended to strength- \nen Lowell\'s Puritanism, which was too deeply \ngrounded to be affected by his years in Madrid and \nLondon. All his life he clung to two ideas; they \nwere, as will be evident, not always maintained in \nhis criticism and were at times even contradicted. \nBut that they were deeply ingrained in his mind \nand were never really abandoned is beyond all \nquestion. They intruded upon his literary esti- \nmates in a confusing way and placed him in the \nquandary of being forced either to abandon or \nessentially to modify his belief on the one hand \nor to shut his eyes to genuine worth on the other. \nThe first of these ideas concerns poetry; the sec- \n\n\n\n^ It has been said in Lowell\'s defense (Greenslet, p. i66) that \nhis resentment towards England\'s pro-Southern attitude in the \nCivil War was partly the cause of the "peculiar animus" so \nevident in this essay. "The component single reviews of which \nthis article is made up had appeared," says Mr. Greenslet, "in \nthe Atlantic and North American in war-time. " This is not quite \naccurate. The first review appeared in the Atlantic in April, \nthe second in May, the third in June, all in 1858; the fifth in \nthe North American for July, 1864; the sixth in the same review \nfor April, 1870; the fourth I have not been able to trace. \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE iii \n\nond, character. As early as the Boston Mis- \ncellany days, Lowell believed in the sacredness of \npoetry and of the poetic calling. In Conversations \nhe wrote: \'\'Poetry is something to make us wiser \nand better, by continually revealing those types \nof beauty and truth which God has set in all men\'s \nsouls." Eleven years later he held to the same \nconception in his lectiu-es before the Lowell Insti- \ntute. The poet has a mission, to which he may be \nfalse, or of which he may be unconscious. \'\'The \nsacred duty and noble office of the poet is to reveal \nand justify . . . [grace and goodness, the fair, the \nnoble, and the true] to men. " \' He does not leave \nbeauty out of the reckoning: "No verse, the chief \nend of which is not the representation of the beauti- \nful, and whose moral is not included in that, can \nbe called poetry in the true sense of the word."^ \nHe reaffirms this notion twenty years later in \nSpenser J though in Wordsworth he has declared \nthat the poet will win our maturer gratitude who \nmakes us less concerned with poetry as beauty \nthan with poetry as a criticism of life.^ From \nthese opinions of Lowell his conception of poetry is \nmanifest: Poetry is the expression of beauty, but \nthat beauty must be the medium for such ideas as \nmake truth and nobility dearer to men. It is the \npresence of the moral element in the definition \nwhich leads to the consideration of the poet as a \n\n^ Lectures on the English Poets, p. 209. \n\n2 Ihid., p. 28. 3 Lowell\'s Works ^ iv., 413. \n\n\n\n112 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nman. Something of a religious character, says \nLowell, clings to the poet. \'\'It is something to be \nthought of, that all the great poets have been good \nmen." ^ The implication is inevitable and was for- \nmulated by Strabo in ancient days and by men as \nunlike as Shelley and Newman in our own time : no \nman can be a great poet who is not first a good \nman. Should Lowell cleave to such a definition of \npoetry, with its emphasis on the moral element, and \ndemand goodness on the part of the poet, he is cer- \ntain to meet with difficulties. Men like Goethe, \nByron, Shelley, and Burns will cause him more or \nless trouble. ^ In the case of most of the poets of \nwhom he treated, a reconciliation of poetic gifts \nand character was not difficult; in no case was it \nimpossible. \n\nAccepting the great classics without question as \nLowell the conservative did, he was bound to \nreconcile his theory of the poet with the poet\'s \nwork: if the work was noble so too must be the \npoet. He does not disguise his eagerness to bring \nthem into harmony. His attitude towards a \nsupposed phase of Chaucer\'s life, long current and \nby no means savory, is typical : \n\n^ English Poets, p. 203. Cf. Works, iv., 357, 48, 297. \n\n^ In the introduction which he wrote to Shelley\'s poems (1857) \nLowell says, speaking of Shelley\'s treatment of his first wife: \n"A matter of morals, as between man and society, cannot be \nreduced to any individual standard however exalted." As to \nByron, cf. Lowell\'s Works, ii., 238; as to Goethe, vide ibid., \nii., 194- \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE 113 \n\nOur chief debt to Sir Harris Nicholas is for having \ndisproved the story that Chaucer, imprisoned for \ncomplicity in the insurrection of John of Northamp- \nton, had set himself free by betraying his accom- \nplices. That a poet, one of whose leading qualities \nis his good sense and moderation, and who should \nseem to have practiced his own rule, to \n\n*\'Fly from the press and dwell with soothf astness ; \nSuffice thee thy good though it be small," \n\nshould have been concerned in any such political \nexcesses, was improbable enough; but that he should \nadd to this the baseness of broken faith was incredible. ^ \n\nWhen he comes to speak of Dante, Lowell con- \nfronts a phase of the poet\'s life the truth of which \nhas met wide acceptance. Taking up the charge \nthat, following Beatrice\'s death, Dante gave him- \nself up to sensual gratification, Lowell says : " Let \nus dismiss at once and forever all the idle tales of \nDante\'s amours."^ Boccaccio, he declares, "first \nset this nonsense agoing" and made such an \naccusation because "it gave him a chance to turn \na period."^ There are dangers in arguing back \nfrom an assumed conclusion. \n\n^ Works, in., 295. ^ Ibid., iv. , 190. \n\n3 Ibid., iv., 190 and 191 (notes). "Nobody who never had \nfelt the like himself could have painted the sinful love of Francesca \nand Paolo so touchingly ... as Dante has done in the fifth \ncanto of Hell." Federn, p. 221. After Beatrice\'s death, "we \nknow that Dante for a time led a rather dissolute life." Ibid., \n\np. 235. \n8 \n\n\n\n114 LOWELL AvS A CRITIC \n\n"a\' This eagerness to bring a poet\'s character into \naccord with the critic\'s ideal of what it should be \nsometimes forces Lowell into open contradiction \nwith his own opinion. Dry den, who is a favorite \nof his, was guilty of writing indecent comedies. \nBut, says Lowell, "I do not believe that he was \nconscious of any harm in them till he was attacked \nby CoUier. "\' A little later however, in the same \nessay, the licentiousness of Dryden\'s comedies is \nbrought home to his recollection by the fact that \n^\'Limerham was barely tolerated for three nights." \nHe then declares: "Dryden\'s own apology only \nmakes matters worse for him by showing that he \ncommitted his offenses with his eyes wide open. "^ \nRegarding the character of Shakespeare, Lowell \nexpresses an opinion in accord with his ideal of \nthe poet, though his conception finds neither \nconfirmation nor denial in the facts as we know \nthem. \'\'Higher even than the genius I rate the \ncharacter of this unique man and the grand \nimpersonality of what he wrote. "^ The second \nclause is rather vague; Lowell explains: Shake- \nspeare has the poise and self-command, the serenity \nand loftiness which are so rare \'\'in our self -exploit- \ning nineteenth century. " \n\nLowell\'s conception of the importance of char- \nacter in its connection with poetic genius ap- \nproaches nearly to puritanism in his inclination \nto believe that great character is a noble form of \n\n^ Works, iii., 149. \' Ibid., iii., 152. 3 Ibid., iii., 94. \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE 115 \n\ngenius. He goes even further: character, he asserts, \nis \'\'the only soil in which real mental power can \nroot itself and find sustenance."\' Difficulties \nlie ahead if Lowell cleave to this belief. He \nrecognizes the difficulty himself: it will not be sur- \nprising to find him endeavoring to soften down the \nacerbity of Pope, and in the face of contradictions \nattributing sincerity to the lachrymose feverish- \nness of Rousseau, just in proportion as he is eager \nto accoimt for the position of the one and to justify \nthe fame and influence of the other. \n\nIn his study of the great poets, Lowell decided \nnot only that "all the great poets have been good \nmen," but that "they were men of their genera- \ntion who felt most deeply the meaning of the \npresent."^ This last idea, to which he himself \nas a poet did not always cleave, explains his failure \nto sympathize with much that is beautiful and \nprobably enduring in nineteenth-century poetry. \nFor, as has been already pointed out, Lowell dis- \nbelieved in Greek and medieval themes, thus \nmaking an application, provincial in its narrow- \nness, of a belief to which one might well hesitate \nto take exception. \n\nIt is not easy to say where in this general atti- \ntude Puritanism ends and provincialism begins. \nIt is not easy to say how far this attitude would \nhave been modified, if Lowell had all his life been \nwriting at the centre. Possibly there would have \n\n^ Works, ii., 195. 2 English Poets, 210. \n\n\n\nii6 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nbeen no modification at all. It has already been \npointed out that various lapses against good taste, \nsome slight, some grave, would not be chargeable \nto LoweU had he always been a cosmopolitan. \nUnder such a fortunate condition he would prob- \nably have felt more interest in the novel and the \ndrama and a less imperfect sympathy for nine- \nteenth-century poetry. But his dislike of realism \nin the novel and of classic and medieval elements \nin modem poetry, while it might have been sof- \ntened by cosmopolitan influences, was probably too \ndeeply rooted in his puritanism to be wholly \neradicated. In his English address on Fielding he \nis not unsympathetic, though Fielding is a realist \nand the inventor of the realistic novel. Lowell\'s \nprejudice in this instance is kept out of sight : after \nall he is discussing a man whose "works are become \na substantial part of . . . English literature." \nAnd yet his sense of moral evaluation will not \ndown: a third of the address is given up to a con- \nsideration and defense of the morality of Fielding \nand his works. The significance of this lies not so \nmuch in the fact that Lowell played the role of \napologist as that he considers such a role as neces- \nsary. It is obvious that this bent of mind which \nhas been called puritanism was too deeply embed- \nded in Lowell\'s fibre ; it played a part even in those \nessays where we have not already marked its \npresence. \n\nHowever defective Lowell\'s sympathies were in \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE 117 \n\ncertain directions, he honestly tried to maintain \ndetachment \xe2\x80\x94 to preserve the judicial attitude \xe2\x80\x94 \ntowards the subject of the essay and his works. \nAs proof of this the essay on Rousseau is worth \nexamination. In ohiter dicta the critic declares \nRousseau a sentimentalist, "the victim of a fine \nphrase, " and \xe2\x80\x94 ^here is his real attitude in a word \xe2\x80\x94 \n"a quack of genius. " But when he comes to dis- \ncuss Rousseau formally, he is determined to main- \ntain a judicial attitude. His lack of sympathy \nmust not appear: after all, the object of his con- \nsideration is a French classic, whose influence \nin awakening an appreciation of nature, and in the \nfields of political thought and of education, has \nbeen great. Lowell first considers Biu*ke, who \nbitterly attacked Rousseau; then Johnson, who \n** would sooner sign a sentence for his (Rousseau\'s) \ntransportation, than that of any felon who has \ngone from the Old Bailey these many years"; and \nfinally Tom Moore, who potired out \'\'several \npages of octosyllabic disgust at the sensuality of \nthe dead man of genius."\' Lowell attempts to \ninvalidate these attacks by attacking the men who \nmade them. Biu-ke was vain, a sentimentalist, \nand a snob. ^ Johnson was a hard-headed, illogical \nconservative, and a friend of "that gay man about \ntown, Topham Beauclerk" and of "that wretched- \nest of lewd fellows, Richard Savage. "^ Moore \n\n^ Works, ii., 235 ff. passim. \' Ihid., ii., 233, 236, \n\n3 Ibid., ii., 236. \n\n\n\nIi8 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nwas a sentimentalist, a toady, and a sham.\' \nRousseau, continues Lowell, had genius, and the \nattacks upon his character might well have been \nomitted : "Genius is not a question of character. " ^ \nIndeed, as to the man of genius, "Whatever he was \nor did, somehow or other God let him be worthy \nto write this, and that is enough for us. "^ But \nafter aU, Lowell cannot quite forget that Rousseau \nis "a quack of genius" and a sentimentalist who \nsent his children to the foundling hospital. He \ncannot ignore his character. He retreats: "The \nmoment he (the sentimentalist) undertakes to \nestablish his feeling as a rule of conduct, we ask at \nonce how far are his own life and deed in accord- \nance with what he preaches."\'\' After all, how \nfine a thing is a lovely action I^ He soon rettirns \nto Moore and remembering that he has branded \nhim as a sham and a toady for daring to call genius \nan impostor, declares: "The confusion of his \n(Moore\'s) ideas is pitiable. . . . [Genius] is always \ntruer than the man himself is, greater than he. "^ \nHe illustrates: "If Shakespeare the man had been \nas marvellous a teacher as the genius that wrote \nhis plays . . . would his contemporaries have left \nus so wholly without record of him as they have \ndone?"s One feels that Lowell\'s eagerness to do \njustice to Rousseau has led him far afield. He \nretreats again, not to any further abstract dis- \n\n\xc2\xbb Works, ii., 238 ff. a Ihid., ii., 241. a Ihid., ii., 241. \n\n4 Ibid,t ii., 243. s Ihid.^ ii., 244. \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE 119 \n\ncussion, but to a consideration of Rousseau\'s \ncharacter. Though weak and sometimes despi- \ncable, he **is not fairly to be reckoned among the \nherd of sentimentaHsts. "^ Moreover, \'\'In judg- \ning Rousseau it would be unfair not to take note \nof the malarious atmosphere in which he grew \nup. "^ In a consideration of sentimentalism and \nof prominent sentimentalists in literature, Lowell \nfeels, it is easy to see, a revulsion from the unreality \nof their work. He forgets that "genius is not a \nquestion of character" ; now he says: Except in the \ncase of the highest creative genius "the author is \ninevitably mixed with his work, and we have a \nfeeling that the amount of his sterling character is \nthe security for the notes he issues. " ^ This excep- \ntion marks a return towards Lowell\'s real belief in \nthe inter-relation of genius and character. Again he \ncomes to Rousseau : he was the \' \' most perfect type of \nthe sentimentalist of genius . " "* In fact his was \' \' the \nbrain most far reaching in speculation that ever kept \nitself steady . . . amid such disordered tumult of \nthe nerves. \' \' ^ And yet one cannot read his Rousseau \njuge de Jean Jacques without believing him insane. ^ \nThe contradiction here Lowell does not notice: \nhis point in one sentence is to praise Rousseau for \nhis mental power and in the next to suggest a reason \n\n^ Works, ii., 244. \n\n\'Ibid., ii., 247. Vide Lippincott\'s, vii., 645 ff., on Lowell\'s \nmisconception in this matter. \n\n3 Ibid., ii., 257. 4 Ibid., ii., 262. s Ibid., ii., 263. \n\n\n\nI20 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nfor a "charitable . . . notion of him." Lowell \ncontinues: Rousseau had a remarkable vein of \ncommon sense, although his political system was \nbased on a fallacy. "For good or evil, " Rousseau \n"was the foster-father of modern democracy."\' \nAs a man he "might have been a saint" or "have \nfounded an order," although a little later Lowell \nfrom his Confessions would "assign him to that \nclass with whom the religious sentiment is strong \nand the moral nature weak."^ Let us pity, he \npleads, not condemn. We ought not to ask, What \nkind of life did Rousseau lead, but rather, "Was \nthis the life he meant to lead?"^ Lowell knows \nthe answer he would make to all this. He made it \nnineteen years later when he called Rousseau "a \nquack of genius. \' \' But now Rousseau is the subject \nof his essay ; he is bound to treat him with judicial \nimpartiality . He answers : \n\nPerhaps, when we take into account his faculty of \nself-deception ... we should ask, Was this the life he \nbelieved he led?^ Have we any right to judge this \nman after our blunt English fashion, and condemn \nhim, as we are wont to do, on the finding of a jury of \naverage householders ? Is French reality precisely our \nreality? Could we tolerate tragedy in rhymed alex- \nandrines, instead of blank verse ?^ \n\nI Works, ii., 264. \' Ihid., ii., 265. 3 Jhid., ii., 268. \n\n4 Cf. Introduction to Shelley\'s Poems, p. 21 : "A question of \nmorals as between man and society cannot be reduced to any \nindividual standard however exalted." \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE 121 \n\nRousseau was a typical Frenchman, in many \nrespects, and too often "fell in with the fashion" \nof "truth padded out to the size and shape de- \nmanded by comme-il-faut.\'\'^ Rousseau was \n"intellectually . . . true and fearless; consti- \ntutionally, timid, contradictory, and weak; but \nnever, if I understand him rightly, false." ^ The \nfinal conclusion is really the keynote to Lowell\'s \ntrue position; stripped of metaphor it means: \nRousseau belonged to the sentimentalists, but \nthere were excellent elements in him notwith- \nstanding and less taint than is usual with the class. ^ \nOne cannot but feel that Lowell has tried hard to \ntreat Rousseau with justice although his endeavors \nled him into strange vagaries. He attacks Burke \nand Johnson, both of whom he admires; hope- \nlessly upsets his deep-rooted notion of genius and \ncharacter; involves himself in a contradiction \nregarding Rousseau\'s sanity; employs false logic; \nand sins against historical accuracy. The price \nwas rather a heavy one to pay : it at least proves \nthat Lowell was eager to be fair. \n\nIn his essay on Pope, Lowell recalls his earlier \ndislike of the poet, and though his sympathy is \nimperfect he protests that he is "at least in a \ncondition to allow him every merit that is fairly \nhis." In 1886, Lowell expressed what a study of \nthe Pope persuades one was his real opinion: \nPope\'s "vivid genius almost persuaded wit to \n\n^ Works, ii., 269. 2 Ibid,, ii., 270. 3 Ibid., ii., 270 flF. \n\n\n\n122 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nrenounce its proper nature and become poetry." \nThis was also his opinion in Conversations. In \nthe essay on Pope, he declares that the poet \'\'fills \na very important place in the history of English \npoetry. " The final point of the essay is embodied \nin this question : Was Pope really a poet ? Lowell\'s \nown belief is evident. But he is talking of a classic \nof English literature and feels bound to do him \njustice : his judicial findings must not be radical on \nthe one hand, nor unfair on the other. He avoids \nan unequivocal answer ; he implies that Pope is not \na poet since "in any strict definition there can be \nonly one kind of poetry."\' But "it should seem \nthat the abiding presence of fancy in his best \nwork forbids his exclusion from the rank of poet. " ^ \nThis idea grows on him until he assumes the very \npoint under discussion in his declaration: "The \nRape of the Lock sets him even as a poet far above \nmany men more largely endowed with poetic \nfeeling and insight than he. "^ All things con- \nsidered, one feels that Lowell has held in check his \nlack of sympathy and tried to maintain a judicial \nattitude. As for Pope as a man he says: "In \nspite of the savageness of his satires, his natural \ndisposition seems to have been an amiable one . . . \nThere was very little real malice in him"; and \n"\'his evil was wrought from want of thought. \'"^ \nLowell believes him a poseur in his letters, thinks \n\n\xc2\xbb Works, iv., 53. ^ Ihid., iv., 56. \n\n3 Ibid., iv., 57. * Ibid., iv., 49 ff. \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE 123 \n\nhis attack on Theobald due to jealousy, and says \nhe made a \'\'brutal assault" on Denis in order \nto "propitiate a man whose critical judgment he \ndreaded."\' But the critic would be just and \nfinds palliation in the influence of the age and of \nSwift. \n\nIf it is necessary to examine Lowell\'s attempt \nto maintain a judicial attitude towards men like \nRousseau and Pope, with both of whom he was out \nof sympathy, it is no less important to examine \nhim from the same point of view in his essay on \nCarlyle, towards whom he felt "a secret par- \ntiality."^ \n\nIf he tries to transcend his sympathy and become \njudicial and coldly considerate, he fails and be- \ncomes "perhaps . . . harder on him than I \nmeant. "^ Carlyle, he finds, is the "first in \ninsight of English critics and the most vivid of \nEnglish historians. " 3 He has a "conceptive \nimagination vigorous beyond any in his gener- \nation," a "mastery of language equalled only by \nthe greatest poets. "^ But he has many defects \nwhich we have a right to inquire into "when he \nasstimes to be a teacher of moral or political phi- \nlosophy. "4 Carlyle would force his ideas upon us \nby repeating them "with increasing emphasis and \nheightened shrillness, " s tintil they have at last \nbecome cant,^ and he has grown to be insincere \n\n^ Works, iv., 52. 2 Letters, ii., 74. 3 Works, ii., 86. \n\n* Ibid.y ii., 90. s Ibid., ii., 96. ^ Ibid., ii., 97. \n\n\n\n124 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nand "something very like a sham himself."