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Outlines of English and American Literature
James Russell Lowell
by Long, William J.
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The work of Lowell is unusual and his rank or position hard to define.
Though never a great or even a popular writer, he was regarded for a
considerable part of his life as the most prominent man of letters in
America. At the present time his reputation is still large, but historians
find it somewhat easier to praise his works than to read them. As poet,
critic, satirist, editor and teacher he loomed as a giant among his
contemporaries, overtopping Whittier and Longfellow at one time; but he
left no work comparable to Snow-Bound or Hiawatha, and one is
puzzled to name any of his poems or essays that are fairly certain to give
pleasure. To read his volumes is to meet a man of power and brilliant
promise, but the final impression is that the promise was not fulfilled,
that the masterpiece of which Lowell was capable was left unwritten.
Biographical Sketch
Lowell came from a distinguished family that
had "made history" in America. His father was a cultured clergyman;
he grew up in a beautiful home, "Elmwood," in the college town of
Cambridge; among his first companions were the noble books that
filled the shelves of the family library. From the beginning,
therefore, he was inclined to letters; and though he often turned
aside for other matters, his first and last love was the love of
poetry.
At fifteen he entered Harvard, where he read almost everything, he
said, except the books prescribed by the faculty. Then he studied
law and opened an office in Boston, where he found few clients,
being more interested in writing verses than in his profession.
With his marriage in 1844 the first strong purpose seems to have
entered his indolent life. His wife was zealous in good works, and
presently Lowell, who had gayly satirized all reformers, joined in
the antislavery campaign and proceeded to make as many enemies as
friends by his reform poems.
Varied Tasks
Followed then a period of hard, purposeful work, during which he
supported himself by editing The Pennsylvania Freeman and by
writing for the magazines. In 1848, his banner year, he published
his best volume of Poems, Sir Launfal, A Fable for
Critics and the first series of The Biglow Papers. It
was not these volumes, however, but a series of brilliant lectures
on the English poets that caused Lowell to be called to the chair
in Harvard which Longfellow had resigned. He prepared for this work
by studying abroad, and for some twenty years thereafter he gave
courses in English, Italian, Spanish and German literatures. For a
part of this time he was also editor in turn of The Atlantic
Monthly and The North American Review.
Life Abroad
In the simpler days of the republic, when the first question asked
of a diplomat was not whether he had money enough to entertain
society in a proper style, the profession of letters was honored by
sending literary men to represent America in foreign courts, and
Lowell's prominence was recognized by his appointment as ambassador
to Spain (1877) and to England (1880). It was in this patriotic
service abroad that he won his greatest honors. In London
especially he made his power felt as an American who loved his
country, as a democrat who believed in democracy, and as a cultured
gentleman who understood Anglo-Saxon life because of his
familiarity with the poetry in which that life is most clearly
reflected. Next to keeping silence about his proper business,
perhaps the chief requirement of an ambassador is to make speeches
about everything else, and no other foreign speaker was ever
listened to with more pleasure than the witty and cultured Lowell.
One who summed up his diplomatic triumph said tersely that he found
the Englishmen strangers and left them all cousins.
He was recalled from this service in 1885. The remainder of his
life was spent teaching at Harvard, writing more poetry and editing
his numerous works. His first volume of poems, A Year's
Life, was published in 1841; his last volume, Heartsease and
Rue, appeared almost half a century later, in 1888. That his
death occurred in the same house in which he was born and in which
he had spent the greater part of his life is an occurrence so rare
in America that it deserves a poem of commemoration.
Lowell's Poetry
There are golden grains everywhere in Lowell's verse but
never a continuous vein of metal. In other words, even his best work is
notable for occasional lines rather than for sustained excellence. As a
specific example study the "Commemoration Ode," one of the finest poems
inspired by the Civil War. The occasion of this ode, to commemorate the
college students who had given their lives for their country, was all that
a poet might wish; the brilliant audience that gathered at Cambridge was
most inspiring; and beyond that local audience stood a nation in mourning,
a nation which had just lost a million of its sons in a mighty conflict. It
was such an occasion as Lowell loved, and one who reads the story of his
life knows how earnestly he strove to meet it. When the reading of his poem
was finished his audience called it "a noble effort," and that is precisely
the trouble with the famous ode; it is too plainly an effort. It does not
sing, does not overflow from a full heart, does not speak the inevitable,
satisfying word. In consequence (and perhaps this criticism applies to most
ambitious odes) we are rather glad when the "effort" is at an end. Yet
there are excellent passages in the poem, notably the sixth and the last
stanzas, one with its fine tribute to Lincoln, the other expressive of
deathless loyalty to one's native land.
Lyrics
The best of Lowell's lyrics may be grouped in two classes, the first
dealing with his personal joy or grief, the second with the feelings of the
nation. Typical of the former are "The First Snowfall" and a few other
lyrics reflecting the poet's sorrow for the loss of a little
daughter,--simple, human poems, in refreshing contrast with most others of
Lowell, which strive for brilliancy. The best of the national lyrics is
"The Present Crisis" (1844). This was at first a party poem, a ringing
appeal issued during the turmoil occasioned by the annexation of Texas; but
now, with the old party issues forgotten, we can all read it with pleasure
as a splendid expression of the American heart and will in every crisis of
our national history.
