brilliant future was prefigured in his youth-that his original genius was evident from the first. A little before his twenty-second birthday he published a small volume of poems, entitled A Year's Life. The motto was from Goethe: Ich habe gelebt und geliebet; concerning which it may be said that most young men appear to have reached the maturity of having "lived and loved" at a comparatively early period. The poems are naturally upon the subject that inspires youths of one-andtwenty; and though they do not appear in the author's "complete" collection, they are worthy of consideration. They bear a favorable comparison with the "Hours of Idleness" and other firstfruits of genius. The unnamed lady who is celebrated in the poet's verse, and who afterward became his wife, was Miss Maria White, a person of delicate and spiritual beauty, refined in taste. sympathetic in nature, and the author of several exquisite poems. Notwithstanding the recollections of A Year's Life have been set aside by the severe judgment of the poet, the student will discover in them many intimations of the genius that shone out more clearly in later days. for perfumery labels, represented a power and influence which the sober Atlantic and the versatile Harper have never since wielded. Poems admitted into those elegant repositories of the arts were already classic. The. revolution in letters had not then begun. In the domain of letters, dead magazines | nery, and poetry was entangled with croare the ruins, if wrecked air castles ever chet-work, and plates were fine enough leave any ruins behind. Nearly every author has at some time felt a shock at the downfall of his castle, and happy is he who is not crushed thereby. In Lowell's case the name of the periodical was the Pioneer. He was associated in the editorship with Robert Carter, of whom mention is made further on. The Pioneer survived but three months. Lowell's chief contributions were some articles upon song-writers. Previous to this he had written some very striking literary essays for the Boston Miscellany, conducted by his classmate and intimate friend Nathan Hale. 99 66 About three years after A Year's Life, another volume of poems appeared, well known to readers of to-day. The "Legend of Brittany" and "Prometheus" are the longest, but the most popular are "Rhoecus, ," "The Shepherd of King Admetus,' To Perdita Singing,' ," "The Forlorn, "The Heritage, 29 66 A Parable," etc. The matter and the manner of this volume were new, and not wholly pleasing to the public of 1844. As we look back, and consider the taste of that public, we can not indulge in any great pride. There were a few names held in honor then that are still more honored now. Longfellow was in the first flush of well-won fame. Men had begun to name him in the same breath with Bryant, the recognized chief of the bards. Holmes was thought to be a witty young man of considerable promise; Whittier to be prostituting his Muse in the service of fanatics. His lyrics had some fire, but an Abolitionist could not be a poet. The retributive tar kettle would befit him rather than the exhilarating tripod. Pierpont's odes were shouted by school-boys, and the din of the rhymes on Public Saturdays was like the riveting of steam-boilers. Poe was as supreme a magician as Prospero; Halleck was the American Campbell. John Neal and Richard H. Dana were great poets, and were sure some day to do something worthy of their fame. "Woodman, Spare that Tree," "The Old Oaken Bucket," and "Home, Sweet Home," had filled the national cup of glory full. Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Hale, Miss Gould, and Mrs. Welby were quoted with Mrs. Barbauld and Mrs. Hemans. Philadelphia editors were the final arbiters in criticism; and their magazines, in which music strove with milliVOL. LXII.-No. 368.-17 In Lowell's verse there was something of Wordsworth's simplicity, something of Tennyson's sweetness and musical flow, and something more of the manly earnestness of the Elizabethan poets. But the resemblances were external; the individuality of the poet was clear. The obvious characteristic of the poems is their high religious spirit. It is not a mild and passive morality that we perceive, but the aggressive force of primitive Christianity. There are several of the poems in this collection which now seem prophetic. They were bold utterances at the time, and were doubtless considered as the wild rhapsodies of a harmless enthusiast. ode beginning, The "In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder, The Poet's song with blood-warm truth was rife," may be regarded as a confession of faith. In force of thought and depth of feeling, and in the energy of its rhythmic movement, it is a remarkable production, whether for a poet of twenty-five or older. He decries the bards who seek merely to amuse, and deplores their indifference to human welfare. "Proprieties our silken bards environ: He who would be the tongue of this wide land Must string his harp with chords of sturdy iron, And strike it with a toil-embrownèd hand." This stirring ode was a fit prelude to the part our poet was to perform. If there were any doubt as to the application, the grand sonnet to Wendell Phillips in the same volume gives it emphasis. There are poets whose verse has no relation to time. "Drink to me only with thine eyes" might have been sung by any lyrist from King Solomon to Algernon Swinburne. Others, like Dante, Milton, Marvell, and Dryden, who live in times when strong tides of feeling are surging to and fro, when vital principles are in controversy, and the fate of a people hangs upon the sharp decision of the hour, find themselves, whether they would or no, in the place of actors-at once causes and products of the turmoil in which they are born. Probably there were never greater of his own nature, all pointed in one dichanges