\' \nCaryle\'s conception of history moreover is wrong : \nit is not primarily concerned with heroic or typical \nfigures. =" The Frederick he finds is an exaltation of \na man far below the heroic standard. ^ It is a work \nwhich (and this is significant) "is open to all \nmanner of criticism, especially in point of moral \npiirpose and tendency. ""* Lowell approaches the \nend of the essay; perhaps he has gone too far in \nhis adverse criticism. He says: "With all deduc- \ntions, he remains the profound est critic and the \nmost dramatic imagination of modem times. "^ \nHe belongs to the highest order of minds, for he is \nan inspirer and awakener.s The next sentence \nis noteworthy, for Lowell is thinking of his own \nobligations: "The debt due him from those who \nlistened to the teachings of his prime for revealing \nto them what sublime reserves of power even the \nhumblest may find in manliness, sincerity, and self- \nreliance, can be paid with nothing short of rever- \nential gratitude. "5 There lies the secret of \nLowell\'s partiality. Perhaps he has experienced \na reaction from the admiration of the early days; \nhis tone in the essay is of one who has outgrown his \nauthor. In considering Carlyle, it is to be remem- \n\n\xc2\xbb Works., ii., 1 08. \n\n\xc2\xbb Cf. Lowell\'s utterance in 1885 {Works, vi., 91): "History is, \nindeed, mainly the biography of a few imperial men. " \n\n3 Works, ii., no. 4 Ihid., ii., 117. \n\ni Ibid., ii., 118. \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE 125 \n\nbered, Lowell had not the steadying influence of \nthat body of opinion which grows up through the \nyears around a classic. These various reasons \nmay be considered to have given Lowell through \nmost of the essay an unsympathetic point of view. \nBeyond doubt his "secret partiality" explains the \nupsetting of his judicial attitude at the outset. \nIn his eagerness to rise superior to that partiality, \nthe critic assumed an attitude which carried him \ntoo far the other way. \n\nIn Thoreau Lowell was treating not a classic \nauthor for whom he felt imperfect sympathy as \nin the case of Pope, nor one whose whole class he \nheld in aversion as in the case of Rousseau, nor \nyet a contemporary like Carlyle for whom he \nhad a secret partiaHty. In Thoreau rather he was \ndiscussing an author who, as a contemporary, had \nnot the claim upon him which as a classic he would \nhave exercised and who had never seemed to him \nmore than a conscious and weak imitator of \nEmerson. \'\' He seems to me to have been a man \nwith so high a conceit of himself that he accepted \nwithout questioning, and insisted on our accepting, \nhis defects and weaknesses of character as virtues \nand powers pecuhar to himself."\' His indolence, \nlack of persistency, poverty, selfishness \xe2\x80\x94 ^all made \nhim regard their opposites as not worth possessing. \' \nThoreau, he held, lacked continuity of mind, \nhumor, and logical power. He was an egotist, \n\n* Works, i., 369. \n\n\n\n126 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nsomething of a sophist and sentimentalizer and \nlacked a "healthy mind."\' "His aim was a \nnoble and a useful one in the direction of \'plain \nliving and high thinking,\'" but his endeavors at \ncarrying it out were unsound. "^ His thought and \nstyle furthermore were misty and not mystic. ^ \nTowards the end of the essay the pendulum swings \nback ; the critic seems warm for man and author \nas before he was warm against them. \' \' We have, \nhe says, "the highest testimony to the natural \nsweetness, sincerity, and nobleness of his temper. " \'^ \nHe concedes that though narrow in range, Thoreau \nwas yet a master. The critic seems to be trying \nhonestly, however tardily, to give us the materials \nfor striking a balance of justice. \n\nIn treating the established classics of language \nLowell points out those beauties of their work \nwhich all have united in praising. In the lesser \nclassics he will find less to praise, and here and \nthere something to blame. But the demands on \nhis detachment, on his power to maintain a ju- \ndicial attitude, will be less than in the case of a man \nwhose tribe is his aversion and much less than in \nthe case of a contemporary for whom he feels such \na partiality as in his conservative eyes would be \nquite safe only in the case of a classic. \n\nShakespeare to Lowell is the greatest of poets. \nHe is "extraordinary from whatever side we look \n\n^ Works, i., 373 ff. \' Ibid., i., 380. \n\n3 Ibid., i., 371. * Ibid., i., 378. \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE 127 \n\nat him. "^ Wherever one turns in Lowell\'s works \none encounters the name of Shakespeare. The \ncritic\'s attitude toward the greatest of the Eliza- \nbethans was evident as early as 1842 when he \nwrote: "Of the old dramatists . . . only Shake- \nspeare united perfectness of parts with adaptation \nand harmony of the whole. "^ In Conversations \nShakespeare appears frequently, his practice being \ntaken as the ultimate criterion of perfection. As \nthe years passed, Lowell\'s earlier judgment became \neven stronger in his mind, was elaborated and \nphrased in sweeping superlatives. No matter \nwhat writer is under discussion, Shakespeare is \nbrought in for a triumphant comparison. Carlyle \nis great, we are told, in the delineation of character, \nbut \'\'we doubt whether he could have conceived" \na certain scene in Antony and Cleopatra^] Pope\'s \nRape of the Lock shows fancy, but compare it \nwith Midsummer Night\'s Dream and see how far \nit falls short of poetic fancy ^; Chaucer has a vivid \nimaginative faculty, but see how vastly superior \nis that of Shakespeare, s One wonders if Shake- \nspeare is an obsession with Lowell. When he comes \nto devote an essay to the poet, one is prepared \nfor the attitude he will assume. If Shakespeare \nabandons play writing and returns to Strat- \nford, is it because he has made a comfortable \n\n^ Works, iii., 61. \n\n^Boston Miscellany, August, 1842, article "John Ford." \n\n3 Works, ii., 103. 4 Ihid., iv., 36. s Ihid., iii., 354. \n\n\n\n128 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nfortune and can satisfy his ambition to live in rural \nquiet with a patent of gentleman? No; it is \nbecause he has fathomed human life and "come \nat last to the belief that genius and its works were \nas phantasmagoric as the rest, and that fame was \nas idle as the rumor of the pit."\' If parts of his \ntext are obscure does it suggest inadequacy or \ncarelessness on the part of the poet? No; it \n\nmay be attributed either to an idiosyncratic use of \nwords and condensation of phrase, to a depth of \nintuition for a proper coalescence with which ordinary \nlanguage is inadequate, to a concentration of passion \nin a focus that consumes the lighter links which bind \ntogether the clauses of a sentence or of a process of \nreasoning in common parlance, or to a sense of music \nwhich mingles music and meaning without essentially \nconfounding them. \' \n\nThis is the attitude, not of judicial calm, but of \nspecial pleading. The following sentence illus- \ntrates without need of further citation Lowell\'s \nassumption of perfection in Shakespeare : "Voltaire \ncomplains that he (Hamlet) goes mad without any \nsufficient object or result. Perfectly true, and \nprecisely what was most natural for him to do, \nand, accordingly, precisely what Shakespeare \nmeant that he should do." "^ Lowell\'s findings can \nbe anticipated : in imagination, fancy, perspicacity, \nartistic discretion, judgment, poise of character, \n^ Works, iii., 27. \' Ibid., iii., 86. \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE 129 \n\npoetic instinct, hiimor and satire, he is so wonder- \nful and unparalleled that even an atheist must \nbelieve his brain the creation of a Deity. ^ Lowell \ndoes not forget that the great poet must be a good \nman: high as he rates Shakespeare\'s genius he \nrates his character even higher. To all this there \ncan be but one conclusion: here Lowell is not a \njudge; he is a panegyrist. \n\nDante, for whom Lowell\'s admiration was \nsecond only to that for Shakespeare, receives \nalmost the same treatment. The critic\'s attitude \nis not so frankly that of rapt devotion. Dante\'s \nwork had faults: \'\'There are no doubt in the \nDivina Commedia (regarded merely as poetry) \nsandy spaces enough both of physics and meta- \nphysics."^ That is the single adverse criticism \nin the essay and Lowell adds, "But with every \ndeduction Dante remains the first of descriptive as \nwell as moral poets. "^ For the rest, he is the \nsupreme figure in Hterary history, whose readers \nturn students, his students zealots, and what was \na taste becomes a religion.^ That sentence is \nsignificant : it is not the expression of a critic who \nwill maintain the judicial attitude, but of one who is \nhimself "a student turned zealot." In vividness, \nhe regards Dante as without a rival; in straight- \nforward pathos, the single and sufficient thrust of \npraise, he has no competitor; he is "the highest \nspiritual nature that has expressed itself in rhyth- \n\n^ Works, iii., 92 ff. = /^.^ iy., 259. 3 Ihid., iv., 163. \n\n9 \n\n\n\n130 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nmical form.*\'\' One does not necessarily take \nissue with these judgments. But they are arrived \nat either by ignoring or brushing aside the case of \nthe advocatus diaholi and it is obvious from the out- \nset that the judge has determined on canonization. \nAs a great poet, Dante must be a good man. The \ncritic will have no flaw in him; charges of sensu- \nality are to be "dismissed at once. " Does Dante \npity Francesca? It is not out of friendship for \nher family or from consciousness of fleshly weakness \nin himself, but from the tenderness of his nature. ^ \nDoes he betray vindictiveness? It is merely \nrighteous anger against base men. ^ \n\nIn Chaucer, as in Dante, Lowell\'s manner and \nattitude are much the same. There is no investi- \ngation of the poet\'s qualities; he is frankly a \nfavorite with the critic, and the essay, so far as it \ndeals with Chaucer, declares him, "One of the \nworld\'s three or four great story tellers, . . . one \nof the best versifiers that ever made English trip \nand sing"; "one of the most purely original of \npoets."\'* The few external stains on the man \nare nothing ; his character we may suppose genial, \nhearty, and good.^ \n\nAs Lowell moves away from this triumvirate \nand comes to consider Spenser, Milton, and the \nrest, he succeeds in detaching himself to some \nextent from that superlative sympathy which in \n\n^ Works, iv., 263. \xc2\xbb Ibid., iv., 171. 3 Ibid., iv., 177 fif. \n\n4 Ibid., iii., 336 and 360. s Ibid, iii., 365. \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE 131 \n\nthe earlier cases became enthusiasm. His attitude \ntoward Spenser is sympathetic enough but not \nlacking in judical coolness. Much in Spenser he \nsays is evanescent, and the allegory of the Faery \nQueen is tiresome. The praise is not overdone, \nthough it is generous as befits the \'\'poet\'s poet." \nThat Milton was the doctrinaire who was \'\'more \nrhetorician than thinker " and who had a "haughty \nconception of himself, " Lowell admits, though the \ninadequate nature of the essay lets him do no \nmore than suggest the poet\'s greatness. Towards \nthe other classics that have not been already \ndiscussed, Lowell\'s attitude was for him judicial. \nTowards Wordsworth perhaps his sympathy may \nbe open to question, although in his essay on \nthe poet he does him justice. \' One might go on \ntaking up in turn every essay which Lowell wrote. \nBut the point of our examination can be made \nfrom those we have already discussed. \n\nTowards the subject of his essay the critic is \nmost likely to transcend judicial calm. In Dante \nhe finds the Italian poet the supreme of literary- \nfigures; in Shakespeare he concedes that place by \nimpHcation to the English poet. In the same \nessay he declares that no one can imitate Shake- \nspeare "by even so much as the gait of a single \nverse"; in a subsequent essay he admits that this \nis not only possible but that it actually occurs.^ \n\n\xc2\xbb Cf. Works, iv., 406; ii., 78; i., 128. \n\n\xc2\xbb Ibid,, iii., 36; Latest Literary Essays, p. 120. \n\n\n\n132 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nAgain in Shakespeare^ he expresses admiration for \nthe poet whose \'\'poise of character . . . enabled \nhim to be the greatest of poets and so unnoticeable \na good citizen as to leave no incidents for biog- \nraphies. " Yet in another essay he demands: \n"If Shakespeare the man had been as marvellous \na creature as the genius that wrote his plays, . . . \nwould his contemporaries have left" him undistin- \nguished and unrecorded?^ In Chaucer he is eager \nto show from what mediocre antecedents the poet \nsprang with his "gracious worldliness. " What \nare the Chansons de Geste after all, he would ask. \n" Who after reading them \xe2\x80\x94 even . . . th.Q, Song of \nRoland \xe2\x80\x94 can remember much more than a cloud of \nbattle-dust, through which the paladins loom dimly \ngigantic, and a strong verse flashes here and there \nlike an angry sword? " "= But later, when he is not \ninterested in exalting Chaucer, he says: "The \nChanson de Roland is to me a very interesting and \ninspiring poem, certainly not to be named with \nthe Iliad for purely Hterary charm, but equipped \nwith the same moral qualities that have made that \npoem dearer to mankind than any other. " ^ This \ntendency to ignore the demands of critical detach- \nment in favor of the author under discussion, is \nthe rule rather than the exception. In Dry den, \nLowell declares the poet "highest in the second \nclass of poets," although he regards both Milton \n\n^ Works, ii., 244. 2 li)id.^ iii., 310. \n\n3 Latest Literary Essays, p. 147. \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE 133 \n\nand Spenser as poets of the second class and \nDryden\'s superiors. In Pope, as has been pointed \nout, Lowell refrains from expressing his opinion \nthat the author of the Rape of the Lock was not a \npoet, although that was his real belief. Discussing \nPope as a man, he believes him guilty of \'\'very \nlittle real malice "^\xe2\x80\xa2 in another essay (that on \nDry den) he says: "Pope seems to have nursed his \ngrudge, and then, watching his chance, to have \nsquirted vitriol from behind a corner, rather glad \nthan otherwise if it fell on the women of those he \nhated or envied."^ \n\nThis partiality for the author tmder discussion \nprobably seemed to Lowell only a phase of that \nsympathy which the critic should feel towards his \nsubject. 3 But it was intrusive with Lowell and too \noften gave him the air of a special pleader. His judg- \nments, in consequence, are confusing, if, as often \nhappens, they are delivered in favor of the sub- \nject of the essay in the ardor of to-day and against \nhim in obiter dicta in the calm of to-morrow. \n\nLowell seems honestly to have desired detach- \nment in treating the subjects of his critical essays. \nThe very extravagances into which he fell in \nRousseau; the repression of his own opinion of \nPope as poet; his fear of being affected by his \npartiaHty for Carlyle; even his apologia of the \n\n^ Works, iv., 49, Essay on Pope. \xc2\xbb Ihid., iii., 177. \n\n3 "Without sympathy there can be no right understanding," \nsaid Lowell. (Article on Swift, Nation, April 13, 1876.) \n\n\n\n134 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\neighteenth century in Gray, all go to prove that \nwhether he were treating a classic or a contem- \nporary, either as man or as writer, or whether he \nwere sketching a period, he was eager to be fair. \n\nAll things considered, his attitude can hardly be \ncalled judicial, except perhaps in the Lowellian \nsense. In Lowell\'s case "judicial attitude" has a \nmeaning of its own. As one finds it in Sainte- \nBeuve, it means a cool aloofness which sets the \nfacts before the reader quite uncolored by the \nprejudice, enthusiasm, or even by the opinion of \nthe critic. There is no marshaling of short- \ncomings on the heels of excellences, each set being \nlabeled by the critic. Of Sainte-Beuve indeed \none is almost unconscious ; it is his business to see \nthat the facts are placed before you; you are the \njury, not he. Yet it is he who admits this set of \nfacts or rules out that ; he does not harangue about \nthe irrelevant, he excludes it. And so far in the \nbackground does Sainte-Beuve remain all this \ntime that one forgets the power of his function. \nHe knows perfectly well what the reader\'s con- \nclusions will be and yet they have all the appear- \nance of being arrived at in entire independence of \nthe critic. But with Lowell, judicial attitude means \nsomething entirely different. He is always in the \nforeground, pointing out that the author imder \ndiscussion has this excellence and that short- \ncoming. Sometimes he gives grounds for his \njudgments; just as often he does not. In either \n\n\n\nHIS JUDICIAL ATTITUDE 135 \n\ncase the judgment is given not with the dispassion \nof a judge, but with the finality of an autocrat. \nAt times he descends from the critical bench and \nargues in behalf of the author under consideration \nwith all the warmth of a special pleader. Such \ndetachment as Sainte-Beuve\'s we never find. \nLowell\'s final conclusions have the air of being \nreached by an intuitive process, the resultant of \nwhich, however it may exceed his grounds of \njudgment, the reader is to accept as the utterance \nof an ultimate tribunal. Lowell does not mean to \nbe tmjust. For the most part he is not. But \nthe justice of his final conclusions does not depend \non his maintenance of a judicial attitude. So far \nas the judicial attitude is apparent in Lowell, it is \nfor the most part an endeavor to arrive at justice \nby striking an average between praise on the one \nhand and blame on the other. \n\n\n\nCHAPTER V \npenetration: the ultimate gift \n\nLOWELL in his best studies likes to call atten- \ntion to the various single qualities of his \nauthor, merely mentioning some, expanding on \nothers, but in the end suggesting the varied round \nof excellences and shortcomings. When one \nfinishes his best essays, one has touched upon the \nworks of the authors under discussion from several \npoints of view. Whatever careful study would \ndisclose to the eyes of a man of cultivation and \ntaste, Lowell sees. His own appreciation of the \nbeauties he points out becomes now and then a \ndelight which seems to revel in a translation of \nits own impressions into poetic prose. Now he \ntranslates his impression of a single quality, as \nwhere he says of Milton\'s descriptions: In them \n"he seems to circle like an eagle bathing in the blue \nstream of air, controlling with his eye broad \nsweeps of champaign or of sea, and rarely fulmin- \ning in the sudden swoop of intenser expression."\' \nNow he translates his impressions of a work, as of \n\n* Works, iv., 99, \n\n136 \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 137 \n\nChaucer*s best tales or of the best passages in \nWordsworth, and his translations are always \nbeautiful. What could be finer than this on \nSpenser\'s poetry? \n\nOther poets have held their mirrors up to nature, . . . \nbut Spenser\'s is a magic glass in which we see . . . \nvisionary shapes conjured up by the wizard\'s art from \nsome confusedly remembered past or some impossible \nfuture; it is like one of those still pools of medieval \nlegend which covers some sunken city of the antique \nworld ; a reservoir in which all our dreams seem to have \nbeen gathered. As we float tipon it, we see that it \npictures faithfully enough the summer-clouds that \ndrift over it, the trees that grow about its margin, but \nin the midst of these shadowy echoes of actuality we \ncatch faint tones of bells that seem blown to us from \nbeyond the horizon of time, and, looking down into \nthe clear depths, catch glimpses of towers and far- \nshining knights and peerless dames that waver and are \ngone. Is it a world that ever was, or shall be, or can \nbe, or but a delusion?^ \n\nOne feels that such a passage as this, or as the \nanalogy between the Divina Commedia and a \nGothic cathedral, belongs to poetry. ^ Such trans- \nlations of impression were not inadvertent. Said \nLowell in 1855: "A lecturer on science has only \nto show how much he knows \xe2\x80\x94 the lecturer on \npoetry can only be sure how much he feels. \' \' ^ This \n\n^ Works, iv., 348. 2 Ihid., iv., 236- \n\n3 Lectures on the English Poets, p. 3. \n\n\n\n138 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\ntendency for translating feeling into figurative \nlanguage was, as has been already pointed out, \none of the chief characteristics of Lowell\'s criticism \nall his life. In 1842 he speaks of Chapman, \n"whose rustling vines and calm snow-capt head, \nwhich seems made to slumber in the peaceful blue, \nare on the sudden deluged with surging lava from \nthe burning heart below."\' Even as a critic, \nLowell the boy was emphatically father of Lowell \nthe man. It is in such interpretative criticism as \nthis that he is at his best. He seems to find ab- \nstract questions penitential to discuss, but once he \nis free to tap the wellsprings of his feelings, he is \nat ease. \n\nThat this should be the case is not surprising. \nLowell had taste and imagination; both gifts \nhelped to make his impressions true and his trans- \nlation of them poetical in conception and phrasing. \nAt times his interpretations are not drawn out \nbut condensed, and gain from their brevity and \nsuggestiveness something of epigrammatic point. \nChapman\'s eloquence, "nobly fine" and "robus- \ntious," at times "seems to be shouted through a \nspeaking-trumpet in a gale of wind. "^ His essay \non Pope is summed up with a striking antithesis : \n"Measured by any high standard of imagination, \nhe will be found wanting ; tried by any standard \nof wit, he is unrivaled. " The grace of inspiration \n\n^ Early Writings, p. 188. (Boston Miscellany, 1842.) \n\xc2\xbb Old English Dramatists, p. 90. \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 139 \n\nwas with him when he wrote of Thoreau: \'*As we \nread him, it seems as if all-out-of-doors had kept a \ndiary and become its own Montaigne. " ^ It would \nbe difficult to find in a volume of appreciation two \nlines more happily suggestive. \n\nThis felicity of phrase is not uncommon in \nLowell and flashes out when most unexpected. \nHe declines to discuss the originality of Keats, for \noriginality is not definable ; we all have intellectual \nancestors: \'\' In the parliament of the present every \nman represents a constituency of the past. \' \' ^ The \nthings of the spirit survive the wealth of nations; \nwho could have put the thought more beautifully? \n"The garners of Sicily are empty now, but the bees \nfrom all climes still fetch honey from the tiny \ngarden-plot of Theocritus."^ Much of the same \nidea again is in Lowell\'s mind, the deathlessness \nof those pages touched by "the authentic soul \nof man," when he said: "Oblivion looks in the \nface of the Grecian Muse only to forget her er- \nrand. "\'^ It is small wonder that the man who \ncould achieve so many phrases, felicitous, illu- \nmined with fancy, quotable, should himself escape \ncriticism by disarming the advocatus diaholi. \n\nThough Lowell, it will be remembered, some- \ntimes fell short in the kind of taste which ob- \nserves the proprieties in the treatment of persons \nand in the expression of thought, he was rarely at \n\n^ Works, i., 381. \' Ihid, i., 241. \n\n3 Ihid., vi., 174. 