Arthur's reign, it is none the less a poem of chivalry in the truest and best sense of that word. We shall, therefore say something concerning its author, America's most representative man of letters, James Russell Lowell. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819–1891) We have been discussing Matthew Arnold-poet, critic, teacher, man of public activities. We come now to the consideration of James Russell Lowell, also poet, critic, teacher, and man of affairs. Though the latter was no doubt the better balanced, the more wholesome, and the sunnier of the two, perhaps the more gifted in varied capability, the parallel between them is nevertheless striking and suggestive. Nearly twenty years ago and during the lifetime of both poets, Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, in his Poets of America, said: "Lowell and Arnold, poets nearly equal in years, both scholars, both original thinkers, occupy representative positions — the one in the Old England and the other in the New which are singularly correspondent. Two things, however, are to be noted. The American has the freer hand and wider range as a poet. Humor, dialect verse, and familiar epistles come to him as naturally as his stateliest odes. Again, while both poets feel the perplexities of the time, Arnold's difficulties are the more restrictive of his poetic glow; with him the impediments are spiritual. With Lowell they are material, and to be overcome. Like Mr. Arnold, Lowell also feels the questioning spirit of our age of unrest; but his nature is too various and healthy to be depressed by it. The cloud rests more durably on Arnold. Lowell always has one refuge. Give him a touch of Mother Earth, a breath of free air, one flash of sunshine, and he is no longer a book man and a brooder; his blood runs riot with the spring; this inborn, poetic elasticity is the best gift of the gods. Faith and joy are the ascensive forces of song." This parallel is noteworthy partly because of its aptness, partly because it suggests an answer to the query with which we are so familiar, "How do the best poets of our country compare in ability and achievement with the greater poets of England?" It is unquestionably true that America has as yet produced no poetic genius who can rank with the greatest among the masters of English poetry—no Chaucer nor Spenser, no Shakespeare nor Milton, no Wordsworth nor Tennyson. But it is no less true that our greater American poets have created a literature which is distinctive and representative; and that, measured by the very best of the second rank of English poets, their position is, to say the least, an honorable one. Matthew Arnold was a very distinguished representative of literary England. But we are undoubtedly safe in saying that of the many points of likeness between Arnold and Lowell there are few in which the American is not the superior. As to his American contemporaries, Lowell outranks them chiefly in the quality of many-sidedness. His place is very high whether he be judged as scholar, diplomat, critic, humorist, writer of brilliant and luminous prose, or poet thoroughly representative of the best that American culture has yet produced. But above and beyond all this he was a Man, a splendid type of all that is highest and noblest in American citizenship. 1819-1838. — James Russell Lowell was born February 22, 1819, just outside of Cambridge, Massachusetts, about a mile from Harvard University. His father, Charles Lowell, was for over half a century a Congregational minister in the West Church of Boston. Lowell was born and lived and died in a fine old country mansion called Elmwood, whose gården, meadow, spreading trees, and lilac hedges had no slight influence in arousing in the future poet a passionate love of nature. In his father's library was an excellent collection of standard literature, and there the future scholar first made acquaintance with the world of books. When fifteen years of age Lowell entered Harvard College, then an institution of only about two hundred and fifty students; and after an uneventful course of four years he took his degree in 1838. But though the young collegian was strikingly indifferent to the prescribed work of his curriculum, he must in some way have given evidence of the stuff of which he was made, for his friend, Dr. Edward Everett Hale, says of him thirty years later, "The year Lowell graduated we were as sure as we are now that in him was first-rate poetical genius, and that here was to be one of the leaders of the literature of the time." 1838-1848. After his graduation Lowell studied law and was admitted to the bar. Discovering, however, that he had little taste for the legal profession, he soon abandoned it. About this time, 1841, appeared his first literary venture - a little volume of poems entitled A Year's Life. A second volume, which followed three years later, marks a distinct advance in his powers. This was the year also of his marriage to Maria White, a woman of noble character, who exerted no small influence over the young poet's early work. Four years later came another series of poems, The Vision of Sir Launfal, the amusing Fable for Critics, and the first instalment of the Biglow Papers, which had been for two years running anonymously in the Boston Courier. This clever satire was a half-indignant, half-humorous protest against the war with Mexico, and was at once recognized as unique, in fact, one of the most original poems ever written. Lowell was now thirty years of age, and had at last caught the public ear. It is with the work of 1848 that his fame as a poet really began. 1848-1877. During 1851 and 1852 Lowell spent a year and a half in Europe with his wife, whose health was failing and who died the next year. In 1855 the poet was appointed to the professorship in Harvard College of Belles-Lettres and Modern Language and Literature, a position which Longfellow had just vacated. After another visit to Europe to fit himself more fully for his new duties, Lowell settled down in 1856 to nearly twenty years of work as a Harvard professor. At the same time that he was carrying on his college courses, he was also occupying the post of editor-first of the Atlantic Monthly and then of the North American Review. To the latter were contributed many of his prose essays, most of them on literature and literary men. From 1862 to 1866 events connected with the Civil War called forth a second series of the Biglow Papers, grimmer in humor and more intense in feeling than his Biglow Papers of eighteen years before. In 1865 the poet recited at Harvard College the noble Commemoration Ode, not only one of his finest poems, but also one of the finest odes ever written. Other volumes of prose and poetry appeared during the next dozen years. At the end of this period Lowell gave up his work as editor and teacher and entered upon his career as public servant. 1877-1891. From 1877 to 1880 the poet served as United States Minister to Spain, and from 1880 to 1885 as Minister to England. By his lively intelligence and ready tact, his fairness and breadth of mind, he gained extreme popularity in both countries. His ripe scholarship and social talents commended him especially to Englishmen; and it is safe to say that no American ambassador to the court of St. James has ever been more welcome. Mr. Lowell's second wife, whom he had married in 1857, died in England in 1885. This same year a change in political administration caused him to resign his post and return to the United States. The remaining years of the poet's life were spent in lecturing and writing, and in revising and republishing his works. His health, which had hitherto been robust, began to fail; but in spite of occasional periods of intense suffering he never lost that geniality which so endeared him to his friends. We have compared Lowell to Matthew Arnold and, indeed, they were alike in many ways. But as a vivid contrast to Arnold's philosophy of doubt we may quote a few words which Lowell wrote in a letter to a friend not long before his death: "I don't care where the notion of immortality came from. It is there, and I mean to hold it fast. There is something in the flesh that is superior to the flesh, something that can in finer moments abolish matter and pain. And it is to this we must cling." He died in August, 1891. The Vision of Sir Launfal, written when Lowell was only twentynine years of age, is considered by many to stand at the high-water mark of American poetry. It is a poem especially worthy of our study, since it so admirably shows the genius of its author both as poet of nature and as poet of the philosophy of life. THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL PRELUDE TO PART FIRST OVER his keys the musing organist, And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay: Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us ; At the Devil's booth are all things sold, 20 25 Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking: "Tis heaven alone that is given away, 'Tis only God may be had for the asking; No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer. And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; 30 Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 35 And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 50 And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, 55 In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? Now is the high-tide of the year, And whatever of life hath ebbed away 60 |