in the principles, training, habits, rection. He was an abolitionist when the tastes, and welfare of any civilized people name signified a fanatic and fool. He than were brought about in the North- did not, however, continue long with the ern States during the fifty years from the destructive theorists like Garrison, but date of the poet's birth. This appears at joined with those who meant to extirpate first sight an unnecessarily strong state- the evil by legal means within the Conment, but it will bear scrutiny. That stitution. The sincerity and the unflinchhalf-century witnessed the astounding ing zeal of the antislavery leaders are not changes which followed the application to be questioned, but in the nature of of steam, electricity, and the arts to prac- things they were scarcely entertaining. tical affairs. In the same period the bulk of all our literature was produced, and the press, too, became a power before unknown in this or any country. Legislation and jurisprudence were lifted into the light of morals. Organized benevolence, taking upon itself the burdens of society, began to make the golden rule an active principle in human affairs. In fifty years the United States had outrun the usual progress of centuries. The function of the critic, as Mr. Stedman has pointed out, is to anticipate the solid and dispassionate judgment of posterity upon the works of to-day-a task sufficiently difficult, for the critic himself | may be enslaved by the literary fashions which he ought to resist and deplore. No one can say what may be the standard of taste a century hence, for it can not be known what direction it will receive from some unborn master-spirit who will dominate his age. But in regard to the fundamental laws of ethics there can not be any retrogressive movement: so much is sure. And to a man in the twentieth century, looking back, what will appear the great fact of our time? Indubitably the abolition of African slavery. It is the most important event since the discovery of America. Yet the time has been when such an opinion would not have been tolerated in polite society. Like its kindred oppressions, monarchy and aristocracy (for which tardy Fate is preparing a similar bloody overthrow), slavery was adorned by the fictile graces of romance and the false glamour of poesy. The antislavery movement is still called an ism by those who see no deeper than the surface of things. But it was such an ism as Christianity, or democracy, or human brotherhood. The position of Lowell was fixed from the beginning. The teachings of Channing and of his father, the example of his illustrious grandfather, and the nobility It is noticeable that in the first two volumes of Lowell's poems there is not a single witticism, nor a hint of the comic power that was to place him among the first of humorists and satirists. In his Conversations on the Poets, now out of print and scarce, there are many keen strokes and ludicrous comparisons, like those in later books with which the public has become familiar. In the Conversations, we see more of the natural man; in the early poems, we see the decorous bard in the proprieties of ceremonial robes. One might believe that the brilliant raillery which Lowell afterward turned upon the supporters of slavery had its origin in a reaction from the monotonous oratory of some of his associates. The Mexican war was in progress, and the Abolitionists declared (what is now accepted as the truth of history) that it was waged to obtain new territory for the extension of slavery, and thereby to counterbalance the growing power of the Northern States. President Polk had been elected to carry out the scheme. The appeal was to Congress, through the conscience of the nation, to stop the supplies. Mr. Lowell wrote a letter to the Boston Courier, purporting to come from Ezekiel Biglow, inclosing a poem in the Yankee dialect, written by his son Hosea, in which the efforts to raise volunteers in Boston were held up to scorn: "Thrash away! you'll hev to rattle That is ketched with mouldy corn." Society was puzzled. Critics turned the homely quatrains over with their claws as kittens do beetles, and doubted. Politicians thought them vulgar. Reverend gentlemen, who had not been shocked at the auction of "God's images in ebony," considered the poet blasphemous. For the first time in the history of the movement the laugh was on the side of the reformers. The peculiarities of some of the more ec that the baby-ruffian was trolling. He sailed to the Mediterranean, and stopped at Malta. While looking at the ruins of the works of the Templars, he observed a par Robinson he centric had furnished the wags heretofore with material for abundant gibes. The long curls of Absalom Burleigh, the sledgehammer action of Henry C. Wright (perhaps the original of Hawthorne's Hollings-ty of English not far distant, and presentworth?), the white woollen garments, pa- ly another infantile voice sang, triarchal beard, and other-world looks of "But John P. Father Lamson, and the pertinacity of the meek lunatic Abby Folsom, had made every meeting of the New England Antislavery Society as rare a show for the baser sort as a circus or a negro concert. Now the leading men in church and state were stung by pestilent arrows. The unanswerable arguments of Garrison, and the magnificent invectives which Wendell Phillips had hurled at well-dressed mobs, were now supplemented by the homeliest of proverbial phrases, set to the airiest lilting rhythm, adorned with the choicest and most effective slang, and tingling with the free spirit that had animated a line of fighting Puritans since the time of Naseby. The antislavery music was in the air, and everybody had to hear it. The more cultivated of the abolitionists were in ecstasies. Some, however, did not quite understand the levity of tone. When Charles Sumner