4 Ihid., vi., 165. \n\n\n\nI40 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nfault in that kind of taste which never mistakes \npoor verse or prose for good. His papers on the \nElizabethan dramatists, published in the Boston \nMiscellany in 1842, are little more than collections \nof excerpts from the dramatists considered; in no \ncase does the selection fail to justify the taste of the \ncritic. In Conversations and again in Old English \nDramatists, in both of which the excerpts are \nnumerous, the case is the same. In several \ninstances indeed, the Lowell of 1887 showed ap- \nproval of his earlier judgment, by quoting pas- \nsages which he had cited forty-five years before. \nThroughout his essays he quotes passages he \nadmires, now from Chaucer, now from Dryden, \nnow from Spenser or Shakespeare or some minor \npoet ; all with scarce an exception have imaginative \nappeal and grace of diction. It is worthy of note \nthat the presence of these qualities rather than \nof conspicuous moral elements gave the determin- \ning impulse to his choice. \n\nImagination indeed with its various phases and \ndistinctions allured him. He liked to discuss it, \nto point out that in its higher form it is "the \nfaculty that shapes, gives unity of design and \nbalanced gravitation of parts"; that it has a \nsecondary office where it is interpreter of the \nartist\'s conception into words; that there is a dis- \ntinction between the two modes of performing this \nfunction. Lowell once or twice tries to apply his \ndistinctions, as where he concedes to Shakespeare \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 141 \n\nthe creative imagination which bodies forth the \nthought, and to Milton the pictorial imagination, \nwhich merely images it forth. ^ But such subtle- \nties seemed to bore him and he was content for the \nmost part to use the term in a general sense. \nIn Dante\'s imagination there is "intense realism" ; \nSpenser was \'\'more habitually possessed by his \nimagination than is usual even with poets. "^ \nTaking imagination in a general sense he some- \ntimes suggested distinctions of kind, as where he \ndeclares Keats amply possessed of "penetrative \nand sympathetic imagination,"^ and Carlyle of \n"conceptive imagination vigorous beyond any in \nhis generation. " 4 \n\nLowell\'s references to imagination are so fre- \nquent, his tone in conceding it is so certain, that \none notes with siirprise his failure to perceive it. \nHe denied creative imagination to the author of \nDuty and Laodamia and Intimations of Immortality y ^ \ngoing so far as to say: "Wordsworth was wholly \nvoid of that shaping imagination which is the \nhighest criterion of a poet. "^ He was uncertain \nwhether the great gift of his favorite Calderon were \nimagination or fancy. In his essay on Chaucer \nthere is no mention of Troilus and Criseyde, \nalthough the imagination which created Criseyde \nis akin to Shakespeare\'s own. Robert Greene, \nwhose Friar Bacon and James IV. are "bright- \n\n* Works, iii., 40. ^ Ibid., iv., 343. ^ Ibid., i., 243. \n\n4 Ibid., ii., 90. s Ibid., iii., 35. ^ Ibid., ii., 78. \n\n\n\n142 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nsome" with imagination and whose Dorothea \nneither Chaucer nor Shakespeare would have \nscorned to own, is "naught,"\' and "had a genius \nfor being dull at all times. "^ \n\nIf Lowell\'s frequent discussions of the imagina- \ntion lead one to concede him an ability to recog- \nnize it which he sometimes disappoints, one \nhesitates to accuse him of defective penetration. \nMany things would seem to proclaim the falsity of \nsuch a judgment. "Rousseau cries, \'I will bare \nmy heart to you!\' and, throwing open his waist- \ncoat, makes us the confidants of his dirty linen. "^ \nThere is a gHmpse of Rousseau the poseur which \nremains in the memory. Again: "History, in the \ntrue sense, he (Carlyle) does not and cannot write, \nfor he looks on mankind as a herd without volition, \nand without moral force. "^ And again: "The \nradical vice of his (Thoreau\'s) theory of life was \nthat he confounded physical with spiritual remote- \nness from men . " ^ There is penetration here . Each \nstatement, one expects, will be used as a basis \non which far-reaching explanations can be made. \nIf Rousseau were a poseur^ did this weakness \n\n* Old English Dramatists, p. 19. \n\n* Ibid.y p. 20. Lowell\'s animosity becomes explicable but not \nhis denial of all virtue to so imaginative a poet as Greene when \none reads: "He (Greene) it was that called Shakespeare \'an \nupstart crow beautified with our feathers,\' as if any one could \nhave any use for feathers from such birds as he." Old English \nDramatists, p. 19. \n\n3 Works, ii., 261. 4 Ibid., ii., 118. s Ibid., i., 373. \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 143 \n\nmodify his influence ? Was it a fundamental weak- \nness? Did it betray itself in any essential ways? \nHow far is it reconcilable with the "faith and . . . \nardor of conviction" which the critic says were in \nhim? Lowell does not state. He discusses in- \nstead the absence of sincerity in autobiographies \nin general. If Carlyle were incapable of writing \nhistory, why not point out his important lapses in \nthe French Revolution and in Frederick? Why not \nmake the weakness of Carlyle \'s philosophy prove \nitself the basic weakness of Carlyle the historian, \nand show how one fundamental misconception \nhas many ramifications? To say that Carlyle \'s \n"historical compositions are wonderful prose \npoems"\'; to declare that his "appreciation is less \npsychological than physical and external,"^ is \nto remain on the surface of things and to toy with \nthe incidental. Such points have their place ; but \ntheir place is subsidiary. If the radical vice of \nThoreau\'s theory of Hfe were his confotinding of \nphysical with spiritual remoteness from men, why \nis this vice not considered as radical and made to \nexplain his idiosyncrasies? Why should Thoreau \nmake such a mistake and how came he to persist \nin it? Has it any bearing on his work? What \nconnection has it with his egotism, with his senti- \nmentalism? To accuse Thoreau of morbid self- \nconsciousness, of unhealthiness of mind, of lack \n\n^ Works, ii., 102. \' Ibid., ii., 103. \n\n\n\n144 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nof humor, is to hide the flash of penetration in a \nmass of cloud. \n\nThis weakness of Lowell points the way to \nothers. It has been said that he seldom failed \nto notice the various qualities of an author. Some \nhe discusses or illustrates; others he merely men- \ntions. Their inter-relation seems to elude him. \nIn Dry den he speaks of the poet\'s faith in himself, \ntendency to exaggeration, inequality, strength of \nunderstanding, and so on. He points out quali- \nties as if they had as Httle vital connection with one \nanother or with the poet to whom they belonged as \nhis coat or hat or gloves. Lowell himself seems \nconscious that an array of quaHties which might be \nfound in many poets tells nothing in particular \nabout Dryden. At the end of the essay he seeks \nto emphasize the poet\'s salient qualities. This \npassage and the method are typical : \n\nWas he, then, a great poet? Hardly, in the narrowest \ndefinition. But he was a strong thinker who some- \ntimes carried common sense to a height where it \ncatches the light of a diviner air, and warmed reason \ntill it had well-nigh the illuminating property of \nintuition ... He sees, among other things, that a \nman who undertakes to write should first have a \nmeaning perfectly defined to himself, and then should \nbe able to set it forth clearly in the best words. This \nis precisely Dry den\'s praise, and ... to read him is \nas bracing as a northwest wind ... In mind and \nmanner his foremost quality is energy. In ripeness of \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 145 \n\nmind and bluff heartiness of expression, he takes rank \nwith the best. His phrase is always a shortcut to his \nsense . . . He had . . . the gift of the right word. \nAnd if he does not, like one or two of the greater \nmasters of song, stir our sympathies by that inde- \nfinable aroma so magical in arousing the subtile \nassociations of the soul, he has this in common with \nthe few great writers, that the winged seeds of his \nthought embed themselves in the memory and germi- \nnate there. ^ \n\nThere can be little question about the soundness of \nall this. But why stop here? Are these qualities \npeculiar to Dry den? What one or two of them or \nwhat combination of them explains him? Is the \npoet thus designated John Dryden and no one \nelse? Are these qualities a sufficient explanation \nof St. Cecilia\'s Day, the Hind and Panther, Absalom \nand Achitophely and the lyrics in the dramas? \nDo we knov/ this Dryden, his mind or his genius? \nDo we know what was fundamental in them, from \nwhich other characteristics had their rise? Have \nwe got at the very pulse of the machine or have we \nmerely been directed to a mass of cog-wheels and \npulleys, all unassembled, with the remark that this \none is large and that one small, but never a word \nabout the interplay of parts or the function of each \nin the total mechanism? Lowell realizes this \nweakness; he will point out the radical element \nin Dryden\'s greatness: \'\'What gave and secures \n\n^ Works, iii., 188 flE. \nxo \n\n\n\n146 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nfor him this singular eminence? To put it in a \nsingle word, I think that his qualities and faculties \nwere in that rare combination which makes char- \nacter. This gave flavor to whatever he wrote, \xe2\x80\x94 a \nvery rare quality."\' One cannot but ask: Is \nthat the answer? \n\nWhat is the ultimate quality of Keats ? \' \' Enough \nthat we recognize in Keats that indefinable new- \nness and unexpectedness which we call genius."^ \nIs this the answer? If so, how shall we explain \nEuclid and Napoleon and Leonardo da Vinci, to \nsay nothing of the great names of literature? \nWhat is the secret of Dante\'s power? "The secret \nof Dante\'s power is not far to seek. Whoever can \nexpress himself with the full force of unconscious \nsincerity will be found to have uttered something \nideal and universal."^ Is that the answer? \nAnd Chaucer \xe2\x80\x94 what of him? "In short, Chaucer \nhad that fine literary sense which is as rare as \ngenius, and, united with it, as it was in him, \nassures an immortality of fame.""* Is that the \nanswer? Was fine literary sense, united to genius, \npeculiar to Chaucer? United as they were in him ? \nThat is just the question; and it goes unanswered. \n\nIn his essay on Wordsworth, ^ Richard Holt \nHutton lays down what he considers the ultimate \ncharacteristic of Wordsworth the poet : \n\n^ Works, iii., i88. ^ Ibid., i., 242. 3 Ihid., iv., 258. \n\n4 Ibid., iii., 331. s Essays in Literary Criticism. \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 147 \n\nHe could detach his mind from the commonplace \nseries of impressions which are generated by common- \nplace objects or events, resist and often reverse the \ncurrent of emotion to which ordinary minds are lia- \nble, and triumphantly justify the strain of rapture \nwith which he celebrated what excites either no feel- \ning, or weary feeling, or painful feeling, in the mass of \nunreflecting men. \n\nThe essay which follows is an exposition of that \nsentence. No phase of the poet\'s mind or art is \nisolated; the inter-relations are made clear, and \nconstantly the critic returns to emphasize again \nthe ultimate characteristic of Wordsworth\'s genius. \nWhen Hutton says: "Wordsworth . . . was al- \nmost a miser in his reluctance to trench upon the \nspiritual capital at his disposal," we recognize \nthe critic\'s penetration in the remark. But he does \nnot stop there ; he expands and explains and shows \nthe relation between this "spiritual frugality" \nand that characteristic of the poet which he had \nalready laid down as fundamental. When he \nputs his finger on the vital spot of Wordsworth\'s \nfaculty, he evokes our assent, not a shock of sur- \nprise at a deduction whose premises have been but \nvaguely suggested. \n\nHis (Wordsworth\'s) poetic faculty lies, I think, in \ncontemplatively seizing the characteristic individual \ninfluences which all living things, from the very \nsmallest of earth or air up to man and the Spirit of \n\n\n\n148 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nGod, radiate around them to every mind that will \nsurrender itself to their expressive power. \n\nHere is penetration; coming as it does, it is not \nlike a flash of lightning in the dark, but like the \nsunlight, steady, luminous, making bright far cor- \nners and dim recesses. \n\nWhen Matthew Arnold writes on Wordsworth, \' \nhe insists upon the acceptance of his own under- \nstanding of poetic greatness: \'\'The noble and \nprofoimd application of ideas to life is the most \nessential part of poetic greatness." He continues: \n\nA great poet receives his distinctive character of \nsuperiority from his application, under the conditions \nimmutably fixed by the laws of poetic beauty and \npoetic truth, ... of the ideas \n\n" On man, on nature, and on human life," \n\nwhich he has acquired for himself. \n\nThe essay is an endeavor to show that Wordsworth\'s \nsuperiority as a poet arises from "his powerful \napplication to his subject" of such ideas. There \nis no deviation from the question; the critic is \ninsistent on his primary definition; he constantly \nrecurs to it, each time letting his exposition become \na little more comprehensive and yet keeping it \nspecific. His final explanation of the poet is \nconsequent from his premises; it is penetrating, as \nHutton\'s is penetrating, and for a similar reason : \n\n\xc2\xbb Essays in Criticism (2d series). \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 149 \n\nWordsworth\'s poetry is great because of the extra- \nordinary power with which Wordsworth feels the joy \noffered to us in nature, the joy offered to us in the \nsimple primary affections and beauties ; and because of \nthe extraordinary power with which in case after case, \nhe shows us this joy, and renders it so as to make \nus share it. \n\nOne may not accept the conclusions of Arnold \nand Hutton ; one may quarrel with Arnold\'s defini- \ntion of poetry. But one cannot fail to perceive \nthat their penetration is an essentially different \nthing from Lowell\'s. \n\nSuch conclusions as these of Hutton and Arnold \ndo more than throw light on the quality of Lowell\'s \npenetration. They make clear the evil of Lowell\'s \nmethod. Laying out to view, as he did, an array \nof separate qualities of different degrees of im- \nportance, and treating each in isolated fashion, \nwithout any reference to some radical principle \neither in the mind or art of the author, Lowell \ncannot be acquitted of sinning against rhetoric \non the one hand and against criticism on the \nother. His essays lack that unity which comes \nfrom the presence of a dominant idea, a thesis to \nbe supported, or a point of view steadily main- \ntained. They leave the reader\'s mind confused \nby the array of imrelated qualities mustered by \nthe critic, whose endeavor toward the end of his \nessay to concentrate upon some ultimate quality as \nthe explanation of the author, results in gener- \n\n\n\nI50 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nalities. Characteristics, instead of being focused \ninto one, and that circumstanced and defined till \nit fits the single author with a nice and inevitable \nfinality, are dissipated into the vague of a general \nterm. Not that Lowell always even makes an \nendeavor to reach the ultimate quality. In Spenser \nhe seems to come close to it without intention \nwhen he declares : \n\nThe exultation with which love sometimes sub- \ntilizes the nerves of coarsest men so that they feel \nand see not the thing as it seems to others, but the \nbeauty of it, the joy of it, the soul of eternal youth \nthat is in it, would appear to have been the normal \ncondition of Spenser. \n\nBut if he has touched the robes of the goddess he \nseems not to know it; for he does not make exal- \ntation of mind serve to explain the other qualities \nof Spenser which he indicates, \xe2\x80\x94 ^his joyousness, \nhis epicureanism of language, his fervor. It is \nmuch the same in Dryden : he seems to have his \nfinger on the poet*s pulse, but soon loses it. \n\nThis preponderance in him (Dryden) of the reasoning \nover the intuitive faculties, the one always there, the \nother flashing in when you least expect it, accounts \nfor that inequality and even incongruousness in his \nwritings which makes one revise one\'s judgment \nat every tenth page. ^ \n\n^ Works, iii., 120. \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 151 \n\nDoes it account for other things, this preponder- \nance, for virtues as well as vices? And what of \nthis judgment which it forces us to revise at every \ntenth page? "He is a prose writer, with a kind \nof ^olian attachment"\'; he was not primarily a \npoet. ^ And yet, \' \' poet he surely was intus^ though \nnot always w cute/\'^ and so on. Is it too much to \nsay that though Lowell has his finger on the poet\'s \npulse he loses it and that his observations tend \nto confuse instead of to clarify ? In Shakespeare he \nmasses up in the last few pages the poet\'s quali- \nties; each was possessed in the highest degree; \nthere is no suggestion of a radical property of the \npoet\'s mind or art in which all inhere, no sugges- \ntion of any inter-relation between them. Out of \nthe aggregate of qualities, our conception of \nthe poet wavers like a creature of the mist: if \nsincere shall we know it for Dante, if original \nfor Wordsworth, if endowed with character for \nDry den? \n\nIt is unfortimate that Lowell ignored the histori- \ncal method or felt it too difficult for his powers. \nIt is equally unfortunate that for similar reasons \nhis was not a biographical method of the type of \nSainte-Beuve\'s. If the impressions left upon us \nby Lowell\'s essays are vague, so also are the figures \nof their subjects. Even the outer appearance of \na poet helps to persuade us of his reality, and to \nmake him ultimately more comprehensible because \n\n^ Works, in., 120. \'Ibid., iii., 123. 3 Ibid., iii., 127. \n\n\n\n152 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nmore like ourselves. Chaucer\'s \n\ndowncast eyes, half -shy, half-meditative, the sensuous \nmouth, the broad brow, drooping with weight of \nthought, and yet with an inexpugnable youth shining \nout of it as from the morning forehead of a boy, are all \nnoticeable, and not less so their harmony of placid \ntenderness. We are struck, too, with the smoothness \nof the face as of one who thought easily, whose phrase \nflowed naturally, and who had never puckered his \nbrow over an unmanageable verse. \' \n\nFor a moment one feels that Chaucer was of the \nearth earthy, a man like ourselves. If Chaucer\'s \nlife is a secret well-nigh buried with him, how he \nwould seem to live again, how much new vitality \nwould have a renascence in his works if only his \ntimes were drawn for us ! What were those brave \nold days like, when men went on pilgrimages \nover-seas or at home in England to the shrine of \nCanterbury? When Wat Tyler could ride into \nLondon with a rabble at his heels and the hand- \nsome boy-king could thrust a knife into his breast \nand put down a rebellion with a smile and a \npromise? One wonders whether Lowell felt that \nthis method lay beyond his powers, or whether \nhe failed to see its advantages. \n\nThe biographical method of Sainte-Beuve, \nLowell himself attests, makes the French critic\'s \nsubject luminous. =" But in the American critic\'s \nessays for the most part there is little biography, \n\n* Works, iii., 294. \xc2\xbb Ibid., ii., 166. \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 153 \n\nexcept of a perfunctory kind. Dry den represents \nhis best endeavor to interweave biography with \ncriticism. The poet\'s life as a chronological \nsequence is followed to some extent in order to \nmake clear the development of his genius. Bom \nin 1 63 1, his earliest verses, those on the death of \nHastings, "are as bad as they can be." After \nten fallow years he at length makes his appearance \nagain in heroic stanzas on the death of Cromwell. \n"Next we have, in 1660, Astrcea Redux on the \n* happy restoration\' of Charles II.," in which one \ncan "forebode little of the ftdl-grown Dryden but \nhis defects." Meanwhile Dryden\'s taste gradually \nrises \xe2\x80\x94 as his prefaces attest \xe2\x80\x94 ^from "Cowley to \nMilton, from Comeille to Shakespeare."^ It was \nthe Annus Mirahilis written in his thirty-seventh \nyear by which he "won a general acknowledgment \nof his powers."^ Dryden as a dramatist is next \ntaken up: "In the thirty-two years between 1662 \nand 1694, h^ produced twenty-five plays." Here \nends the attempt at following the sequence of \nDryden\'s life; the rest of the essay is a discussion \nof the poet as "satirist and pleader in verse," his \nprefaces and translations and his various general \nqualities. In Dante, Lowell approaches nearest \namong his essays to that method which in the \nhands of Sainte-Beuve became not merely bio- \ngraphical, but psychological. Dante\'s writings, \nhe says, "are all (with the possible exception of \n\n^ Works ^ iii., 123. ^ Ihid., iii., 133. \n\n\n\n154 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nBe Vulgari Eloquio) autobiographic, and all of \nthem, including that, are parts of a mutually \nrelated system of which the central part is the \nindividuality and experience of the poet." The \ncritic tries to make the various works explain \nthe poet. The Vita Nuova, for example, \n\nrecounts the story of his love for Beatrice Portinari, \nshowing how his grief for her loss turned his thoughts \nfirst inward upon his own consciousness, and, failing \nall help there, gradually upward through philosophy \nto religion and so from a world of shadows to one \nof eternal substances.