In the nature lyrics we have a double reflection, one of the external
world, the other of a poet who could not be single-minded, and who was
always confusing his own impressions of nature or humanity with those other
impressions which he found reflected in poetry. Read the charming "To a
Dandelion," for example, and note how Lowell cannot be content with his
Dear common flower that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
but must bring in Eldorado and twenty other poetic allusions to glorify a
flower which has no need of external glory. Then for comparison read
Bryant's "Fringed Gentian" and see how the elder poet, content with the
flower itself, tells you very simply how its beauty appeals to him. Or read
"An Indian-Summer Reverie" with its scattered lines of gold, and note how
Lowell cannot say what he feels in his own heart but must search everywhere
for poetic images; and then, because he cannot find exactly what he seeks
or, more likely, because he finds a dozen tempting allusions where one is
plenty, he goes on and on in a vain quest that ends by leaving himself and
his reader unsatisfied.
Sir Launfal
The most popular of Lowell's works is The Vision of Sir Launfal
(1848), in which he invents an Arthurian kind of legend of the search for
the Holy Grail. Most of his long poems are labored, but this seems to have
been written in a moment of inspiration. The "Prelude" begins almost
spontaneously, and when it reaches the charming passage "And what is so
rare as a day in June?" the verse fairly begins to sing,--a rare occurrence
with Lowell. Critical readers may reasonably object to the poet's
moralizing, to his imperfect lines and to his setting of an Old World
legend of knights and castles in a New World landscape; but uncritical
readers rejoice in a moral feeling that is fine and true, and are content
with a good story and a good landscape without inquiring whether the two
belong together. Moreover, Sir Launfal certainly serves the first
purpose of poetry in that it gives pleasure and so deserves its continued
popularity among young readers.
Satires
Two satiric poems that were highly prized when they were first published,
and that are still formally praised by historians who do not read them, are
A Fable for Critics and The Biglow Papers. The former is a
series of doggerel verses filled with grotesque puns and quips aimed at
American authors who were prominent in 1848. The latter, written in a
tortured, "Yankee" dialect, is made up of political satires and conceits
occasioned by the Mexican and Civil wars. Both works contain occasional
fine lines and a few excellent criticisms of literature or politics, but
few young readers will have patience to sift out the good passages from the
mass of glittering rubbish in which they are hidden.
Much more worthy of the reader's attention are certain neglected works,
such as Lowell's sonnets, his "Prometheus," "Columbus," "Agassiz,"
"Portrait of Dante," "Washers of the Shroud," "Under the Old Elm" (with its
noble tribute to Washington) and "Stanzas on Freedom," It is a pity that
such poems, all of which contain memorable lines, should be kept from the
wide audience they deserve, and largely because of the author's
digressiveness. To examine them is to conclude that, like most of Lowell's
works, they are not simple enough in feeling to win ordinary readers, like
the poetry of Longfellow, and not perfect enough in form to excite the
admiration of critics, like the best of Poe's melodies.
Lowell's Prose
In brilliancy at least Lowell has no peer among American
essayists, though others excel him in the better qualities of originality
or charm or vigor. The best of his prose works are the scintillating essays
collected in My Study Window and Among My Books. In his
political essays he looked at humanity with his own eyes, but the titles of
the volumes just named indicate his chief interest as a prose writer, which
was to interpret the world's books rather than the world's throbbing life.
For younger readers the most pleasing of the prose works are the
comparatively simple sketches, "My Garden Acquaintance," "Cambridge Thirty
Years Ago" and "On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners." In these
sketches we meet the author at his best, alert, witty and so widely read
that he cannot help giving literary flavor to whatever he writes. Among the
best of his essays on literary subjects are those on Chaucer, Dante Keats,
Walton and Emerson.
Quality of the Essays
One who reads a typical collection of Lowell's essays is apt to be divided
between open admiration and something akin to resentment. On the one hand
they are brilliant, stimulating, filled with "good things"; on the other
they are always digressive, sometimes fantastic and too often
self-conscious; that is, they call our attention to the author rather than
to his proper subject. When he writes of Dante he is concerned to reveal
the soul of the Italian master; but when he writes of Milton he seems
chiefly intent on showing how much more he knows than the English editor of
Milton's works. When he presents Emerson he tries to make us know and
admire the Concord sage; but when he falls foul of Emerson's friends,
Thoreau and Carlyle, his personal prejudices are more in evidence than his
impersonal judgment. In consequence, some of the literary essays are a
better reflection of Lowell himself than of the men he wrote about.
An author must be finally measured, however, by his finest work, by his
constant purpose rather than by his changing mood; and the finest work of
Lowell, his critical studies of the elder poets and dramatists, are perhaps
the most solid and the most penetrating that our country has to show. He
certainly kept "the great tradition" in criticism, a tradition which
enjoins us, in simple language, to seek only the best and to reverence it
when we find it. As he wrote:
Great truths are portions of the soul of man;
Great souls are portions of eternity;
Each drop of blood that e'er through true heart ran
With lofty message, ran for thee and me.
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