^ \n\nDante\'s other works are taken up briefly in turn \nand the critic hurries on to the Divina Commedia. \nThe essay soon becomes a commentary on Dante\'s \nmasterpiece, with discussions now and then of his \nqualities \xe2\x80\x94 ^his conservatism, his mystical turn of \nmind, his endowment of memory and genius, and \nso on. Here Lowell goes back to his usual method : \nan enumeration of characteristics not necessarily \nhaving inter-relation, not emanating from the same \nradical elements in the poet\'s mind or art. He is \nat pains to explain Dante\'s philosophy, the "dis- \ncrepancy between the Lady of the Vita Nuova \nand her of the Convito\'\' and the like, nor \'\'does he \nspeak without book." But when all is said, does \nLowell reveal to us the development of that \nstrangely isolated individual, either as moral \n\n^ Works, iv., 148. \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 155 \n\nbeing or as poet? Does he make us feel the unity \nof this man who as Prior /)f Florence could exile \nhis dearest friend Cavalcanti, and yet weep to see \nthe hapless lovers blown for evermore upon the \nshrilling winds of Hell; of this poet whose equal \nvision could gaze upon the horrors of Malebolge \nand the celestial splendors of the Infinite? In a \nword, has Lowell penetrated into the heart of this \nDante, and realized beneath his various qualities \nthe psychological unity which imderlay the man \nand the poet? One thinks of Sainte-Beuve, of \nhis power of reanimating the men and women of \nthe past, of placing them over against friends and \nfoes, of making them reveal their works, and their \nworks in turn reveal them, until we view them \nthrough the eyes of the sanest and broadest and \nmost penetrating of their contemporaries. One \nthinks of Carlyle, of those "portrait-devouring \neyes" of his, which would have looked into the \nsoul of Dante and made both heart and mind of \nhim yield their secrets. If one seems to demand \ntoo much of Lowell by the implication of such \ncomparisons, there is Arnold, a critic in his own \ntongue and of his own immediate time. \n\nWriting of Keats, ^ Arnold points out that Keats \nis eminent for the sensuousness of his poetry. \n"The question with some people will b^, whether \nhe is anything else. \' \' From one angle, Keats seems \nto have no character, no self-control, qualities \n\n^ Essays in Criticism (2d Series). \n\n\n\n156 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nindispensable for the great artist. Here is Arnold\'s \nthesis, direct, simple, falling back upon his theory \nof poetry as an interpretation of life : \n\nWe who believe Keats to have been by his promise, at \nany rate, if not fully by his performance, one of the \nvery greatest of English poets, and who believe also \nthat a merely sensuous man cannot either by promise \nor by performance be a very great poet, because poetry \ninterprets life, and so large and noble a part of life \nis outside of such a man\'s ken, \xe2\x80\x94 we cannot but look \nfor signs in him of something more than sensuousness, \nfor signs of character and virtue. \n\nAnd with deftness and insight, the critic sets \nabout his task. He quotes Houghton and George \nKeats in attestation of the poet\'s high qualities, and \nhe looks \'\'for whatever illustrates and confirms" \ntheir testimony. Keats\' own words are quoted: \none gets to understand that this sensuous and sen- \nsitive consumptive was possessed of admirable wis- \ndom and temper; of a determination to \'*fag on as \nothers do at periodical literature," to avoid en- \ndangering his independence and his self-respect; \nof fortitude in the face of imjust criticism, and so \non. And out of it all \'\'the thing to be seized on \nis that Keats had flint and iron in him, that he had \ncharacter." And what else of him? \n\n" I have loved the principle of beauty in all things " \nand " if I had had time I would have made myself re- \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 157 \n\nmembered." He has made himself remembered and \nremembered as no merely sensuous poet could be; \nand he has done it by having " loved the principle of \nbeauty in all things." \n\nIn his Keats, Lowell sketches the poet\'s life. \nHe tells us that Keats "longed for fame, but longed \nabove all to deserve it " ; that he took the attacks \nupon Endymion in a manly way. \'\'A man cannot \nhave a sensuous nature and be pachydermatous \nat the same time, and if he be imaginative as well \nas sensuous, he suffers just in proportion to the \namoimt of his imagination. \' \' Keats finally goes to \nItaly broken in health, and we are given a letter \nof his from Naples, feverish, pitiful. He dies \nand is buried in Rome with that pathetic epitaph \nupon his gravestone.\' One asks: Is that all? Is \nthere nothing beneath that eagerness to deserve \nfame, that manly bearing up under attack, that \nsensuous nature and imaginative temperament, \nthe feverish morbidity of that letter from Naples? \nIs there not a radical unity there which makes \nall these things congruous? One need not believe \nthat Arnold has gone to the root of the matter; \nbut there is penetration, psychological penetration, \nin his brief study. \n\nLowell, one remembers, was essentially a man \nof books. It is significant that he cotdd write: \n\'*Nor am I offended with this odor of the library \n\n^ " Here lies one whose name was writ in water." \n\n\n\n158 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nthat hangs about Gray, for it recalls none but de- \nlightful associations." \' The tenor of his way was \napart from the highroad of men, far from the heat \nand din of the market-place. One associates him \nwith Cambridge, with long hours spent over \nfavorite volumes, with a handful of intimates at \nwhist or dinner, or fulfilling the duties of class- \nroom or sanctum. Did he understand men? \nOne recalls his letter to Briggs in 1845, lamenting \nthat as a man he was not appreciated or under- \nstood, and that other letter to Holmes with its \npert condemnation of a man ten years his senior \nwhom he scarcely knew. Then there is his letter \nto the editor of Putnam\'\' s, condemning as the \n*\'mob" that public which was bored by his im- \npossible comic poem; there are the recondite \nallusions constantly cropping out in his political \nessays and the sophomoricisms in his literary \nstudies which offend good taste \xe2\x80\x94 one wonders if \nthe man who was guilty of these lapses really \nunderstood men himself. In Lowell\'s letters one \nfinds no evidence of psychological penetration \nand the same is true of those of his dispatches from \nMadrid which we now have as Impressions of \nSpain, One gets delightftd sketches of men from \nthe outside, like that of Franklin Pierce, ^ and that \nmore elaborate one of Canovas in the Spanish \ndispatches.^ There is no quarrel with these; it \n\n^ Latest Literary Essays, p. 39. \n\n" Letters, i., 302 ff. ^ Impressions of Spain, p. 29 ff. \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 159 \n\nmay even be that one has no right to expect more. \nBut one has a right to look for psychological in- \nsight in the critical essays ; if it is wanting in them \ncan they be called critical in any serious sense? \nThis question is worth further consideration. \n\nIn his essay on Carlyle, LoweU discusses Carlyle \nthe man. * \' In the earlier part of his literary career \nMr. Carlyle was the preacher up of sincerity, man- \nliness, and a living faith. ... He had intense \nconvictions and he made disciples." He became \npopular: "His fervor, his oddity of manner, his \npugnacious paradox, drew the crowd." Once \nbecome popular, "he must attract, he must aston- \nish." Why was this necessity upon him? Be- \ncause the excitement of making a sensation becomes \na necessity of the successful author.^ Carlyle, he \ngoes on, "continues to be a voice crying in the \nwilderness, but no longer a voice with any earnest \nconviction behind it." Whether this conclusion \nbe just or not, one need not stop to inquire. But \none is obliged to ask, is there psychological pene- \ntration behind that conclusion.^ Has the crier- \ndown of sham become himself a "mountebank of \ngenius" because the excitement of making a sensa- \ntion becomes a necessity of the successful author? \nIn Rousseau, after following faithfully in the wake \nof the critic, one is finally forced to ask: Is Rous- \nseau after all only a baffling psychological anomaly, \nan aggregate of irreconcilable contradictions? \n\n\xc2\xbb Works, ii., 107. The italics are mine. \n\n\n\ni6o LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nHere is the critic\'s answer: "It would be sheer \nwaste of time to hunt Rousseau through all his \ndoublings of inconsistency, and run him to earth \nin every new paradox." When Lowell writes of \nGray, he shows a certain penetration bom of \nsympathy for one in whom he saw a weakness \nakin to his own. Bonstetten, he says, records the \nmelancholy from which Gray suffered, and for \nwhich Sainte-Beuve accounted by alleging "la \nsterilite d\'un talent poetique si distingue, si rare, \nmais si avare." Says Lowell: \n\nSainte-Beuve is perhaps partly right, but it may be \nfairly surmised that the remorse for intellectual indo- \nlence should have had some share in making Gray \nunwilling to recall the time when he was better em- \nployed than in filling in coats-of-arms on the margin \nof Dugdale and correcting the Latin of Linnaeus. \n\nAnd behind that intellectual indolence \xe2\x80\x94 what? \n... It is worth while to quote Arnold. Writing \non Gray, Arnold also quotes Bonstetten; then he \nadds: \n\nSainte-Beuve, who was much attracted and interested \nby Gray, doubts whether Bonstetten\'s explanation of \nhim is admissible^; the secret of Gray\'s melancholy he \nfinds rather in the sterility of his poetic talent, . . . \nin the poet\'s despair at his own unproductiveness. \nBut to explain Gray, we must do more than allege his \n\n^ Bonstetten had said: "I believe that Gray had never loved; \nthis was the key to the riddle. " \n\n\n\nPENETRATION i6i \n\nsterility, as we must look further than to his seclusion \nat Cambridge. What caused his sterility? Was it \nhis ill-health, his hereditary gout? . . . What gave \nthe power to Gray\'s reclusion and ill-health to induce \nhis sterility?^ \n\nArnold\'s answer is this: Gray fell upon an age of \nprose; \'\'with the qualities of mind and soul of a \ngenuine poet," he was "bom out of date, a man \nwhose full spiritual flowering was impossible."^ \nWhether or not one agree with Arnold\'s conclusion \none comes to realize that there is a difference \nbetween that penetration which stops short and \nthat other which seeks to pierce to the heart of \nthings. One might go on, examining the essays \nin detail; the conclusion is inescapable: the quest \nfor anything approaching sustained psychological \npenetration will go imre warded. \n\nThis weakness for stopping short of the ultimate \nbetrays itself in other ways. In Lessing, Lowell \ndiscusses the German type of mind, its "inability \nor disinclination to see a thing as it really is, unless \nit be a matter of science." ^ But still it is a thor- \nough mind to which we owe much. He goes on : \n\nThe sense of heaviness which creeps over the reader \nfrom so many German books is mainly due, we suspect, \nto the language, which seems well-nigh incapable of \nthat aerial perspective so delightful in first-rate French \n\n^ Essays in Criticism (2d series), p. 90 ff. \n\n* Ihid., p. 92 jBf. 3 Works, ii., 163. \n\n\n\ni62 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nand even English writing. But there must also be in \nthe national character an insensibility to proportion, a \nwant of that instinctive discretion which we call tact. ^ \n\nSpeaking of the Germans, Arnold says : \n\nYou have the Germanic genius : steadiness with honesty. \n. . . Steadiness with honesty; the danger for a \nnational spirit thus composed is the humdrum, the \nplain and ugly, the ignoble: in a word, das Gemeine, \ndie Gemeinheit . . . The excellence of a national \nspirit thus composed is freedom from whim, fiightiness, \nperseverance; patient fidelity to Nature, \xe2\x80\x94 in a word, \nscience. . . The universal dead-level of plainness and \nhomeliness, the lack of all beauty and distinction in \nform and feature, the slowness and clumsiness of the \nlanguage . . . this is the weak side.* \n\nOne sees that Arnold has delved under Lowell \nand sought the ultimate. \n\nSuch weakness in penetration as one finds in \nLowell, betrayed itself at times in his uncertain \ngroping for the exact thought which he wanted to \nexpress. He seems to be seeking to pierce through \nhis impressions to what was exact and basic be- \nyond them. \n\nHow unlike is the operation of the imaginative faculty \nin him (Chaucer) and Shakespeare ! When the latter \ndescribes, his epithets imply always an impression on \n\n\xc2\xbb Works t ii., 167. 2 Celtic Literaturet p. 74. \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 163 \n\nthe moral sense (so to speak) of the person who hears \nor sees. The sun "flatters the mountain-tops with \nsovereign eye"; the bending "weeds lacquey the dull \nstream" ; the shadow of the falcon "coucheth the fowl \nbelow" ; the smoke is "helpless" ; when Tarquin enters \nthe chamber of Lucrece "the threshold grates the door \nto have him heard." His outward sense is merely a \nwindow through which the metaphysical eye looks \nforth, and his mind passes over at once from the simple \nsensation to the complex meaning of it, \xe2\x80\x94 feels with \nthe object instead of merely feeling it. His imagina- \ntion is forever dramatizing. Chaucer gives only the \ndirect impression made on the eye or ear.^ \n\nOne can imagine readily with what incisiveness \nand yet with what breadth of implication Cole- \nridge would have put that thought. Comparing \nSchiller and Shakespeare, Coleridge says: "Schiller \nhas the material sublime; to produce an effect, he \nsets you a whole town on fire, and throws infants \nwith their mothers into the flames, or locks up a \nfather in an old tower. But Shakespeare drops a \nhandkerchief and the same or greater effects \nfollow,"^ Instances of this groping are common \nenough in Lowell. Regarding Spenser he says: \n"He is full of feeling, and yet of such a kind that \nwe can neither say it is mere intellectual percep- \ntion of what is fair and good, nor yet associate it \nwith that throbbing fervor which leads us to call \n\n^ Works, iii., 354 ff. \n\n2 Coleridge\'s Works , vi., 255 ff. \n\n\n\n1 64 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nsensibility by the physical name of heart." ^ \nAgain : [Chaucer] \n\nis original, not in the sense that he thinks and says \n. . . what nobody can ever think and say again, but \nbecause he is always natural, because, if not always \nabsolutely new, he is always delightfully fresh, because \nhe sets before us the world as it honestly appeared to \nGeoffrey Chaucer, and not a world as it seemed proper \nto certain people that it ought to appear. * \n\nAt other times, Lowell\'s weakness in penetra- \ntion gives one the feeling that words are being \nforced to do the duty of ideas. Shakespeare\'s \nmoral, he tells us, "is the moral of worldly wisdom \nonly heightened to the level of his wide- viewing \nmind, and made typical by the dramatic energy \nof his plastic nature." ^ The critic was not con- \nsciously superficial ; he had without doubt a feeling \nthat there was a point to be made. But in instan- \nces Hke these, he seems to have crystallized that \nfeeling not into thought but into language. His \nphrasal power indeed, so characteristic of poets \nin their prose, sometimes wins us to an acceptance \nof his statements as charged with a thoughtfulness \nor penetration which they will not yield on analy- \nsis. The following is worth examination: \n\nHad Shakespeare been bom fifty years earlier, he \n\n^ Lowell\'s Works, iv., 326. \n\n\' Ibid., iii., 361. * Ibid., iii., 324. \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 165 \n\nwould have been cramped by a book-language not \nyet flexible enough for the demands of rhythmic \nemotion, not yet sufficiently popularized for the \nnatural and familiar expression of supreme thought, not \nyet so rich in metaphysical phrase as to render possible \nthat ideal representation of the great passions which \nis the aim and end of Art, not yet subdued by \npractice and general consent to a definiteness of ac- \ncentuation essential to ease and congruity of metrical \narrangement.^ \n\nOne recalls that Bemer\'s Froissart, in 1523, \n"made a landmark in our tongue"\'\'; that Tyn- \ndale*s Translation of the New Testament, in 1525, \n"fixed our standard English once for all."^ One \nrecalls that Chaucer, who had died in 1400, had \nsurprised words "into grace, ease, and dignity \n\n^ Works, iii., 2. \n\n* Brooke, English Literature, p. 83. \n\n3 Ihid., p. 84. "Tyndale\'s translation of the New Testament \nis the most important philological monument of the first half \nof the sixteenth century, perhaps I should say of the whole period \nbetween Chaucer and Shakespeare." It "more than anything \nelse contributed to shape and fix the sacred dialect, and establish \nthe form which the Bible must permanently assume in an English \ndress. The best features of the translation of 161 1 are derived \nfrom the version of Tyndale, and thus that remarkable work \nhas exerted, directly and indirectly, a more powerful influence \non the English language than any other single production be- \ntween the ages of Richard II. and Queen Elizabeth." Marsh, \nEnglish Language, p. 113. Says Brooke, English Literature, p. \n84: "Of the 6000 words of the Authorized Femow still in great \npart his (Tyndale\'s) translation, only 250 are not now in common \nuse." \n\n\n\ni66 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nin their own despite," had achieved an "airiness \nof sentiment and expression, a felicity of phrase \nand an elegance of turn"; that he was great in \nnarrative, in description, in command of satire, \nof pathos, of humor, and yet withal "he was also \none of the best versifiers that ever made English trip \nand sing . . . every foot beats time to the tune \nof the thought." \' If, finally then, Chaucer in the \nlatter part of the fourteenth century could make \nlanguage to his will because "he was a great poet, \nto whom measure was a natural vehicle, " ^ are we \nto believe that a greater poet, with the language of \nTyndale as well as that of Chaucer, would have \nmade Venus and Adonis a less notable premibre \n(Buvre of genius had it been possible to come from \nhis hands in 1543 instead of in 1593? \n\nThis subject of the possibilities of language in \nthe hands of a poet is a favorite one with Lowell. \nHe is constantly emphasizing the value of diction. \n"Men\'s thoughts and opinions are in a great degree \nvassals of him who invents a new phrase or re- \napplies an old epithet. The thought or feeling a \nthousand times repeated becomes his at last who \nutters it best."^ He likes also to discuss a poet\'s \nuse of words, and to trace influences of versifica- \ntion and of style. 4 \n\n^ Works, iii., 329; 322; 351 ; 323; 352; 336. \n2 Ibid.y iii., 345. J Ibid., i., 245. \n\n* The influences he discovers are sometimes confusing: Milton\'s \nteacher in versification was Marlowe {Works, i., 277); later he \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 167 \n\nIt may be thought [he says in Spenser], that I lay too \nmuch stress on this single attribute of diction. But \n... it should be remembered that it is subtle per- \nfection of phrase and that happy coalescence of \nmusic and meaning, where each reinforces the other, \nthat define a man as poet and make all ears con- \nverts and partisans.^ \n\nWhen Lowell comes to the discussion of prose \nwriters, one expects him to pay the same attention \nto the influence of ideas as, in the case of poets, he \npaid to diction. Has Carlyle exerted a definite \ninfluence on the thought of his generation? He \nrevealed, says Lowell, to those who listened to him \nin his prime, the "sublime reserves of power even \nthe humblest may find in manliness, sincerity, \nand self-reliance."* We must be content with the \nindefinite statement that he had great value as \n\'\'an inspirer and awakener."* As for Emerson: \n"What does he mean, quotha? He means inspir- \ning hints, a divining-rod to your deeper nature." ^ \nHas he exerted a definite influence on his genera- \ntion? Lowell answers: much of the country\'s \n"intellectual emancipation was due to the stimu- \nlus of his teaching and example" ; he kept burning \n" the beacon of an ideal life above our lower region \n\nsays Spenser {Works, iv., 305) ; later still he convinces himself "of \nwhat I had long taken for granted, that his versification was \nmainly modelled on the Italian and especially on the Divina \nCommedia." {Letters, ii., $^6.) \n\n^ Works, iv., 308. \'Ibid., ii., 118. 3 Jbid,, i., 352, \n\n\n\ni68 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nof turmoiL" What has he told us definitely in \nRousseau about sentimentalism? What has he \ntold us at all about the influence of Richardson \nin France or in Europe, or about his connection \nwith Rousseau? In Coleridge what has he said \ndefinitely about the infiuence of the greatest of \nEnglish critics? His \'\'service was incalculable"; \nthe subtle apprehension of his mind seems an \ninstinct; he was *\'the first in noting some of the \nmore occult phenomena of thought and emotion." \nAnd Fielding? He discusses his comedies, but \nsays of his influence only that he was an originator \nwho invented the realistic novel. ^ What of the \ninfluence of these men, what pregnant ideas of \ntheirs took root and modified the opinions or \nthoughts of others? One will meet, it must be \nconfessed, no satisfactory answer to this question \nby a diligent search through Lowell\'s works. \n\nIt has already been pointed out that Lowell\'s \nsympathy with certain phases of literature was \nimperfect. That imperfect sympathy was due \nnot only to a certain narrowness in Lowell himself \nbut to the inadequacy of his penetration. In his \nworks and letters one finds few references to the \nnovelists; his Fielding is not the work of a man \nwho regarded the novel as a type of literary expres- \nsion which even before his own day had become \nof prime importance. His chief interest in fiction \n\n\' Works t vi., 64. \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 169 \n\nseems to have been as a relaxation.^ No hint \nappears that he realized how powerful a factor \nthe novel had become in modern-day life ; how \nmuch of the place once occupied by Chaucer and \nSpenser, by Shakespeare and the Elizabethan \ndramatists, by Dry den and Pope and Restoration \nComedy, has been gradually preempted by \nRichardson and Fielding and Scott and Jane \nAusten, and in Lowell\'s own day by Thackeray \nand Dickens and George Eliot. In the hands of \nthese masters, the novel was a work of art as \ncertainly as the narrative poem with Chaucer and \nthe drama with Shakespeare. The Newcomes \nand David Copperfield and Middlemarch have a \ndeeper significance than the passmg of a pleasant \nhour. They are the expression of their day, its \ndoubts and fears, its faith, its opinions, its aspira- \ntions. Lowell demanded of poetry that it be the \nexpression of its own time; but this other literary \nform, which had come to be the most powerful \nvehicle of human emotion, seems to have had to \nhis mind no significance. In his eyes Fielding \nhad been a great man, for all men have accepted \nhim and he is a classic. But he is of interest to \nthe critic not for what he stands for of himself, \nbut because he can be referred to in connection \nwith Chaucer and Shakespeare. \n\nTo weakness of penetration no less than to \n\n"\xe2\x96\xa0 Letters, i., 390 ff. Cf. Letters, ii., 433: "I read novels . . . \na new habit with me. " \n\n\n\n170 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nimperfect sympathy is also to be ascribed Lowell\'s \nsweeping condemnation of Victorian poets who \nhave employed Greek and medieval themes. The \npivotal point, he holds, of Greek motivation is \nFate and thus an essential difference separates \nthe Greeks from us.^ Thus the Greek point of \nview must be to our eyes piurely factitious ; Merope \nand Atalanta and the rest are ultimately not a \nreality but an imitation.^ Lowell, it is worth \nremembering, does not level his criticisms against \nother than Victorian poets who sought Greek or \nmedieval themes. It may be that his conserva- \ntism would not warrant his pushing his belief to \nits logical conclusion and thus including in his \ncondemnation a line of poets from Chaucer \nthrough Keats. The merit of his contention in \nthe abstract need not detam us. But one feels \nthat he has failed to see that the Greek spirit and \nthe medieval spirit have not without reason at- \ntracted many minds in the nineteenth centiu-y; \nthat it is this spirit, only when clothed in essential \nhumanity, which is ultimately the life-giving \nelement in the Greek and the medieval stories; \nthat love and hatred and desire and the heart- \nbreak of shattered ideals are of all time and may \nbe woven into a Grecian boar-himt or a tourna- \nment below Camelot, as well as into the life of \nmodern Boston or London. ^ Lowell seems to \n\n^ Works, ii., 124 ff. " Ihid., ii., 134. \n\n3 On this point cf. Swinburne, Essays and Studies, p. 97. \n\n\n\nPENETRATION 171 \n\nhave limited his objections to poetry. Against \nScott\'s novels he makes no protest. Perhaps it \nis significant of the relatively imimportant place \nwhich the novel occupies in his mind in comparison \nwith poetry, that he should object to the theme \nof the Idylls of the King but not to that of Ivanhoe, \n\nIn more than one notable instance, one finds \nLowell strangely oblivious to merits which are too \neminent to pass without recognition. One reads: \n"The Saxon was never, to any great extent, a \nliterary language."\' Again: "The Anglo-Saxons \nnever had any real literature of their own. They \nproduced monkish chronicles in bad Latin, and \nlegends of saints in worse metre. "^ Lowell would \nprobably not assume so dogmatic an attitude to- \nday, since during the last forty years there have \nbecome more widespread an understanding of the \nAnglo-Saxon language and an appreciation of the \nAnglo-Saxon literature. Lowell was a student of \nthe language, it is true, but always the conserva- \ntive, was not the man to blaze new paths, even in \nthe domain of literature. With no less surprise \none notes his failure in his Chaucer to mention \nTroilus and Criseyde, that study of feminine psy- \nchology tmsurpassed in English literature for \nsubtlety and penetration. Here again, however, \none is to remember that adequate appreciation \nof this poem was not usual a generation ago. The \nquestion comes to mind: Would not a genuine \n\n\xc2\xbb Works, iii., 11. \xc2\xbb Ibid., iii., 320. \n\n\n\n172 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\npenetration have triumphed over such conserva- \ntism and proclaimed a merit even though but few \neyes had already perceived it? \n\nOne more phase of Lowell\'s lack of penetration \nremains to be noted. In discussing the Eliza- \nbethan dramatists, he says: \'\'To some of them we \ncannot deny genius, but creative genius we must \ndeny to all of them, and dramatic genius as well." \' \nThis seems a surprising statement when one re- \ncalls The Silent Woman, New Way to Pay Old \nDebts, and The Maid\'s Tragedy, to name no more. \nBut Lowell\'s attitude is not difficult to imderstand. \nThe Elizabethan dramatists, he assures us, are \n*\'the best comment ... to convince us of the \nimmeasurable superiority of Shakespeare."^ It \nhas already been pointed out that Lowell\'s atti- \ntude towards Shakespeare is one of admiration \nto which no laudation seems extravagant. He is \nthe "miracle of Stratford," and in the process of \nhis apotheosis, \'\'creative genius" and "dramatic \ngenius" must be held as the sacred possession of \nhim alone. What again becomes of Lowell\'s \npenetration? Before the radiant figure of his \nliterary god, it seems to vanish into thin air. \n\n* Old English Dramatists, p. 24. ^ Ihid., p. 26. \n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI \nLowell\'s type of mind \n\nLOWELL, it has been already suggested, was \na conservative. \'*I was always a natural \ntory," he wrote, \'\'and in England . . . should be \na staunch one. I would not give up a thing that \nhad roots to it, though it might suck up its food \nfrom graveyards."\' In religion, also, whatever \ndoubts may have assailed him, he was a conser- \nvative. ^ \'\'I look upon a behef as none the worse \nbut rather the better for being hereditary, prizing \nas I do whatever helps to give continuity to the \nbeing and doing of man, and an acciimulated \nforce to his character."^ In the sphere of litera- \nture it was the same. He approaches a considera- \ntion of the classics of language with a realization \nthat they are great by tmiversal consent and with \na determination to find in them what others have \ndiscovered. \'\'What," he asks, "is a classic, if it \nbe not a book that forever delights, inspires, and \nsurprises, \xe2\x80\x94 ^in which and in ourselves, by its help, \nwe make new discoveries every day?""* Works \n\n^ Letters, ii., 136. \xc2\xbb Ihid., ii., 325. ^ Ihid., ii., 152. \n\n4 Latest Literary Essays, p. 143. \n173 \n\n\n\n174 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nwhich have lasted generations he cannot approach \nexcept from the traditional viewpoint of accept- \nance. His whole attitude may be seen in his \nexperience with Hamlet: \n\nMany years ago ... I pleased myself with imagining \nthe play of Hamlet published under some alias^ as \nthe work of a new candidate in literatiure. Then I \nplayed . . . that it came in regular course before \nsome well-meaning doer of criticisms, who had never \nread the original, . . . and endeavored to conceive the \nkind of way in which he would be likely to take it. I \nput myself in his place, and tried to write such a \nperfunctory notice as I thought would be likely, in \nfilling his column, to satisfy his conscience. But it \nwas a tour de force ... I could not arrive at that \nartistic absorption in my own conception which \nwould enable me to be natural . . . My result was a \ndead failure ... I could not shake ofiE that strange \naccumulation which we call self, and report honestly \nwhat I saw and felt even to myself, much less to \nothers.^ \n\nThis is the epitome of Lowell\'s conservatism as it \nconcerns the classics of Hterature. \n\nNot so fundamental as Lowell\'s conservatism, \nthough none the less an element in him with which \none must reckon, was his enthusiasm, which has \nbeen spoken of in another place. His enthusiasm, \npositive and negative, if it may be so distinguished, \nis scarcely ever in abeyance. One can feel it \n\n^ Works, iii., 28 ff. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S TYPE OF MIND 175 \n\ngathering in intensity as it proceeds. Starting \nwith the declaration, "My respect for what Lea- \nsing was, and for what he did, is profoiind," \nLowell\'s expression of respect moves onward \nthrough \'\'Greater poets she (Germany) has had, \nbut no greater writer," till by the end of a page \nit becomes such high admiration as this : \n\nThe figure of Goethe is grand, it is rightfully pre- \neminent, it has something of the calm, and some- \nthing of the coldness, of the immortals; but the \nValhalla of German letters can show one form, in its \nsimple manhood, statelier even than his.^ \n\nThe critic\'s enthusiasms in the case of many \nauthors were abiding but so exclusive in their \nnature as to lead him into extravagances of state- \nment which he was afterwards forced to contradict. ^ \nHis negative enthusiasms, especially when con- \ncerned with a writer for whom his conservatism \ndoes not demand deep acknowledgment, is no \nless conspicuous. Beginning with the declaration, \n" Skelton was an exceptional blossom of autumn," \nhe continues : \n\nA long and dreary winter follows. Surrey ... is \nto some extent another exception . . . but he has no \nmastery of verse, nor any elegance of diction. We \n\n1 Works y ii., 171 ff. \n\n2 E. g., cf. Works, iii., 92, with ibid., ii., 244; Works, iii., 36, \nwith Latest Literary Essays, p. 114, etc. \n\n\n\n176 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nhave Gascoigne, Surrey, Wyatt, stiff, pedantic, \nartificial, systematic as a country cemetery, and, \nworst of all, the whole time desperately in love . . . \nThey are said to have refined our language. Let us \ndevoutly hope they did, for it would be pleasant to be \ngrateful to them for something, ^ \n\nand so on. \n\nLowell was to a considerable extent a creature \nof moods; their influence at times betrays itself \nin his essays. The eighteenth century is not a \nfavorite with him but in Gray"^ he writes: \'\'As one \ngrows older, one finds more points of half -reluc- \ntant sympathy with that undyspeptic and rather \nworldly period." He goes on praising its \n\ncheerfulness and contentment with things as they \nwere ... If there was discontent, it was in the \nindividual, and not in the air . . . Post and tele- \ngraph were not so importunate as now . . . Man- \nners occupied more time and were allowed more \nspace. \n\nFinally after nearly three pages of laudation, he \nconfesses: "This, no doubt, is the view of a special \nmood, but it is a mood that grows upon us the \nlonger we have stood upon our lees." This "view \nof a special mood" was beyond question not in- \n\n^ Works, iv., 274. It was Poe who wrote of Lowell, "He must \nbe a fanatic in whatever circumstances you place him." Poe\'s \nWorks, vi., 240. \' Latest Literary Essays. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S TYPE OF MIND 177 \n\nfrequent with Lowell. It never, one may believe, \ninterferes with his final pronouncements on a \nclassic author to whom he devotes an essay, but \nit sometimes affects the tone with which he dis- \ncusses single qualities. Is he weary of what he \nregards as the morbid egotism of his own day? \nThen he must laud Shakespeare\'s serene restraint \nwhich kept him from talking of himself, ^ or Dry- \nden\'s quahty of \'\'blowing the mind clear."\'\' Is \nhe tired from over-reading? Then Wordsworth \n"wrote too much to write always well," though \nhis product is by no means notably large. These \nmoods he allows to affect him even more in the \ncase of less important writers. Fagged out with \nlong reading, his mood is obvious in his attack on \nGower : \n\nLove, beauty, passion, nature, art, life, the natural \nand theological virtues, \xe2\x80\x94 there is nothing beyond \nhis power to disenchant, nothing out of which the \ntremendous hydraulic press of his allegory . . . \nwill not squeeze all feeling and freshness and leave \nit a juiceless pulp.^ \n\nAngry at British editors, he brands HalHwell\'s \nMarston as \'\'the worst edition we ever saw of any \nauthor." 4 This imtil he comes to another editor \n\n* Works, iii., 94. \n\n^ Ibid., iii., 189. "To look at all sides, and to distrust the \nverdict of a single mood, is, no doubt, the duty of a critic." \nWorks, iii., 114. 3 Ihid., iii., 330. 4 Ihid., i., 272. \n\n12 \n\n\n\n178 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nin the same series, and then, "Of all Mr. Smith\'s \neditors, Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt is the worst."\' \n;{ The secret of Lowell, however, does not end with \nmood or enthusiasm ; going even deeper, it does not \nend with conservatism. In a letter of December \n15, 1849, Fredrika Bremer wrote of Lowell and \nhis wife : \n\nHer mind has more philosophical depth than his. \n. . . He seemed to me occasionally to be brilliant, \nwitty, gay, especially in the evening, when he has \nwhat he calls his "evening fever," when his talk \nis like an incessant play of fireworks.^ \n\nLack of philosophical depth. The weakness which \nMiss Bremer discovered is worthy of an examina- \ntion. If it proves to be true it will make many \nthings clear. \n\nIt has already been pointed out that Lowell \nfailed to get to the heart of things and of men. \nThe subject is worth further scrutiny. Complex \ncharacters eluded him. One feels a certain satis- \nfaction in his study of such men as Lessing with \nhis "simple manhood, "^ and of Landor, fragmen- \ntary though it is, for in them were no subtleties to \n\n\' Works, i., 304. \n\n^ Homes of the New World, i., 134. Lowell wrote of Miss \nBremer: "She is one of the most beautiful persons I have ever \nknown \xe2\x80\x94 so clear, so simple, so right-minded and -hearted, and \nso full of judgment." Letters i., 174. The last four words are \nworth noting. 3 Works, ii., 172. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S TYPE OF MIND 179 \n\nbaffle him. But Thoreau he cannot understand; \nhe is too complex. The critic accuses him of \nsentimentalism, but still the Concord recluse \ndefies his analysis. Rousseau, \'\'many ways a \ncomplex character," lies beyond him, and Carlyle \nequally, of whom he writes in 1884: *\'I find . . . \nhim more problematic than ever. "^ He wrote \non Lessing but passed by Goethe, whose figure \n"is grand, is rightfully preeminent," but who \n\'\'to make a study . . . would soil the maiden \npetals of a woman\'s soul. "^ He has "the best \npossible Swift in his head," but his review of \nForster\'s Swift in the Nation is evidence that the \ngreat Dean, "generous miser; skeptical believer; \ndevout scoffer; tender-hearted misanthrope, "^ lay \nquite beyond the reach of the critic\'s psychological \ninsight. Sometimes he gives up in frank despair \nas in the case of Rousseau. ^ Again, as in treat- \ning of Dante, he would simplify the character by \ndenying certain phases which tended to make it \ncomplex. The lover of Beatrice never gave him- \nself up to the gratification of sense ; the portrayer of \nFrancesca and her lover could not be vindictive. \nEven in treating men less difficult, it has been \npointed out that he never gets to the radical \nexplanation of their qualities. ^ He always leaves \na substratum tintouched, whose presence he may \n\n^ Letters, ii., 282. \xc2\xbb Works, ii., 172; 194. \n\n3 Nation, vol. xxii; April 13, April 20, 1876. \n\n4 Works, ii., 262. s Vide ante, Chap. V. \n\n\n\ni8o LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nat times have guessed, but to which he could not \npenetrate. One begins to understand why Lowell \ndid not attempt the method of Sainte-Beuve. \n\nLowell\'s essays, studied as wholes, betray a \nweakness which shows itself in many ways.^ \nHe once attempted a novel but abandoned it. His \ncomment is significant: "As for the novel, in the \nfirst place I can\'t write one nor conceive how any \none else can." Consecuity of thought was not a \nstrong point with Lowell. Paragraphs frequently \nfollow one another without any inter-relation save \nthat of dealing with the same author. This is \nsometimes true of sentences in the same paragraph. \nThe following is typical of such inconsecuity. \nSpeaking of the quarrel between Pope and Addison \nand the former\'s explanation of the cause, Lowell \nsays: \n\nLet any one ask himself how he likes an author\'s \nemendations of any poem to which his ear had \nadapted itself in its former shape, and he will hardly \nthink it needful to charge Addison with any mean \nmotive for his conservatism in this matter. \n\nThe next sentence runs: "One or two of Pope\'s \nletters are so good as to make us regret that he \ndid not oftener don the dressing-gown and slippers \n\n^ One is reminded of Lowell\'s own words in another connection: \n"The essays confuse by the multiplicity of details while they \nweary by want of continuity." Works, iv., 79. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S TYPE OF MIND i8i \n\nin his correspondence. One in particular, to Lord \nBurlington, describing a journey,"\' etc. He \nconstantly returns in his studies to matters he has \nalready considered. In his non-literary essays, he \nrambles along, finally coming not to a conclusion \nbut to a stop. His literary essays have much \nof this desultory character. The butterflies of \nchance allusion proved irresistibly alluring and he \nnever overcame his weakness for giving chase to \nthem. Opening a volume at random, one finds: \n"So far as all the classicism then attainable was \nconcerned, Shakespeare got it as cheap as Goethe \ndid, who always bought it ready-made." Then \nfollows two-thirds of a page on Goethe\'s method \nof obtaining \'\'ready-made classicism."* Again, \nafter discussing Chaucer\'s alleged irregularities of \nmetre, he says : "Enough and more than enough on \na question about which it is . . . hard to be pa- \ntient." But he cannot be content and pursues \nthe topic for nearly three pages further.^ \n\nIt is beyond doubt that some of the blemishes \nof Lowell\'s essays are due to re- working of old ma- \nterial, but not so the weaknesses in his logic. Dis- \ncussing the question whether Rousseau were a \nself -deluded poseur, he asks: "Have we any right \nto judge this man after our blunt English fash- \nion . . . ? Is French reality precisely our reality? \n\n\xc2\xbb Works, iv., 53. " Ihid., iii., 46. \n\n3 Ihid., iii., 348. Of Lowell\'s mind one recalls Lamb\'s words \n\nin another connection: "Its motion is circular, not progressive." \n\n\n\n1 82 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nCould we tolerate tragedy in rhymed alexandrines, \ninstead of blank verse?"\' The want of parity \nbetween tolerating a pose which affects even the \nsphere of moral action and tolerating a type of \nverse, is obvious. He comes to the defense of \nRousseau by attacking those who had borne testi- \nmony against him. Even though Burke were a \n\'*snob,"^ Johnson an intimate of Savage, and \nMoore "the ci -devant friend of the Prince Regent, " \nRousseau, one would think, remained no better \nnor worse for that. In discussing the Anglo- \nSaxon, Lowell sets out to examine his qualities, \nbut shifts to a depiction of the modem English- \nman. ^ Doctor Johnson and John Bunyan, after \ncenturies of Norman admixture, are not Cynewulf \nand ^Ifric. Speaking of the Elizabethan drama- \ntists, he says : \'\'How little they were truly dramatic \nseems proved by the fact that none, or next to \nnone, of their plays have held the stage. "^ it \nwas not unfortunate that \'\'seems" provided the \ncritic with a loophole of escape from the strict \nimplication of his statement. When he sums up \nPope, the question at issue is this : Was Pope a poet? \nSuddenly in Lowell\'s resimie the question has \nbecome, not was Pope a poet, but was he a great \n\n^ Works, ii., 268. \n\n\'Ibid., ii., 236. Cf. Letters, u., 421: "The only feeling ... in \nmy memory concerning . , . [De Quincey] is that he was a kind \nof inspired cad." 3 Works, iii., 316. \n\n4 Old English Dramatists^ p. 24. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S TYPE OF MIND 183 \n\npoet ? The implication in the question as thus put \nassumes the very point at issue. ^ \n\nThe inexactness of Lowell\'s thought appears at \ntimes in his tendency to employ a word in some \nunexplained signification of his own or in his \nlimitation of it to his own definition. He tells \nus that Shakespeare\'s method "was thoroughly \nGreek, "=" although Greek in what sense he fails to \nsay. When he declares: **A rooted discontent \nseems always to underlie all great poetry, if it be \nnot even the motive of it, " he leaves us to guess at \nhis definition of \'\'discontent" or to go back to his \nsotirce for its meaning.^ When he calls Burke \na sentimentalist, he defines the term to mean \'\'a \nman who took what would now be called an aes- \nthetic view of morals and politics. \' \' ^ Montaigne he \nregards as "really the first great modern writer, "^ \n"modem writer" meaning "the first who assimi- \nlated his Greek and Latin, and showed that an \nauthor might be original and charming, even classi- \ncal, if he did not try too hard. " ^ Such usage of a \nterm in a special and sometimes tmdefined signi- \nfication is no less confusing because one reads in \nLowell\'s letters: "It fags me to deal with particu- \n\n^ Said Lowell of Dryden : He "sees . . . that a man who under- \ntakes to write should first have a meaning perfectly defined to \nhimself and then should be able to set it forth clearly in the best \nwords." 2 Works, iii., 92. \n\n3 Vide Hazlitt\'s Works, v., 3. 4 Works, ii., 233. \n\n^ Ibid., ii., 221. Cf. "Dante is . . . the founder of modem \nliterature," ibid., iv., 229. \n\n\n\n184 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nlars." Such a declaration is a confession, not a \ndefense. Speaking of Wordsworth, Lowell asks: \n\nHow much of his poetry is likely to be a permanent \npossession? The answer to this question is involved \nin the answer to a question of wider bearing, \xe2\x80\x94 What \nare the conditions of permanence? Immediate or \ncontemporaneous recognition is certainly not domi- \nnant among them . . . Nor can mere originality \nassure the interest of posterity . . . Since Virgil \nthere have been at most but four cosmopolitan \nauthors. . . . These have stood the supreme test \nof being translated into all tongues, because the \nlarge humanity of their theme, and of their handling \nof it, needed translation into none.\' \n\n\n\nThe matter in Lowell\'s hands, instead of being \nsimplified, becomes steadily more complex. We \nask again: How much of Wordsworth\'s poetry is \nlikely to be a permanent possession? What are \nwe to understand by "permanent"? Does the \ncritic mean cosmopoHtan permanence or national \npermanence? On the meaning of the latter term \ndepends the answer to the original question. \nLowell seems for a moment to consider the bearing \nof recognition and originahty upon it, suddenly \nshifts the point from national to cosmopoHtan per- \nmanence, and then leaves the question he has \nraised hanging in the air with an inadequate answer \n\xc2\xbb Works, vi., 107 fif. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S TYPE OF MIND 185 \n\nto one phase of it, and that not the phase which \nbears on the case.\' \n\nAkin to the weakness which has just been dis- \ncussed, is the critic\'s lack of precision. His \ntendency to grope for the exact expression of an \nidea means not a paucity in vocabulary but a \nvagueness in thought. That incisive quality of \nmind which seizes upon the inevitable word, is \nevident only in flashes. Face to face with an idea \nwhich requires precision of thought and consequent \nprecision of phrase, he handles it in the large, \nexpanding or shifting it till its nicety is destroyed. ^ \nThis lack of precision has to some extent already \nbeen exemplified; it betrays itself in Lowell\'s \ntendency to limit a word to a peculiar meaning of \nhis own; in his avoidance of a definition even \nthough such omission leaves his sentences foggy \nor meaningless; in his shifting of the point of dis- \ncussion; in his weakness of logic and inconsecuity \nof thought. 3 As to his habit of enlargement of \n\n\n\n^ This opening up of a question and leaving it hanging in the \nair is common with Lowell; e. g., Latest Literary Essays, p. 150, \non the personal equation. This paragraph is an excellent example \nof Lowell\'s inconsecuity of thought. \n\n" For an excellent example of Lowell\'s weakness in close reason- \ning and in precision of thought and expression, vide Works, iv., \n261, "No doubt it is primarily," etc. \n\n3 "Without clearness and terseness," says Lowell, "there \ncan be no good writing whether in prose or verse." Works, iv., \n55. Again: " Precision of phrase presupposes lucidity of thought." \nIbid., iv., 55. \n\n\n\ni86 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nphrase and shifting of the exact idea, the following \nis typical: \n\nBonstetten tells us that "every sensation in Gray was \npassionate," but I very much doubt whether he \nwas capable of that sustained passion of the mind \nwhich is fed by a prevailing imagination acting on \nthe consciousness of great powers. ^ \n\nOne cannot fail to perceive the hiatus between \nBonstetten\'s idea and the idea as one finds it in \nLowell\'s phrasing. Speaking of Fielding he says : \n\'\'Hisimagination was of that secondary order . . . \nsubdued to what it worked in; and his creative \npower is not less in degree than that of more purely \nideal artists, but was different in kind, or, if not, is \nmade to seem so by the more vulgar substance in \nwhich it wrought." The attempt at shading the \nthought becomes irksome and overnice for the \ncritic to handle ; he engulfs it in this ample phras- \ning: \'\'Certainly Fielding\'s genius was incapable of \nthat ecstasy of conception through which the poetic \nimagination seems fused into a molten unity with its \nmaterial,\'\' and so on.^ Aut Ccesar aut nihil! \nThis phase of Lowell\'s lack of precision is evident \nwhen he sets one writer over against others for the \ncomparison of style. Writing of Milton\'s blank \n\n^ Latest Literary Essays, p. i6. The italics are mine. \n\n\' Works, vi., 55. For an excellent example of this largeness \nof phrase carried into a discussion, which in turn keeps beside the \npoint, vide Old English Dramatists, p. 79 Q. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S TYPE OF MIND 187 \n\nverse, with its \'\'variety of pause" and "majestic \nharmony, " he says: \n\nLandor, who, like Milton, seems to have thought \nin Latin, has caught somewhat more than others \nof the dignity of his gait, but without his length of \nstride. Wordsworth, at his finest, has perhaps \napproached it, but with how long an interval ! Bryant \nhas not seldom attained to its serene equanimity, \nbut never emulates its pomp. Keats has caught \nsomething of its large utterance, but altogether fails \nof its nervous severity of phrase. ^ \n\nIn the hands of a man of precision of mind, this \nmethod of cross-comparison may have certain \nadvantages ; in the hands of Lowell it has few or \nnone. For to set men into juxtaposition who offer \nonly imperfect grounds for comparison is to run \nthe risk of giving a false impression of both unless \nthe treatment is of the nicest. To this same lack \nof precision of mind must be traced his betrayal \ninto superlatives, although the immediate causes \nof that betrayal were his over-enthusiasm and \nperhaps a well-grounded suspicion that the prin- \nciples adduced to support his conclusions were \ninadequate. \n\nFurther light on Lowell\'s type of mind is not \nwanting. His conceptions of matters at all \nabstract were vague, and his application of what \n\nI Works, iv., 86. Cf. ibid., ii., 114; iii., 129 ff. Latest Literary \nEssays, p. 4. \n\n\n\n1 88 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nhe regarded as fundamental ideas broke down in \nthe face of varying conditions. He defines form \nas \'\'the artistic sense of decorum controlling the \ncoordination of parts and ensuring their harmoni- \nous subservience to a common end."^ Style is \nsomething different, \'\'a lower form of the same \nfaculty or quality whichever it be"; it "has to \ndo with the perfection of the parts themselves. " ^^ \nHe is uncertain whether style is a faculty or a \nquality; but imagination \'4s the faculty that \nshapes, gives unity of design and balanced gravi- \ntation of parts. "3 Rhythm "shapes both matter \nand manner to harmonious proportion. " ^ " Reach \nof mind . . . selects, arranges, combines, rejects, \ndenies itself the cheap triumph of immediate \neffects, because it is absorbed by the controlling \ncharm of proportion and unity. "^ Taste is "a \ntrue sense of proportion. " ^^ Style again "con- \nsists mainly in the absence of undue emphasis and \nexaggeration. " 7 Again it is "that exquisite some- \nthing . . . which . . . makes itself felt by the \nskill with which it effaces itself, and masters us at \nlast with a sense of indefinable completeness."^ \nAgain it is "the establishment of a perfect mutual \nunderstanding between the worker and his ma- \n\n^ Precision, says Lowell, comes of insight. Old English \nDramatists, page 56. \n\n* Latest Literary Essays, p. 144. \n\n3 Works, iii., 30. 4 Ibid., ii., 117. s Ibid., iii., 332. \n\n\xc2\xab Ibid., iii., 317. ? Ibid., iii., 353. \xc2\xbb Ibid., iii., 31. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S TYPE OF MIND 189 \n\nterial. "^ Such a confusing medley of meanings \nsuggests Lowell\'s inability to get at the ultimate \nand his consequent weakness for improvising \ndefinitions to fit any particular case which might \narise. \n\nIn Shakespeare, Lowell attempts to work out \nthe Tempest as an allegory : Prospero is the Imagi- \nnation, Ariel is the Fancy, Caliban is \'\'the brute \nUnderstanding, " who, \'\'the moment his poor wits \nare warmed with the glorious liquor of Stephano, \nplots rebellion against his natural lord, the higher \nReason." Miranda is "abstract Womanhood"; \n"Ferdinand is Youth." His allegory gets no fur- \nther. One may suspect that the difficulty of \naccounting for Womanhood as the daughter of \nImagination, of identifying the higher Reason \nwith the Imagination, and the like, may have \nbaffled him. His inconsistencies and contradic- \ntions, indeed, are constantly occurring; the reason \nis the same. His notions about Nature and the \ninteractions of sympathy between her and man are \nvague and contradictory. He points out as a \nweakness in others an attitude of mind which he \nconfesses to in himself.^ He adopts Carlyle\'s \nfamous definition of history^ only to deny its \nsoundness. \'^ And so one might go on. \n\nIt has already been pointed out that a fimda- \n\n\'^ Works, iii., 37 ff. \n\n2 Cf. Works, ii., 266; i., 376; Letters, ii., 66, 424; ibid., i., 366. \n\n3 Ibid., vi., 91 ; ii., 284. 4 Ibid., ii., 99. \n\n\n\n190 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nmental idea of Lowell\'s was that of moral character \nas a necessity for a great poet; that this idea \nexpanded till he declared character to be "the \nonly soil in which real mental power can root \nitself and find sustenance."^ But difficulties \nbeset him. What of Goethe and Burns and Byron \nand Rousseau, to name no others? He answers: \n"Shakespeare, Goethe, Bums, \xe2\x80\x94 what have their \nbiographies to do with us? Genius is not a ques- \ntion of character. "^ The man and the genius are \ndifferent beings.^ "We forgive everything to the \ngenius; we are inexorable to the man. "^ For \n"There is nothing so true, so sincere, so down- \nright and forthright, as genius. It is always truer \nthan the man himself is, greater than he. " "* What \nbecomes of character as the only soil in which \nreal mental power can root itself and find suste- \nnance? What becomes of the critic\'s declaration \nthat "for good or evil, the character and its \nintellectual product are inextricably interfused? "^ \nRousseau the man, he insists, is not to be consid- \nered in connection with Rousseau the genius.^ \nBut soon the critic changes his mind; we are \njustified in examining Rousseau\'s character, for he \n\n^ Works, ii., 195. \'Ibid., ii., 241. \n\n3 "The poet and the man are two different natures; though \nthey exist together, they may be unconscious of each other, \nand be incapable of deciding on each other\'s powers and efforts \nby any reflex act. " Letter of Shelley to Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne, \nJuly 19, 1 82 1. 4 Lowell\'s Works, ii., 244. \n\ns Ibid., iii., 271. <\xe2\x80\xa2 Ibid., ii., 240 ff. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S TYPE OF MIND 191 \n\nis a professed moralist. \' Then we shall not forgive \neverything to the genius? No, answers the critic, \nfor in natures incapable of escaping from them- \nselves, \'\'the author is inevitably mixed with his \nwork, and we have a feeling that the amount of his \nsterling character is the security for the notes he \nissues."^ Then genius may be a question of \ncharacter? Yes, answers the critic, except in the \nsingle case of the \'\'highest creative genius . . . \nfor there the thing produced is altogether dis- \nengaged from the producer."^ Who is to be \nnumbered among the highest creative geniuses? \nWe are not told. Let it be asstimed that Shake- \nspeare is one of that high company; let it be as- \nsumed either that character is the only soil in which \nreal mental power can root itself and find suste- \nnance, or that character is quite apart from genius. \nWhat of Shakespeare then? The critic rates the \npoet\'s genius so high as to make it a confirmation \nof a creative Deity, ^ but rates his character \n"higher even than . . . [his] genius. ""* Perhaps \nafter all the critic was right when he suggested \nthat character was a nobler form of genius. ^ But \none remembers that genius is "always truer than \nthe man himself is, greater than he. " ^ How does \nthe critic support this last assertion? By demand- \ning to know whether Shakespeare\'s contemporaries \nwould have "left us so wholly without record of \n\n^ Works, ii., 241 and 243. \' Ibid., ii., 257. 3 Ibid., iii., 93. \n4 Ibid., iii., 94. s Ibid., ii., 171. \' Ibid., ii., 244. \n\n\n\n192 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nhim as they have done, " if he as a man "had been \nas marvellous a creature as the genius that wrote \nhis plays? "^ Nine months later Lowell has \nchanged his mind and reversed the answer to his \nown question.^ What was before a reason for \ndepreciating Shakespeare\'s character becomes a \nreason for exalting it. Shakespeare, says Lowell, \nwas wonderfully exceptional because of "his \nutterly unimpeachable judgment, and that poise \nof character which enabled him to be at once the \ngreatest of poets and so unnoticeable a good citizen \nas to leave no incidents for biography. "^ But \nwhy go on? In small as in great things it is the \nsame: vagueness of thought, largeness of expres- \nsion, failure to meet a difficulty fairly, weakness for \navoiding or shifting or missing the point at issue, \ninability to answer difficulties without raising new \ncontradictions, the contradictions left \\mrecon- \nciled because unreconcilable except to a philo- \nsophic mind. To say that Lowell never took the \ntrouble to bring his contradictory statements into \nharmony is to assume the real point, which is : Was \nit possible for Lowell to bring his contradictions \xe2\x80\x94 \nwhen they went at all deep \xe2\x80\x94 ^into harmony? The \n\n^ Works, ii., 244. \n\n" In Shakespeare, in North American Review, April, 1868. \n\n3 Works, iii., 92. For a typical example of Lowell\'s vagueness \nof thought and expression, vide Works, iv., 261, "No doubt it is \nprimarily, " etc. Cf. Letters, i., 357: "You see what I mean \xe2\x80\x94 or, \nat any rate, that I have a meaning, which is the main thing. " \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S TYPE OF MIND 193 \n\nunity which lies at the root of variety was precisely \nwhat presented difficulties to Lowell. It was \npointed out earlier that his enthusiasm led him to \nexpress views on character and genius which \ntended to exalt that author who was the subject \nof his immediate study. Lowell\'s enthusiasm \nwould never have been allowed so to dominate \nhim, had he possessed philosophic depth of mind. \n\nOne begins to understand why the law, with its \ndemands of penetration to basic principles, of \n\xe2\x80\xa2exactness in conception and expression, of con- \nsecuity of thought and of logical reasoning, should \nnot have appealed to Lowell. Small wonder that \nhe wrote: It is a calling \'\'which I hate and for \nwhich I am not well fitted to say the least. " ^ \n\nSuch comments as this upon himseh are frequent \nin LoweU. It would be to demand of him that \nquality of mind which he did not possess were one \nto expect him to suggest the ultimate source of his \nown weaknesses. Many of these weaknesses he \nsaw in other writers.\'\' What he says of himself \nhas a particular interest ; it points the way to a con- \nfirmation of our contention. Here is the man of \nfeeling, whose early conceptions of a work to be \n\n^ Letters, i., 66. \n\n* For example, he says of Milton : " He was far more rhetorician \nthan thinker." {Works, \'w., 84.) Of Richter: "Delightful as \nJean Paul\'s humor is, how much more so would it be if he only \nknew when to stop." Lowell did not take kindly to criticism \nfrom others. Cf. Letters, i., 121 ; ihid., ii., 65 ff.; Howells, \nLiterary Friends and Acquaintance, p. 224. \n13 \n\n\n\n194 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nwritten are vague and Itiniinous in the warm haze \nof first imaginings: "The germ of a poem ... is \nalways delightful to me, but I have no pleasure in \nworking it up. " ^ Here is the man of feeling again : \n" One of my great defects . . . is an impatience of \nmind which makes me contemptuously indifferent \nabout arguing matters that have once become \nconvictions."^ One gets new light on this impa- \ntience of mind if one recalls another admission of \nLowell\'s, "It fags me to deal with particulars. " ^ \nThere is the man of feeling again, whose ideas are \nin the large, because the result of impression, and \nnever crystallized by contact with the touchstone \nof ultimate principles. It is worth while to lis- \nten to these self -revelations ; they help to establish \nour contention. Lowell says in one of his letters : \n" I must see the full face [of truth] and then the two \nsides have such different expressions that I begin \nto doubt which is the sincere and cannot surrender \nmyself. "^ In the Cathedral, he speaks of those \n\n"Who see two sides, with our posed selves debate." \n\nHow often the "two sides" belonged to one and \nthe same truth, if only he had been able to per- \nceive it! That " uniformity in variety," which, as \nProfessor Beers says, "it is for . . . the philoso- \npher to detect,"^ lay beyond Lowell\'s powers to \n\n\' Letters, ii., lo. * Ibid., i., 134. \n\n\xc2\xbb Ibid., ii., 280. * Points at Issue, p. 1 15. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S TYPE OF MIND 195 \n\nperceive. He never seems to have realized the \nsignificance of this weakness. \n\nHe wrote in 1875 : " I am one of the last ... of \nthe great readers," and he confesses to being \n\'\'rather an unwilling writer. " \' With all his wide \nreading, how much real thinking did Lowell do? \nDid he have his eyes turned inward upon himself \nwhen he wrote: \'\'It is curious . . . how tyranni- \ncal the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make \nto escape thinking. There is no bore we dread \nbeing left alone with so much as our own minds." ^ \nDid he find his own mind a bore with which he \ndreaded to be left alone? He writes in a letter of \nDecember, 1884: "Every now and then my good \nspirits carry me away and people find me amusing, \nbut reaction always sets in the moment I am \nleft to myself."^ We are not without illumi- \nnating commentaries on this. Fifteen months \nlater, writing of Gray,^ he says: "He was cheerful \n... in any company but his own, and this, it \nmay be guessed, because faculties were called into \nplay which he had not the innate force to rouse \ninto more profitable activity. " To what was due \nthis lack of innate force? Lowell answers, indo- \nlence, "intellectual indolence." One need not \nstop to consider whether or not Lowell\'s diag- \nnosis of Gray is sound. One\'s interest in it is \n\n^ Letters, ii., 154. \' Works, i., 21. ^Letters, ii., 289. \n\n4 New Princeton Review for March, 1886, now in Latest Liter- \nary Essays. \n\n\n\n196 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nkeen, not for what it tries to tell us about Gray, \nbut for what it actually does tell us about Lowell. \nBeyond doubt the critic thought he read in the poet \nsymptoms which he found in himself. He dis- \ncovers that Gray like himself is cheerful only in \ncompany; he decides that Gray\'s "constant en- \ndeavor was to occupy himself in whatever would \nsave him from the reflection of how he might \noccupy himself better." Was it for a similar \nreason that Lowell read omnivorously, but wrote \nunwilHngly?^ Was he eager to escape what would \ndemand thought? \'\'I always write my longest \nletters," he says, "when I have something else to \ndo. It seems so like being industrious.\'" ^ Ho wells \ntells us: "Lowell liked to have some one help \nhim idle the time away and keep him as long as \npossible from his work." The critic offers in \nexplanation of Gray the weakness which he thinks \nexplains himself. He writes: "I have never been \nable to shake off the indolence (I do not know \nwhether to call it intellectual or physical) that I \ninherited from my father."^ One does not find \nthat physical indolence is the term to apply to this \nman Lowell who enjoys the experiences of the \nMoosehead Journal, who likes frequent and long \ntramps in the open, who goes on vacation trips to \n\n^ Cf. Letters, ii., 154. \n\n\' Ibid., ii., 346. The italics are mine. Cf. Latest Literary \nEssays, p. 20: Lowell was thinking of himself when he wrote: \n"Nobody knew better than Johnson what a master of casuistry- \nis indolence." 3 Letters, ii., 280. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S TYPE OF MIND 197 \n\nthe Adirondacks and finds delight in the free Hfe \nof the woods. Lowell gives us the key to the \nanswer in his own case when he expresses the \nbelief that Gray\'s indolence was intellectual. He \nfinds that Gray was melancholy in his own com- \npany just as he was himself. ^ And why ? * * Gray\'s \nmelancholy was that of Richard II. : \xe2\x80\x94 \n\n**I wasted time, and now doth time waste me, \nFor now hath time made me his numbering clock." \n\nHere again Lowell thinks he finds in Gray the \nsame symptoms as in his own case and suggests a \nsimilar explanation, \xe2\x80\x94 something akin to remorse. \n"I have thrown away hours enough to make a \nhandsome reputation out of," Lowell wrote in \n1876. Again he speaks of the time when "I am \nin Mount Auburn, with so much undone that \nI might have done."^ And still again: "I feel \nthat my life has been mainly wasted \xe2\x80\x94 that I have \nthrown away more than most men ever had," \nbut he was never able, he says, to shake off indo- \nlence. Thus one gets back to indolence again ; but \none is not in the throes of a vicious circle ; the ex- \nplanation is not far to seek. Lowell was a man of \nfeeling, not a man of thought ; he read enormously \nand found in reading a threefold satisfaction: his \nimpressionism was sated; thought was cheated \ninto a semblance of real activity by following the \ncourse of another\'s mind ; it seemed, to use his own \n\n^ Letters, ii., 289. 2 Ibid., ii., 215. \n\n\n\n198 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nwords in another connection, "so much like being \nindustrious." Conceptions of poems and essays \nfell short in the reality.\' He came to reaHze \nthat something was lacking in his work. And \nwith the passing years was bom a dissatisfaction, \nnot alone, one may believe, with the amount of his \nwritings, for the amount was not small. He \n"has lived so long and done so little. " ^ His feel- \ning of dissatisfaction with his life and of something \nakin to remorse for his supposed sins of omission \nsprang not from a moment\'s mood of depression, \nbut from the consciousness of a fatal defect in him- \nself which robbed his accomplishment of its best \nvitality. It was characteristic of Lowell that in \ntracing this defect he got no further than his \nindolence, one may say his intellectual indolence. \nAn outgrowth of that infirmity was doubtless the \ndependence on stimuli outside of himself which \nwas so marked in Lowell\'s case and which has \n\n^ "The conception of the verses [The Flying Dutchman] is \ngood; the verses are bad ... As for putting back what was \nin the first copy \xe2\x80\x94 the said first copy went up my chimney Sunday \nafternoon, as airy and sparkling a poem as I meant it to be when \nit came first into my head. If I could recover it with the fervor of \nthe flame and the grace of the smoke still in it ! That\'s the kind \nof thing we dream of \xe2\x80\x94 the copy you have is the kind of thing we \ndo. " Letters, i., 397 ff. Cf. ibid., i., 345 ff ; ii., 10. \'"I have the \nbest possible Swift in my head if I could only get him out.\' . . . \nApparently he had planned a paper on Swift of the proportions of \none of his North American articles; what actually appeared was a \nbrief review of Forster\'s Life of Swift in the Nation." Scudder, ii., \n198. Cf. Letters, ii., 166 fi. \' Letters, ii., 367. \n\n\n\nLOWELL\'S TYPE OF MIND 199 \n\nalready been discussed. But to say that the secret \nof the critic\'s shortcomings is found in intellectual \nindolence, is to shut one\'s eyes to the real signifi- \ncance of the weaknesses which have already been \npointed out; it is, in a word, to stop short of the \nfundamental explanation. ** All thought is sad, " ^ \nsaid Lowell, and in so far as he spoke for himself \nhe was right. It is sad when it is something we \nmake shift to escape from ; it is sad when it brings \nus no nearer a radical truth than its seemingly \ncontradictory facets; it is sad finally to that man \nwith whom penetration is an occasional moment\'s \nflash of insight and not a quaHty of mind. Be- \nhind Lowell\'s intellectual indolence lay his real \nweakness: lack of philosophic depth of mind. \nTo that lack is to be attributed the absence of \ngenuine vitality in his critical essays. Remember- \ning this, we find that Lowell\'s feelings of a wasted \nlife are explicable. It is fair to believe that he \nsuspected, perhaps even realized, that he had \nfailed to penetrate to the heart of his subject; \nthat his work in consequence, when judged by \nwhat he had hoped to achieve and by the criticism \nof admitted masters, was tried and found wanting. \nWhat he did not realize, perhaps not even suspect, \nwas that the deficiency of his essays had root in a \ndeficiency of his type of mind. An examination \nof Lowell\'s critical method will not contradict \nthis contention. \n\n\' Poetical Works, iv., 61. \n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII \n\nLOWELL: THE CRITIC AND HIS CRITICISM \n\nLOWELL\'S early critical works have already \nbeen discussed. They are worth bearing \nin mind as eminently characteristic of the mature \nLowell. They are discursive, generally vague \nwhen the question at issue becomes abstruse, and \nabound in purple patches. The qualities of the \npoets discussed are set down without any endeavor \nto mark their inter-relation or to trace them back \nto any radical characteristic. Poems are regarded \nfrom the standpoint of their effect on the reader, \nand that effect is translated into figurative lan- \nguage. In his Lectures on the English Poets, Lowell \nfollowed the same method. He translated his \nimpressions into simile and metaphor. He never \ngot at the ultimate answer to a difficult question. \nIn his first lecture he said: "The lecturer on \nscience has only to show how much he knows \xe2\x80\x94 the \nlecturer on poetry can only be sure how much he \nfeels." Here is the secret of Lowell\'s critical \nmethod. However uncertain he might be about \npenetrating to ultimate principles, he was sure of \n\n200 \n\n\n\nTHE CRITIC AND HIS CRITICISM 201 \n\nthe feelings which a poem aroused in him. His \nmethod in consequence was essentially sjibjective, \nbecause, after all, only a matter of impression. \nWhen he pointed out the various qualities of an \nauthor, he was still making use of his impressions, \nas in that clever jeu d\' esprit, A Fable for Critics. \nSuch a work as the Fable was peculiarly suitable \nto a man of Lowell\'s type of mind. For in it he \nwas not restrained by that conservatism which \nwas botmd to accept a classic with deference, nor \nby those particulars with which it fagged him to \ndeal, nor by the necessity of appealing to the \nprinciples of judgment in literature. He could \ngive a brilliant exhibition of critical pyrotechnics, \nand he did. But critical pyrotechnics is not \ncriticism. Lowell came to realize this and in his \nLectures on the English Poets, he tried to be better \nthan his creed. For he did not altogether content \nhimself with his impressions about poets and their \npoetry. His attempts at penetrating to ultimate \nprinciples were hardly successful or satisfying,\' \nbut they showed a tendency in the right direction. \nLowell was coming to realize that criticism, to \npossess vitality, must go deeper than the mere \nimpressions of the critic. \n\nBy the time he came to maturity in his critical \nessays, he could write : \n\nUnless we admit certain principles as fixed beyond \n^ E.g.y chap, i., called Definitions. \n\n\n\n202 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nquestion, we shall be able to render no adequate \njudgment, but only to record our impressions, which \nmay be valuable or not, according to the greater or \nless ductility of the senses on which they are made. ^ \n\nThis need not lead one astray; Lowell remained \nan impressionist. He reads a work through, \nmaking marginal notes as he goes along, realizes \na total impression and then sets to work. In his \ntypical essays he presents this total impression, \nthen the tale of his author\'s separate qualities, \nthen his total impression again as a summary. \nThis procedure explains in some degree the fre- \nquent inconsequence of his summary, which \nrarely is warranted in any strict sense by the array \nof qualities adduced. He is not blind to this \nhimself. He reads Dry den, gets his total impres- \nsion, which as usual seems broader than the aggre- \ngation of qualities would warrant, and confesses: \n^^ Yon feel that the whole of him was better than \nany random specimens, though of his best, seem \nto prove."\'\' He tries hard to give warrant to his \ngeneral impression, but finally contents himself \nwith an emphatic reaffirmation of it. \'\'It is \nhard," he says in Gray^ "to justify a general \nimpression by conclusive examples. Two in- \nstances will serve to point my meaning, if not \nwholly to justify my generalization. " ^ His atti- \n\n^ Works, iii., 29, written in 1868. \n\n\' Ibid., iii., 103. The italics are mine. \n\n3 Latest Literary Essays ^ p. 4. \n\n\n\nTHE CRITIC AND HIS CRITICISM 203 \n\ntude as an impressionist is evident in occa- \nsional statements of his own : He has "read through \nhis (Thoreau\'s) six volumes in the order of their \nproduction." He continues: \'\'I shall try to give \nan adequate report of their impression upon me \nboth as critic and as mere reader.\'"\'- In his sum- \nmary of Spenser he quotes three of the poet\'s \nstriking lines, prefacing his selection by the state- \nment that they \'\'best characterize the feeling his \npoetry gives us."\'\' \n\nNot being content merely with appreciation, \nLowell, as has been suggested, made various \nendeavors to go deeper ; it was when he attempted \n"to give a reason for the faith that was in him" \nthat his failure was most marked. His inability \nto handle at all adequately difficult or abstract \nquestions has already been referred to. They \nbear out the point that Lowell was a man of feeling \nrather than of thought. For they retreat from \nthe definite and specific and concrete into the \nlarge and figurative and vague. Speaking of \nShakespeare, to cite here but one new example, \nLowell says: His "moral is the moral of worldly \nwisdom only heightened to the level of his wide- \nviewing mind, and made typical by the dramatic \n\n^ Works, i., 369. The italics are mine. \n\n2 Ihid., iv., 352. The italics are mine. Cf. "In gathering up \nthe impressions made upon us by Mr. Masson\'s work," etc. \n{Works, iv., 86); also "I find a confirmation of this feeling about \nDryden," etc. {Works, iii., 123). \n\n\n\n204 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nenergy of his plastic nature."^ One is tempted \nto say of this as De Quincey said of Pope: His \n\'\'language does not realize the idea; it simply \nsuggests or hints it." The following passage, \nthough rather lengthy, is worth quoting. It is typi- \ncal and will repay analysis as indicative of several \nweaknesses in Lowell which have already been \ndiscussed. He has used the phrase \'\'imaginative \nunity," and now says: \n\nThe true ideal is not opposed to the real, nor is it \nany artificial heightening thereof, but lies in it, and \nblessed are the eyes that find it! It is the mens \ndivinior which hides within the actual, transfigur- \ning matter-of-fact into matter-of -meaning for him \nwho has the gift of second-sight. In this sense \nHogarth is often more truly ideal than Raphael, \nShakespeare often more truly so than the Greeks. I \nthink it is a more or less conscious perception of this \nideality, as it is a more or less well-grounded persua- \nsion of it as respects the Greeks, that assures to him \nas to them, and with equal justice, a permanent su- \npremacy over the minds of men. This gives to his \ncharacters their universality, to his thought its irradi- \nating property, while the artistic purpose running \nthrough and combining the endless variety of scene \nand character will alone account for his power of \ndramatic effect.* \n\nHow far does all this penetrate through the \n\n\' Works, iii., 324. \n\n* Ibid., iii., 66. Cf. also ibid., ii., 79, 99; iv., 284; iii., 92, etc. \n\n\n\nTHE CRITIC AND HIS CRITICISM 205 \n\nmist of words into the realm of ideas? To use \nMatthew Arnold\'s words in another connection, \nthey \'\'carry us really not a step farther than the \nproposition which they would interpret." It is \nnot easy to bring oneself to examine such passages \nof LoweU from a coldly analytic point of view. \nHe has such a generous flow of language that one \nis inclined to accept his words as surcharged with \nmeaning. On submitting them to examination \none seems to hear him say, "You see what I mean \n\xe2\x80\x94 or, at any rate, that I have a meaning, which is \nthe main thing." De Quincey\'s words on Pope \ncome to mind again, \'\'His language does not \nrealize the idea." This is but another phase of \nthat weakness which rims through all Lowell\'s \ncritical essays and which "keeps him amid sym- \nboHsm and illusion and the fringes of things." \nWe face here the same question which constantly \nconfronts us: What was this weakness? And \nalways one answer remains. \n\nIn saying that Lowell was an impressionist, one \nneed not deny that he had certain definite ideas \nabout poetry. Three he adhered to : poetry must \nbe interesting\'; it must possess the power of \nimaginative appeaP; it must have finish of ex- \npression or verbal style. ^ So far as Lowell \n\n^ Works, ii., 142. Cf. also ibid., ii., 134; Old English Dramatists, \npp. 19 and 20. \' Cf. Ibid., iii., 31, 32, 35; iv., 267. \n\n3 Cf. Ibid., iii., 15, 46, 335; iv., 308; vi., 107; Old English \nDramatists, p. 106. \n\n\n\n206 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\napplied these criteria at all, it was with no cer- \ntainty of method. Merope is impossible because \ndull.^ Most of Wordsworth\'s poetry will perish \nbecause it lacks style.\'\' No poetry possesses true \nvitality which does not "leap throbbing at touch \nof that shaping faculty, the imagination."^ For \nthe most part, however, Lowell relies upon the \nsoundness of his impression to assure him that a \nwork is excellent. That impression he then casts \nabout to justify. That this is his procedure is \nevident in general from a study of his essays and \nin particular from his tendency to shift his em- \nphasis from one poetical quality to another. In \nhis essay on Spenser, the "epicure of language," \nhe emphasizes diction to the point where he con- \nfesses that he lays himself open to the charge of \nover-stressing this single attribute. "^ In his essay \non Shakespeare whose "imagination is wonderful" \nhe declares that the "power of expression is sub- \nsidiary, and goes only a little way toward the \nmaking of a great poet. "^ Calderon, he declares, \nis "one of the most marvellous of poets, "^ indeed \n"a greater poet than Goethe, "^ but yet he cannot \n\n\' Works, ii., 134. \' Ibid,, iii., 35. 3 Ibid., iv., 267. \n\n4 Ibid., iv., 308. Cf. also iii., 335; vi., 107; Old English Drama- \ntists, p. 106. s Works, iii., 31. \n\n^ Letters, ii., 149. "I find a striking similarity between Faust, \nand this drama (Magico Prodigioso), and if I were to acknowledge \nColeridge\'s distinction, should say Goethe was the greatest phi- \nlosopher and Calderon the greatest poet." Letter of Shelley to \nJohn Gisborne, April 10, 1822. 7 Works, vi., 108. \n\n\n\nTHE CRITIC AND HIS CRITICISM 207 \n\ndecide whether the Spaniard\'s gift were imagi- \nnation or fancy. But what did it matter? He \nconsidered Calderdn a marvellous poet for all that. \nHis taste told him so ; the ultimate reason why did \nnot matter. Whether a poet was great because \nhis work was rich in style or imagination or interest \nwas of only secondary importance to Lowell. The \nprimary consideration with him was his impres- \nsion; to this he clung, however inadequate or \ncontradictory his reasons in its support. \n\nBefore saying the final word, it is worth while \nto take a glance at Lowell the critic from the view- \npoints we have occupied in studying him. He had \na wide knowledge, gained from school and college \nand legal studies, from the demands put upon \nhim in sanctum and classroom, from foreign \ntravel, intimate acquaintance with modern lan- \nguages, enormous reading, and friendship with \nmen of culture and learning. He was proficient \nin linguistics and held to illuminating principles \nregarding the vitality of language. In his knowl- \nedge of art and history, and in his sympathy for \nscience and classic art, he was deficient. While \ntowards literature his sympathy was broad enough \nto include almost all the greater classics of various \nlanguages, he was deficient in sympathy for the \nnineteenth century and regarded the fifteenth \nthroughout Europe as almost a literary desert. \nHis condemnation was evoked by sentiment alism, \nby the employment in poetry of Greek and medie- \n\n\n\n2o8 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nval themes, by modem-day realism. His interest \nin the drama and the novel was of the slightest. \nLowell seems honestly to have tried to preserve a \njudicial attitude towards the subjects of his \ncritical essays. Towards the greater classics, \nespecially Dante and Shakespeare, his attitude \nbecame one of frank encomium. He was subject \nto enthusiasms which often swept him into over- \nstatements of both praise and blame. When \nhis devotion to an author did not blind him to his \ndefects, he struck a fair balance of justice, not so \nmuch by maintaining a coolly impartial attitude \nas by swinging pendulum-wise between praise and \nblame. Lowell could never keep the personal \nequation in subjection. So far as taste belongs \nto penetration by being that faculty which does \nnot stamp as excellent a piece of literature which \nis poor, Lowell may be said to have possessed \npenetration. But his taste in recognizing an \nexcellent piece of Hterature was not so sound. \nConsiderations which should not have weighed \nwith him made him at times ignore or deny the \nmerit of certain works. In so far as penetration is \ninsight into the mind of an author or his art and \ninto the ultimate principles which stamp him as \nsui generis and explain him, Lowell was wanting. \nHis taste was intuitive. He had to trust it to \njustify him without the aid of radical principles. \nPorro unum est necessarium. The final gift whose \npresence, even despite his deficiencies, would \n\n\n\nTHE CRITIC AND HIS CRITICISM 209 \n\nhave made him a genuine critic of merit, stamps \nhim by its absence as merely an impressionist. \nWhat principles he had, became more or less \ndistorted when he endeavored to apply them; in- \ndeed they always had the air of being extemporized \nfor the particular case under discussion. That \npenetration which goes deep in a moment\'s flash, \nLowell displays on occasions. But the sudden \nrending of the veil seems as unexpected to him \nas to the reader. The knowledge which thus \nsuddenly opens to his gaze is not used to illumi- \nnate the whole man or his work ; the critic seems \nuncertain how to employ it and the benefit of \nthat swift inner glimpse is lost. It is not unjust to \nsay of Lowell that penetration with him was an \noccasional gift of such insight as comes at times to \nmost men of imaginative temperament ; it was not \na quality of mind. \n\nThe ultimate secret of Lowell\'s weakness did \nnot he, it is reasonable to maintain, in his own \npower to remedy. It belonged to his type of \nmind. That precision in detail which a classical \ntraining might be supposed to foster and whose \nimportance would be emphasized by the demands \nupon him as editor and professor, is for the most \npart wanting. That disregard of the unessential, \nthat closeness of reasoning, that penetration to \nultimate principles, all of which a course of legal \ntraining would inculcate in a mind receptive to \nsuch influence, left no perceptible traces on Lowell. \n\n\n\n2IO LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nHis course in law seems to have fulfilled no purpose \nexcept that of eqmpping him with legal phrases \nfor figurative use. Porro unum est necessarium. \nLowell lacked philosophical depth of mind, the \none thing so necessary that without it the total \nof his other endowments was inadequate. \n\nOne difficulty remains: if this contention is \ntrue, how are we to account for Lowell\'s high place \nas a critic? Without going into a history of \nAmerican criticism, it is fair to say that, with \nthe exception of Lowell, only three critics among \nhis predecessors or contemporaries demand con- \nsideration, Poe, Reed, and Whipple. Reed\'s \nlife ended while he was still a young man. Though \nhis work indeed shows poise and though tfulness, he \nbetrays a tendency to value literature for its \nmoral rather than for its aesthetic value. He lacks \nthe buoyancy which went so far to make Lowell \nreadable. Whipple is inclined to be heavy-footed; \nthere is no sparkle in his pages. He has a cer- \ntainty of tone, born doubtless of his success on the \nplatform, which is not justified by the precarious- \nness of his judgments. Poe deserves a study by \nhimself. He had many of the essential gifts of an \nexcellent critic, but was unfortunate enough to \nbecome involved in literary bickerings, and to \n"give up to party what was meant for mankind. " \nMuch of his work was ephemera critica; it perished \nwith the writings which evoked it. Lowell \nentered the field, and with the prestige which \n\n\n\nTHE CRITIC AND HIS CRITICISM 211 \n\nbelonged to him as a poet and as the academic \nsuccessor of Ticknor and Longfellow, wrote of the \nmasters of Hterature. Something of the buoyancy \nand verve of the man clung to his work. Here \nwere a wealth of allusion, a heightened rhetoric, \na pregnant homeliness of illustration, and yet \nwithal something of the air of the Edinburgh and \nthe Quarterly domesticated in America. These \ncritiques seemed to join the literary traditions of \npolished old England on the one hand to the eager \nyearning for culture of crude New England on the \nother. Here was a critic, it was thought, and a \npoet and professor as well, who might match lances \nwith the critics over-seas. New England itself, Bos- \nton, was the centre of Hterary America in Lowell\'s \ntime, and the leaders in its literary ascendancy \nwere his friends. Who was there to undertake \nthe ungracious business of pointing out weak- \nnesses in his critical work?\' Men who came in \ndirect contact with him seem to have found him \nbrilliant and charming in his mood. It is not \nhard to believe that the sparkling cleverness of \nLowell and the range of allusion made possible by \nhis enormous reading and retentive memory, \nastonished as well as dehghted the men with whom \nhe came closely in contact ; that their admiration \nled them not only to attribute to him a depth of \nmind which he did not possess, but also perhaps to \n\n^ Severely critical articles appeared in Scrihner\'s Monthly , iv., \n75\xc2\xbb 227, 339, and in Lippincott\'s for June, 1871. \n\n\n\n212 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nbelieve they found evidences of it in his critical \nessays. To doubt it indeed might well seem \nheresy. Men of a younger generation, no less \nthan of his own, came to know Lowell on familiar \nterms and to their writings regarding him rather \nthan to those of his immediate contemporaries, is \ndue the maintenance of the Lowell tradition. \n\nIt has been said already that it is not easy to \nprobe into the weaknesses of a critic who has \nachieved so many quotable phrases. Remember- \ning them one is almost disarmed. But this quota- \nbility, what of it? To read the more recent \nworks in which reference is made to Lowell, makes \none fact striking: Lowell\'s dicta are introduced, \nnot because they are surcharged with a pregnancy \nwhich makes them an open sesame to an author\'s \nmind or art ; not because they contain a luminous \ndefinition which makes the elusive more nearly \ntangible, or crystallizes what lurks too often in \nthe realm of feeling ; not, in a word, for any intrinsic \nmerit they possess as criticism in a high degree, \nbut mainly for their quotability. \' Quotability \ndoes not prove Lowell a great critic any more than \nit proves Pope a great poet. If it were taken \nas a test, Lowell might sit next to Coleridge, and \nPope to Shakespeare. \n\n^ "Mere vividness of expression, such as makes quotable \npassages, comes of the complete surrender of self to the impres- \nsion, whether spiritual or sensual, of the moment. " Lowell\'s \nWorks ^ iii., 31. \n\n\n\nTHE CRITIC AND HIS CRITICISM 213 \n\nCan Lowell grapple with principles like Cole- \nridge? Or interpret with steady lucidity and \nconsistence like Hazlitt? Or give one that pecul- \niar flash of insight by which Lamb illumined an \nauthor not for a moment but abidingly? Can \nhe penetrate a problem in the psychology of liter- \nature, like De Quincey in Knocking at the Gate in \nMacbeth, or achieve a pregnant distinction, like \nthat between the literature of knowledge and the \nliterature of power? Can he apply a wide-reach- \ning principle of human significance like Carlyle, \nwho by fitting the Johnson-Boswell relation to \nhero-worship, revolutionized forever the world\'s \nopinion of Bos well? Has he given us criteria \nbroad enough for general application, like Arnold \nin his description of the grand style and his defi- \nnition of poetry? Has he a command of principles \nlike Hutton, whose ethical and aesthetic notions \nwere not constantly at the grapple? Has he, in a \nword, given us principles of wide appHcation, \nwhich may be applied consistently and which \nstimulate the reader to expand and to modify \nthem, thus eventually arriving at permanent \ncriteria for himself? \n\nIt may be objected that such comparisons and \nsuch demands are unfair to Lowell ; that one ought \nto accept him for what he is. It is the piirpose \nof this study to endeavor to appraise him for what \nhe is and candidly to inquire whether he belongs \nto the ranks of critics. No conclusions which aim \n\n\n\n214 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nto state the real truth about Lowell are unfair. \nHe has been regarded as a critic ; in such a light he \nseems seriously to have regarded himself. But to \nassign him such a rank is to do him the injustice \nof over-estimation. If he would claim kinship \nwith Ulysses, let him prove his metal by bending \nthe hero\'s bow. \n\nIf Lowell is to survive, it must be frankly as an \nimpressionist. For so far as criticism approaches \na science, so far as it depends to any serious extent \non ultimate principles, so far, in a word, as it is \nsomething more fundamental and abiding than \nthe ipse dixit of an appreciator, Lowell is not a \ncritic. \n\n\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY \n\nArnold, M. Celtic Literature and On Translating Homer, New \n\nYork, 1883. \n\nDiscourses in America, New York, 1894. \n\nEssays in Criticism (First and Second Series), New York, \n\n1891. \nBeers, H. A. History of Eighteenth Century Romanticism, \n\nNew York, 1899. \n\nHistory of Nineteenth Century Romanticism, New York, 1901. \n\nPoints at Issue, New York, 1904. \n\nBremer, Fredrika.. Homes of the New World, 3 vols. (tr. Mary \n\nHowitt), London, 1853. \nBrooke, S. A. English Literature, New York and London, 1899. \nBrownell, W. C. American Prose Masters, New York, 1909. \nBruneti^re, F. Essays in French Literature (tr. D. N. Smith), \n\nLondon, 1898. \nBurton, R. Literary Leaders of America, Boston, 1904. \nCarlyle, T. Works. Cent. Mem. Ed., Boston, 1899. \nCheney, J. V. That Dome in Air, Chicago, 1895. \nColeridge, S. T. Works, New York, 1871. \nCooke, G. W. Bibliography of James Russell Lowell, Boston and \n\nNew York, 1906. \n\n-Poets of Transcendentalism, Boston and New York, 1903. \n\nCross, W. L. Development of the English Novel, New York, 1899. \n\nCurtis, G. W. James Russell Lowell, New York, 1893. \n\nDe Quincey, T. The Eighteenth Century, New York, 1878. \n\nLiterary Criticism, New York, 1878. \n\nDowden, E. Studies in Literature, London, 1878. \nEmerson, R. W. Works, Boston and New York, 1903. \nFedern, K. Dante and His Times, New York, 1902. \n\n215 \n\n\n\n2i6 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nFrothingham, O. B. Transcendentalism in New England, New \n\nYork, 1876. \nGreenslet, F. James Russell Lowell, Boston and New York, \n\n1905. \nHale, E, E. James Russell Lowell and His Friends, Boston and \n\nNew York, 1899. \nHale, E. E., Jr. James Russell Lowell, Boston, 1899. \nHazlitt, W. Works, London and New York, 1902-04. \nHo WELLS, W. D. Literary Friends and Acquaintance, New \n\nYork, 1900. \nHuTTON, H. H. Essays in Literary Criticism, Philadelphia, \n\n1876. \nJames, H. Essays in London, New York, 1893. \nLamb, C. Critical Essays, London and New York, 1903. \nSpecimens of Dramatic Poets, 2 vols. , London and New \n\nYork, 1903. \nLawton, W. C. The New England Poets, New York, 1 898. \nLongfellow, H. W. Hyperion, Boston and New York, 1899. \nLowell, J. R. American Ideas for English Readers. \n\nClass Poem, Cambridge, 1838. \n\nConversations on Some of the Old Poets, Cambridge, 1845. \n\nEarly Writings, London and New York, 1902. \n\nImpressions of Spain (Compiled by J. B. Gilder), Boston \n\nand New York, 1899. \n\nLast Poems, Boston and New York, 1895. \n\nLatest Literary Essays, Boston and New York, 1892. \n\nLectures on the English Poets, Cleveland, 1897. \n\nLetters, 2 vols., New York, 1894. \n\nMemoir of Shelley, prefixed to Poetical Works of Shelley, \n\nBoston, 1857. \n\nOld English Dramatists, Boston and New York, 1892. \n\nPoetical Works, 4 vols., Boston and New York, 1890. \n\nProse Works, 6 vols., Boston and New York, 1896. \n\nThe Round Table, Boston, 1913. \n\nLowell, Maria. Poems, Cambridge, 1855. \n\nMacaulay, T. B. Essays, Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous, \n\n6 vols., New York, 1864. \nMarch, G. P. Lectures on the English Language, 4th ed., New \n\nYork and London, 1863. \n\n\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY 217 \n\nMeynell, Alice. Rhythm of Life, London, 1893. \n\nNiCHOL, J. American Literature, Edinburgh, 1898. \n\nOssiLi, M. F. Art, Literature, and the Drama, Boston, 1874. \n\nPater, W. Appreciations, New York and London, 1895. \n\nPayne, W. M. The Book of American Literary Criticism, New \n\nYork and London, 1904. \nPoE, E. A. Works, London, 1884. \nReed, H. Lectures on British Poets, London, 1863. \nRichardson, C. F. American Literature, 2 vols., New York and \n\nLondon, 1887. \nRobertson, J. M. New Essays toward a Critical Method, \n\nLondon, 1897. \nSainte-Beuve, C. a. Causeries du Lundi, Paris, 1850. \nSaintsbury, G. History of Criticism, 3 vols., Edinburgh and \n\nLondon, 1900-04. \nScuDDER, H. E. James Russell Lowell, Boston and New York, \n\n1901. \nShelley, P. B. Defense of Poetry (Ed. A. S. Cook), Boston, \n\n1903. \nSpingarn, J. E. Literary Criticism of the Renaissance, New \n\nYork and London, 1899. \nStedman, E. C. Poets of America, Boston and New York, \n\n1885. \nStuart, G. Essays from Reviews, Quebec, 1892. \nSwinburne, A. C. Essays and Studies, London, 1875. \nTaylor, B. Critical Essays, New York, 1880. \nThoreau, H. Walden, 2 vols., Boston and New York, \n\n1897. \nTrent, W. T. American Literature, New York, 1903. \nUnderwood, F. H. James Russell Lowell, Boston, 1882. \n\nJames Russell Lowell, Poet and Man, Boston, 1893. \n\nWatson, W. Excursions in Criticism, London and New York, \n\n1893. \nWendell, B. Literary History of America, New York, 1900. \n\nStelligeri, New York, 1893. \n\nWhipple, E. P. Outlooks on Society, Literature, and Politics, \n\nBoston, 1898. \nWilkinson, W. C. A Free Lance, New York, 1874. \nWoodberry, G. E. Makers of Literature, New York, 1900. \n\n\n\n21 8 LOWELL AS A CRITIC \n\nWordsworth, W. Literary Criticism, London, 1905. \n\nAcademy, 7: 271. \n\n40: 155. \n\nAndover Review, 16: 294. \nAthenceum, \'91, 2: 257. \nAtlantic Monthly, 90: 862. \nBlackwood\'s, 150: 454. \nCalifornia University Chronicle, 8: 352. \nCatholic World, 23: 14. \nChautauqua, 16: 554. \nContemporary Review, 60: 477. \nCritic, 16: 91. \n\n19: 82, 92, 291. \n\nCurrent Literature, 42: 410. \n\nDial, 45: 157. \n\nEclectic Magazine, 2>\'2\\ ^10. \n\nEdinburgh Review, 174: 377* \n\nFortnightly Review, 44: 79. \n\nForum, 12: 141. \n\nGentlemen\'s Magazine, 249: 464, 544. \n\nHarper\'s, 86: 846. \n\nInternational Review, 4: 264. \n\nLippincotfs, 7: 641. \n\n50:534 \n\n56:717 \n\n62: 252. \n\nLiterary World, 16:217, 225. \n\n22: 290. \n\nLiving Age, 195: 416. \nNation, 10: 258. \n\n12: 128. \n\nNineteenth Century, 17: 988. \n\nNorth American Review, 153: 460. \n\nNorth British Review, 46: 472. \n\nPublication of Modern Language Ass\'n of America, Vol. VII \n\nReview of Reviews, 4: 291. \n\nSaturday Review, 72: 53\xc2\xbb 180. \n\n73:255- \n\n\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY 219 \n\nScribner^s, 15: 186. \nSpectator, 58: 744. \n\n66:693. \n\n67:215. \n\nUnitarian Review, 36: 436. \n\nNote: An extensive bibliography of articles by Lowell, only \nsome of which have been republished (in the Round Table, \nBoston, 1 9 13), is given in the appendix to Scudder\'s biography \nof Lowell. \n\n\n\nINDEX \n\n\n\nA \n\n\n\nAbra, Prior\'s, 67 \n\nA h sal om and A chitophel, \n\nDryden\'s, 55, 145 \nAddison, Joseph, 56, 180 \n^Ifric, 182 \n^schylus, 44, 45, 96 \nAgamemnon, Browning\'s, 91 \nAgassiz, Louis, 39 \nAmong My Books, Lowell\'s 25 \nAngelo, Michael, 50, 74 \nAnne, Queen, 71 \nAnnus Mtrabilis, Dry den\'s, \n\n153 \n\nAnthologia Graeca, 42 \n\nAnti-Slavery Standard, 15 \n\nAntony and Cleopatra, 127 \n\nAriel (in Tempest), 189 \n\nAriosto, 79 \n\nAristophanes, 44, 45 \n\nAristotle, 43, 82 \n\nArnold, Matthew, 93, no, 148, \n149, 155. 156, 157, 160, 161, \n162, 205, 213 \n\nArnolfo, 83 \n\n"Assumption," (of Titian), 74 \n\nAstrcea Redux, Dryden\'s, 153 \n\nAtalanta in Calydon, Swin- \nburne\'s, 92, 170 \n\nAtlantic Monthly, 23, 24, 30, \n37 \n\nAurora Leigh, Browning\'s, 100 \n\nAusten, Jane, 169 \n\nB \n\nBallads, 19 \nBallads, Percy\'s, 56 \n\n\n\nBalzac, Honore, 53, 99 \n"Band, The," 5, 17 \nBarbour, John, 54 \nBarnfield, Richard, 67 \nBeatrice (in Divina Commedia), \n\n113, 154, 179 \nBeauclerc, Topham, 117 \nBeaumont and Fletcher, 64, \n\n95 \n\nBeers, H. A., 194 \n\nBells and Pomegranates, \nBrowning\'s, 90 \n\nBernard, Charles de, 53, 99 \n\nBemers, Baron (translator of \nFroissart), 165 \n\nBiglow Papers, Lowell\'s, 15, 16, \n24, 37, 64 . ^ , \n\nBiographia Literana, Cole- \nridge\'s, 87 \n\nBirds, Aristophanes\', 96 \n\nBlackstone\'s Commentaries, 4 \n\nBlaine, James G., 27 \n\nBoccaccio, Giovanni, 50, 77 \n\n79, 113 \n\nBoileau, Nicolas, 42, 58 \nBonstetten, Charles Victor de, \n\n160, 186 \nBooks and Libraries, Lowell\'s, \n\n97 \nBoston Courier, 15 \nBoston Miscellany, 8, 11, 12, \n\n13,30, 31, III, 140 \nBoswell, James, 33, 213 \nBothie, Clough\'s, 89 \nBremer, Frederika, 178 \nBriggs, Charles F., 14, 17, \n\n158 \nBright, John, 29 \nBroadway Journal, 14 \n\n\n\n221 \n\n\n\n222 \n\n\n\nINDEX \n\n\n\nBrowning, E. B., loo \nBrowning, Robert, 90, 91, 93 \nBrunelleschi, Filippo, 83 \nBryant, William Cullen, 16 \nBunyan, John, 60, 182 \nBurke, Edmund, 103, 117, \n\n121, 182, 183 \nBurlington, Lord, 181 \nBurns, Robert, 112, 190 \nButler, Samuel, 19 \nByron, Lord, 35, 52, 87, 88, \n\n112, 190 \n\n\n\nCalderon de la Barca, 51, 78, \n100, 141, 206, 207 \n\nCaliban (in Tempest), 189 \n\nCambridge Thirty Years Ago, \nLowell\'s, 3 \n\nCambridge University, 26, 27, \n68, 96 \n\nCanovas del Castillo, 158 \n\nCanzoni, Dante\'s, 82 \n\nCarlyle, Thomas, 4, 53, 61, 62, \n71, 80, 103, 123, 125, 127, \n133, 141, 142, 143, 155. I59\xc2\xbb \n167, 179, 189, 213 \n\nCathedral, Lowell\'s, 73, 194 \n\nCatullus, 46 \n\nCavalcanti, Guido, 155 \n\nCenci, Shelley\'s, 104 \n\nCentury Magazine, 93 \n\nCervantes, 29, 51, 78 \n\nChamberlain, Joseph, 29 \n\nChansons de Geste, 132 \n\nChapman, George, 8, 11, 138 \n\nCharles II., 69, 153 \n\nChastelard, Swinburne\'s, 92 \n\nChateaubriand, Viscount, loi \n\nChaucer, Geoffrey, 11, 19, 20, \n45, 49, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, \n66, 68, 78, 81, 83, 85, 112, \n113, 127, 130, 132, 137, \n140, 141, 142, 146, 151, \n152, 162, 163, 164, 165, \n166, 169, 170, 181 \n\n\n\nChaucer, Lowell\'s, 69, 130, \n\n132, 171 \nCicero, 63 \nCid, The, 27, 98 \nCimabue, Giovanni, 83 \nCinna, Corneille\'s, 49 \nClaude Lorrain, 74 \nClough, A. H., 89, 93 \nColeridge, Samuel Taylor, 29, \n\n59, 60, 61, 87, 107, 163, 212, \n\n213 \nColeridge, Lowell\'s, 168 \nCollier, Jeremy, 114 \nCollins, William, 13 \nConfessio Amantis, Gower\'s, \n\n105 \nConfessions of Rousseau, 120 \nCongreve, William, 95 \nConversations on Some of the \n\nOld Poets, Lowell\'s, 11, 12, \n\n13, 19, 30, 31, 88, III, 122, \n\n127, 140 \nConvito, Dante\'s, 82, 154 \nCooper, James, F., 16, 97 \nCorneille, Pierre, 49, 63, 79, \n\n153 \n\nCowley, Abraham, 60, 153 \nCowper, William, 13 \nCriseyde (in T roil us and \n\nCriseyde), 141 \nCromwell, Oliver, 69, 153 \nCurtis, George William, 39 \nCvnewulf, 182 \n\n\n\nD \n\n\n\nDane Law School, 4 \n\nDaniel, Samuel, 54 \n\nDante, 23, 35, 47, 49, 50, 52, \n71, 74, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, \n83, 85, 92, 96, 113, 129, \n130, 141, 146, 151, 153, \n154, 155, 179, 208 \n\nDante, Lowell\'s, 78, 130, 131, \n\n153 \nDavid Copperfield, Dickens\', \n\n97, 98, 169 \nDecameron, Boccaccio s, 50 \n\n\n\nINDEX \n\n\n\n223 \n\n\n\nDekker, Thomas, 66 \nDemocracy, Lowell on, 39 \nDe Monarchia, Dante\'s, 82 \nDenis, John, 123 \nDe Qiiincey, Thomas, 60, 204, \n\n205, 213 \nDe Vulgari Eloquio, Dante\'s, \n\n82, 154 \nDickens, Charles, 97, 98, 169 \nDigby, Lady Venetia, 75 \nDigby, Sir Kenelm, 75 \nDilke, Charles, 29 \nDivina Commedia, Dante\'s, \n\n82, 129, 137, 154 \nDodsley, Robert, 56 \nDonne, John, 66 \nDon Quixote, Cervantes\', 23, \n\n27, 29, 50, 98 \nDon Sebastian, Dryden\'s, 63 \nDorothea (in James IV.), \n\n142 \nDouble Marriage, Beaumont \n\nand Fletcher\'s, 64 \nDouglas, Gawain, 54 \nDrake, Sir Francis, 68 \nDramatists of the Restoration, \n\nAlacaulay\'s, 69 \nDrayton, Michael, 54 \nDryden, John, 49, 52, 55, 56, \n\n58, 59, 63, 64, 65, 69, 80, \n\n81,84,85,97, 114, 133, 140, \n\n144, 145, 150, 151, 153, \n\n169, 177, 202 \nDryden, Lowell\'s, 57, 69, 95, \n\n132, 144, 150, 153 \nDunbar, Battle of, 69 \nDunbar, WiUiam, 54 \nDunciad, Pope\'s, 86, 100 \nDunlop, Frances, 22, 36 \nDiirer, Albert, 74 \nDuty, Wordsworth\'s, 141 \nDwight, Timothy, 13 \n\n\n\nE \n\n\n\nEarly Writings, Lowell\'s, 12 \n"Edelmann Storg, " 3 \n\n\n\nEliot, George, 98, 169 \nElizabethans, 66, 88, 90, 95, \n\n127 \nEHzabethan Dramatists, 8, 9, \n\n12, 30, 140, 169, 172, 182 \nElizabethan England, 68 \nElizabethan Stage, 57 \nElizabeth, Queen, 68 \nEmerson, R. W., 3, 4, 6, 16, \n\n23, 38, 39, 93, 125, 167 \nEndymion, Keats\', 103, 157 \nEssay on Criticism, Pope\'s, \n\n86 \nEssay on Man, Pope\'s, 86 \nEucHd, 146 \n\nEuripides, 45, 47, 96, 100 \nExcursion, Wordsworth\'s, 13 \n\n\n\nFable for Critics, A, Lowell\'s, \n10, 15, 16, 201 \n\nFaery Queen, Spenser\'s, 3, 131 \n\nFalkland, Viscount, 69 \n\nFalstaff (in He^iry IV.), 67, \n98 \n\nFerdinand (in Tempest), 189 \n\nFielding, Henry, 29, 56, 96, \n99, 100, 168, 169, 186 \n\nFielding, Lowell\'s, 97, 116, \n168 \n\nFields, James, T., 22, 24 \n\nFletcher, John, 64, 95 \n\nFord, John, 8, 11, 31, 103 \n\nForster, John, 179, \n\nFrancesca (i n Divina Com- \nmedia), 130, 179 \n\nFrancis, St. (of Assisi), 71 \n\nFrederick the Great, 71, 75, \n\n124, 143 \n\nFreeman, see under Penn- \nsylvania \n\nFrench Revolution, Carlyle\'s, \n\nFriar Bacon, Greene s, 141 \nFrobisher, Sir Martin, 68 \nFuller, Margaret, 10, 15 \n\n\n\n224 \n\n\n\nINDEX \n\n\n\nGascoigne, George, 54, 104, \n\n176 \nGhiberti, Lorenzo, 83 \nGiotto, 83 \nGlobe Theatre, 68 \nGoethe, J. W., 48, 52, 53. 79, \n\n112, lyg, 181, 190, 206 \nGoldsmith, Oliver, 13, 56 \nGower, John, 54, 105, 177 \nGray, Thomas, 56, 90, 158, \n\n160, 161, 195, 196, 197 \nGray, Lowell\'s, 56, 134, 176, \n\n202 \nGreene, Robert, 105, 141 \nGreenslet, F., 4 \n\n\n\nH \n\n\n\nHakluyt, Richard {Voyages), \n\n42 \nHalliwell, J. O., 68, 177 \nHamlet, 174 \nHamlet, 108, 128, 174 \nHarvardiana, 3 \nHarvard University, 3, 27, 37, \n\n42,50 \nHawthorne, Nathaniel, 16 \nHayes, R. B., 27 \nHazlitt, W. C., 67, 68, no, \n\n178 \nHazlitt, William, 60, 213 \nHeath, J. F., 7 \nHeine, H., 48 \nHenry Esmond, Thackeray\'s, \n\n97 \nHerbert, George, 13 \nHeywood, Thomas, 67 \nHigginson, Thomas Went- \n\nworth, 3 \nHind and Panther, Dry den\'s, \n\n145 \nHolmes, O. W., 15, 16, 23, 158 \nHomer, 43, 45, 67, 77, 96 \nHopkins, John, 105 \nHorace, 46, 78 \nHoughton, Lord, 156 \n\n\n\nHowells, W. D., 23, 98, 99 \nHughes, Thomas, 26 \nHugo, Victor, 53 \nHume, David, 42 \nHutton, R, H., 146, 147, 148, \n149, 213 \n\n\n\nIbsen, Henrik, 99 \n\nIdylls of the King, Tennyson\'s, \n\n90, 104, 171 \nIliad, 45, 100, 132 \nImpressions of Spain, Lowell\'s, \n\n158 \nInnocent III., 71 \nIntimations of Immortality, \n\nWordsworth\'s, 141 \nIphigenie, Goethe\'s, 52 \nIrving, Washington, 27 \nIsabella, Keats\', 104 \nIvanhoe, Scott\'s, 171 \n\n\n\nJames, Henry, 98 \n\nJames IV., Greene\'s, 105, 141 \n\nJane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte\'s, \n\n98 \nJane Shore, Rowe\'s, 95 \nJohn of Northampton, 113 \nJohnson, Life of, Boswell\'s, \n\n33 \nJohnson, Samuel, 62, 117, 121, \n182, 213 \n\n\n\nK \n\n\n\nKeats, George, 156 \n\nKeats, John, 52, 53, 59, 87, \n\n139, 141, 146, 155, 156, 157. \n170 \n\nKeats, Lowell\'s, 57, 87, 157 \n\nKent\'s Commentaries, 5 \n\nKipling, Rudyard, 33 \n\nKnocking at the Gate in Mac- \nbeth, De Quincey\'s, 213 \n\n\n\nINDEX \n\n\n\n225 \n\n\n\nLamb, Charles, 60, 213 \nLandor, W. S., 53, 93, 94, 103, \n\n178 \nLangland, William, 54 \nLaodamia, Wordsworth\'s, 104, \n\n141 \nLaura (Petrarch\'s), 109 \nLear, 20, 67 \nLeaves from my Journal, \n\nLowell\'s, 3 \nLectures on the English Poets, \n\nLowell\'s, 21, 200, 201 \nLegend of Brittany, Lowell\'s, \n\n103 \nLessing, G. E., 62, 79, 81, 175, \n\n178, 179 \nLessing, Lowell\'s, 161 \nLibrary of Old Authors, 64, 66, \n\n109 \nLimberham, Dryden\'s, 58, 114 \nLiterary Friends and Acquaint- \nance, Howell\'s, 38 \nLondon Daily News, 15 \nLongfellow, H. W.,21, 23, \n\n78, 104,211 \nLowell, Blanche, 14 \nLowell Institute, 18, 30, in \nLowell, Maria, 18 (see also \n\nWhite, Maria) \nLowell, Mrs. Charles, 2, 33 \nLowell, Rebecca, 10 \nLowell, Rev, Charles, i, 2, 33 \nLucan, 46, 47 \nLucretius, 46, 78 \nLyrical Ballads, Wordsworth\'s, \n\n59 \n\nM \n\nMacaulay, Thomas B., 11, 67, \n\n69, 73,\' loi \nMaid\'s Tragedy, Beaumont \n\nand Fletcher\'s, 1 72 \nMalebolge (Inferno), 155 \nMalherbe, Francois de, 28 \nMansfield Park, Austen\'s, 97 \n\n\n\nMarie de France, 49 \nMarlborough, Duke of, 71 \nMarston, Halliwell\'s, 177 \nMarston Moor, Battle of, 69 \nMassinger, Philip, 8 \nMasson, David, 55, 66, 68, 69, \n\n109 \nMaud, Tennyson\'s, 90 \nMaximilian, Emperor, 75 \nMercedes, Queen, 28 \nMeredith, George, 98 \nMerope, Arnold\'s, 93, 170, 206 \nMetrical Romances, 19 \nMiddlemarch, Eliot\'s, 169 \nMidsummer Night\'s Dream, \n\nShakespeare\'s, 95, 127 \nMilton, John, 13, 19, 42, 52, \n\n53, 55, 56, 59, 66, 69, 70, 71, \n\n77,84,85,108, 109,130, 131, \n\n132, 136, 141, 153, 186, 193 \nMiranda (in Tempest), 189 \nMitchell, S. Weir, 33 \nModern Italian Literature, \n\nHowell\'s, 98 \nMoliere, 44 \n\nMontaigne, 63, 139, 183 \nMontrose, Marquis of, 69 \nMontgomery, Macaulay \'s, loi \nMoore, Thomas, loi, 117, ii8, \n\n182 \nMoosehead Journal, Lowell\'s, \n\n196 \nMoral Essays, Pope\'s, 86 \nMorris, William, 91 \nMotley, John L. 27 \nMy Study Windows, Lowell\'s, \n\n25 \n\n\n\nN \n\n\n\nNapoleon, 72, 146 \n\nNation, 179 \n\nNewcomes, Thackeray\'s, 169 \n\nNewman, J. H., 112 \n\nNew Testament (Tyndale\'s), \n\n165 \nNew Way to Pay Old Debts, \nMassinger\'s, 172 \n\n\n\n226 \n\n\n\nINDEX \n\n\n\nNicholas, Sir Harris, 1 13 \nNooning, The, Lowell\'s, 17, \n\n37 \nNorth American Review, 24, \n\n^25. 37, 48, 86, 98 \nNorton, Charles E., 24, 46, 50, \n\n73, 78, 106 \nNovum Organon, Bacon\'s, 108 \n\n\n\nOdyssey, 45, 100 \n\nOld English Dramatists, \n\nLowell\'s, 30, 140 \nOld Plays, Dodsley\'s, 56 \nOld Wives\' Tale, Peele\'s, 105 \nOur Own, Lowell\'s, 40 \nOvid, 46, 47, 78, 96 \nOxford University, 26, 29, 68 \n\n\n\nPamela, Richardson\'s, 96 \n\nPeele, George, 105 \n\nPennsylvania Freeman, 13, 14 \n\nPercival, loi \n\nPercy, Bishop Thomas, 56 \n\nPeter Bell, Wordsworth\'s, 61 \n\nPetrarch, 35, 50, 77, 79, 96, \n102, 109 \n\nPhelps, Edward J., 30 \n\nPierce, Franklin, 158 \n\nPilgrim\'s Progress, Bunyan\'s, \n60 \n\nPioneer, The, 9, 13 \n\nPisani, 83 \n\nPlain Dealer, Wycherly\'s, 95 \n\nPlato, 43 \n\nPoe, Edgar Allan, 16, 38, 210 \n\nPope, Alexander, 2, 12, 19, \n49, 52, 55, 56, 58, 77, 80, \n86,87,95, 100, 115, 121, 122, \n123, 127, 133, 169, 180, \n182, 204, 205, 212 \n\nPope, Lowell\'s, 58, 85, 121, \n\n133, 138 \nPrefaces, Wordsworth\'s, 59 \n"Presentation of the Virgin," \n\nTitian\'s, 74 \n\n\n\nPretender (James Francis \n\nEdward Stuart), 70, 71 \nPride and Prejudice, Austen\'s, \n\n97 \n\nPrimrose, Dr. (in Vicar of \n\nWakefield), 2 \nPrincess, Tennyson\'s, 89 \nProgress of the World, Lowell\'s, \n\n72 \nProspero (in Tempest), 61, 189 \nPutnam\'s Magazine, 40, 158 \nPutnam, Mr., 6 \n\n\n\nRacine, 79 \n\nRape of the Lock, Pope\'s, 86, \n122, 127, 133 \n\nRecent Italian Comedy, How- \nell\'s, 98 \n\nReed, Henry, 210 \n\nRelapse, Vanbrugh\'s, 58 \n\nRenaissance, 43 \n\nRestoration, 58, 70, 71, 95 \n\nRestoration Comedy, 169 \n\nReview of American Literature, \nFuller\'s, 10, 15 \n\nRichard II, Shakespeare\'s, 197 \n\nRichardson, Samuel, 96, 168, \n169 \n\nRichter, Jean Paul, 48 \n\nRoman de la Rose, 49 \n\nRomeo (in Romeo and Juliet) , 68 \n\nRossetti, D. G., 92 \n\nRousseau, J. J., 49, 62, 79, 81, \n88, loi, 103, 115, 117, 118, \n119, 120, 121, 123, 125, 142, \n159, 160, 168, 179, 181, 182, \n190 \n\nRousseau, Lowell\'s, 96, 119, \n133, 159, 168 \n\n\n\nSaint Andrews, University of, \n\n29 \nSainte-Beuve, 49, 53, 134, 135. \n\n151, 152, 153, 155, 160, \n\n180 \n\n\n\nINDEX \n\n\n\n227 \n\n\n\nSamson Agonistes, Milton\'s, \n\n52 \nSatires, Pope\'s, 86 \n"Saturday Club," 23 \nSavage, Richard, 117, 182 \nSchiller, Johanti von, 48, 163 \nSchool for Scandal, Sheridan\'s, \n\n95 \n\nScott, Sir Walter, 33, 42, 97, \n169, 171 \n\nScudder, Horace, 97 \n\nShakespeare, 12, 31, 43, 44, 45, \n51,52, 53,54, 55,56,57,58, \n60, 61, 66,67, 74,75,77, 78, \n79, 81, 84, 85, 96, 108, 114, \n118,126, 127, 128, 129, 140, \n141, 142, 153, 162, 163, 164, \n169,172, 177, 183, 190, 191, \n192, 203, 206, 208, 212 \n\nShakespeare, Lowell\'s, 61, 68, \n69,95, 131, 132, 151, 189 \n\nShelley, P. B., 88, 112 \n\nSheridan, R. B., 95 \n\nShe Stoops to Conquer, Gold- \nsmith\'s, 95 \n\nShylock (in Merchant of Ven- \nice), 68 \n\nSidney, Algernon, 70, 71 \n\nSidney, Sir Philip, 54 \n\nSilent Woman, Jonson\'s, 172 \n\nSir Launfal, Lowell\'s, 103 \n\nSkelton, John, 175 \n\nSmollett, Tobias, 42 \n\nSong of Roland, 132 \n\nSophocles, 45 \n\nSordello, Browning\'s, 90 \n\nSouthey, Robert, 42 \n\nSpence family, i \n\nSpens, Sir Patrick, i \n\nSpenser, Edmund, 3, 19, 40, \n54, 55, 56, 60, 84, 85, III, \n130, 131, 133, 137. 140, 141, \n150, 163, 169, 203, 206 \n\nSpenser, Lowell\'s, 150 \n\nSpinoza, 82 \n\nStael, Mme. de, 13 \n\nSt. Cecelia\'s Day, Dryden\'s \n145 \n\n\n\nStephano (in Tempest), 180 \nSterne, Laurence, 56, 107 \nStemhold, Thomas, 105 \nStewart, Dugald, i \nStillman, W. J., 19 \nStory, W. W., 3 \nStrabo, 112 \n\nStuart, James, see Pretender \nSurrey, Earl of, 54, 104 \nSwift, Forster\'s, 179 \nSwift, Jonathan, 100, 123, 179 \nSwinburne, A. C., 53, 92, 100, \n103 \n\n\n\nTacitus, 46 \n\nTasso, 35, 79 \n\nTempest, Shakespeare\'s, 95, \n189 \n\nTennyson, Alfred, 89, 93, 104 \n\nTerence, 42 \n\nThackeray, W. M., 97, 98, 169 \n\nTheobald, Lewis, 123 \n\nTheocritus, 43 \n\nThoreau, Henry, 3, 7, 16, 23, \n39, 53. 102, 125, 126, 139, \n142, 143, 179, 203 \n\nThoreau, Lowell\'s, 125 \n\nTicknor, George, 211 \n\nTilden, Samuel, zj \n\nTitian, 74, 75 \n\nTom Jones, Fielding\'s, 99 \n\n"Tribute Money," Titian\'s, 74 \n\nTroihis and Criseyde, Chaucer\'s \n141, 171 \n\nTroubadours, 54 \n\nTrouveres, 54 \n\nTurner, William, 75 \n\nTurner\'s Old Temeraire, Low- \nell\'s, J2 \n\nTvler, John, 25 \n\nTyler, Wat, 152 \n\nTyndale, William 165, 166 \n\nU \nUnwin, Mrs., 13 \n\n\n\n228 \n\n\n\nINDEX \n\n\n\nValdes, A. P., 90 \nVanbrugh, Sir John, 58 \nVan Dyke, Sir Anthony, 75 \nVanity Fair, Thackeray\'s, 97 \nVega, Lope de, 51 \nVenice Preserved, Otwaj\'-\'s, 95 \nVenus and Adonis, Shake- \nspeare\'s, 166 \nVictorian Poets, 89 \nVinci, Leonardo da, 146 \nVirgil, 45, 46, 78 \nVision of Piers Ploughman, \n\nLangland\'s, 19 \nVita Nuova, Dante\'s, 82, 154 \nVoltaire, 49, 52, 58, 128 \n\nW \n\nWace, 49 \n\nWalden, Thoreau\'s, 102 \nWallenstein, Coleridge\'s trans- \nlation of, 107 \nWaller, Edmund, 100 \nWalton, Isaac, 13 \n\n\n\nM^ay of the World, Congreve\'s, \n\n95 \nWebster, Daniel, 4, 37 \nWebster, John, 8 \nWellington, Duke of, 71 \nWells, William, 3 \nWestminster Abbev, 29 \nWhipple, E. P., 210 \nWhite, Maria, s, ii, 36, 37 \nWHiittier, John G., 16, 23 \nWillis, Nathaniel, 10 \nWordsworth, William, 13, 19, \n\n29, 52, 53, 59, 6c, 61, 87, \n\n104, 131, 137, 141, 146, 147, \n\n148, 149, 151, 177, 184, \n\n206 \nWordsworth, Lowell\'s, 57, 87, \n\nIII \nWorkingmen\'s College, 108 \nWuthering Heights, Emily \n\nBronte\'s, 98 \nWyatt, Sir Thomas, 54, 104 \nWycherly, William, 95 \n\n\n\nYear\'s Life, A, Lowell\'s, 8, 10 \n\n\n\n^^\xe2\x80\xa2^ ^*. \n\n\n\nr: ^\'\'\xc2\xb0\' \n\n\n\n\n\n\n^\'^^^^ : \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nx^^^. < \n\n\n\n^ %^ \n\n\n\n^0\xe2\x80\xa2 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n< \n\n\n\nx^^<. \n\n\n\nr^0 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n^^ ^^ \\* .^^ ^- \'."^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n%^^\'\' \n\n\'":> ^ \n\n\n\n\n\xe2\x96\xa0\\^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\xc2\xab5 -^c*- \n\n\n\n\n\n\n.^^ \n\n\n\n-V \n\n\n\n\\> v-^ \n\n\n\n\\^ ^^ ^/r??y^^ ., \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\'i\' \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\xe2\x80\x9e..^ \n\n\n\n^~" \xe2\x96\xa0\'\'=*i \n\n\n\n**. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n,0^^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\ny\' \n\n\n\'% \n\n\n\'-^\xe2\x96\xa0/"\'\'o \' ^\'^ \n\n\nO \n\n\n?^ *\xe2\x80\xa2 .#\\^\'v: \n\n\n,!%"< \n\n\n-t. V*-\' \n\n\n\n\nvOo \n\n\n\n\n\\^ "-xs .^ ^^ \n\n\n\n\nr~^ y \n\n\n\n\nO it \n\n\nc \n\n\n\'^ "^c^ \n\n\n> \n\n\n^^^ ^^ \n\n\n\n\n- % \n\n\n\\^\' \n\n\n^/ \n\n\n% \n\n\n.:^\' \n\n\n\n\n\n^^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\nv^^ \n\n\n\n\\^ \n\n\n\n0^ \n\n\n\n\'V-\'s^\' N^ \n\n\n\n\\\' * \n\n\n\n\n\n\n^0 o. "^ \\ \n\n\n\n*_, \n\n\n-\'^^.<,^^- : \n\n\n\n\n^^ \n\n\n\n\n"\'^H \n\n\n\nc^ t- ^^\' \n\n\n< \n\n\ne^- \n\n\n" 8. \n\n\n\\ \' \n\n\n^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\'^<^ \n\n\n/\xe2\x96\xa0\xe2\x80\xa2 \n\n\n\n\n.^^ \n\n\n\\\' \n\n\n^ A \n\n\n\n\no. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\' \'^, .V \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\xe2\x80\xa2\xe2\x96\xa0t^^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n'