saw the first Biglow poem in the Courier he exclaimed to a friend: "This Yankee poet has the true spirit. He puts the case admirably. I wish, however, he could have used good English." Hosea Biglow kept up the warfare, and each poem was furnished with a preface and notes by an imaginary Parson Wilbur. First a Mexican war recruit gave his amusing experiences from the field. Then came "What Mr. Robinson Thinks." This tickled the public amazingly, and "John P. Robinson he Sez he wunt vote for Guvener B." was in every one's mouth, like the "What, never?" of Pinafore. Mr. Robinson was a refined and studious man, unhappily on the wrong side of a moral question, and was not a little annoyed by his "bad eminence"; but he is preserved in the Biglow amber like an ante-Pharaonic fly. He went abroad, perhaps to get out of hearing, but as soon as he landed at Liverpool and got to his hotel, he heard a child in an adjoining room idly singing. He listened. Yes, it was true; the detested refrain had got across the ocean. It was Sez they didn't know everythin' down in Judee." About this time Dr. Palfrey, the historian, then an able and eloquent member of Congress, had refused to vote for Mr. Winthrop, the Whig candidate for Speaker. Hosea Biglow gave expression to the party wrath in a burlesque version of a speech supposed to have been delivered at an indignation-meeting in State Street. This was the opening: "No? Hez he? He hain't, though? Wut? voted agin him? Ef the bird of our country could ketch him, she'd skin him." "A Debate in the Sennit, sot to a Nusry Rhyme," followed; then "The Pious Editor's Creed," and a burlesque of General Taylor's letter accepting the nomination for the Presidency. The most musical, adroit, and effective of the series was the second letter from Birdofredum Sawin, the Mexican volunteer. He had been sadly mutilated and ill-treated and disillusioned. He had imagined Mexico as a country "Ware propaty growed up like time, without no cultivation, An' gold was dug ez taters be, among our Yan- Ware nateral advantages were pufficly amazin'- stuns waz blazin' Ware mill sites filled the country up ez thick ez you could cram 'em, An' desput rivers run about a-beggin' folks to dam 'em." The volunteer finally descants upon his own rare merits and available qualities, and offers himself as a candidate for President under the sobriquet of "The Oneeyed Slarterer." In a third letter, the last of the first series, Mr. Sawin withdraws in favor of Ol' Zack. The poems were finally gathered into a volume, which in comic completeness is without a parallel. The "work" begins with "Notices of the Press," which are delightful travesties of the perfunctory style both of "soft-soaping" and of “ cutting up. There happening to be a vacant page, the space was filled off-hand by the first sketch of "Zekel's Courtship": "Zekel crep' up quite unbeknown, An' peeked in thru the winder, With no one nigh to hender." This is the most genuine of our native idyls. It affects one like coming upon a new and quaint blossoming orchid, or hearing Schumann's "Einsame Blume." Its appearance in the Biglow Papers was purely an accident; but it had the air of being an extract, and it was so greatly admired that the poet afterward added new stanzas to fill out the picture. In the original sketch there were six stanzas; there are now twenty-four. The title itself is a travesty, reminding one of the days of black-letter quartos. The head-line is "MELIBUS HIPPONAX," as much as to say, "This is a horseeclogue." A note informs us of the position of Mr. Wilbur in the learned world, and refers us to some scores of (imaginary) | societies to which he belongs. The introduction gives some account of the poet, Hosea Biglow, and quotes specimens of his serious verse. Italian villas, nor even the heavy-timbered mansions like that of Lowell's friend G. N., dating from 1656. Oxen are as strange as camels, and if there were a milkmaid to be found, her hands would smell of millefleurs or patchouli. As soon expect the return of Jacob and Rachel as to see again the originals of the poet's Zekel and Huldy. The old town as it was in Lowell's boyhood is sketched with rare humor and fine touches in an article by him published in Putnam's Monthly in 1853, entitled "Cambridge Thirty Years Ago." This charming essay, brimming with feeling, and full of the graces that delight cultivated readers, shows Lowell himself, in his early maturity, in the most striking way. Later essays may be more profound, but none of them are so full of the sunshine of the heart. In this masterly picture we see a country village, silent and rural. There are old houses around the bare common, "and old women, capped and spectacled, still peered through the same windows from which they had watched Lord Percy's artillery rumble by to The notes and comments of the grave Lexington." One coach sufficed for the and erudite parson are difficult to charac- travel to Boston. It was "sweet Auburn" terize. One sees that he is professionally then, a beautiful woodland, and not a solemn and pedantic, and often ridiculous great cemetery. The "Old Road" from the in adhering to obsolete modes of spelling square led to it, bending past Elmwood. and to old-fashioned ways. In every page Cambridgeport was then a "huckleberry there are striking thoughts, as well as a pastur'," having a large settlement of oldprofusion of imagery and an affluence of fashioned taverns with vast barns and learning; but there is also a quaint flavor yards on the eastern verge. 'Great of antiquity, as if the honey of his periods white-topped wagons, each drawn by douhad been gathered from the flowers of ble files of six or eight horses, with its Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Brown, and dusty bucket swinging from the hinder holy George Herbert. Nothing finer or axle, and its grim bull-dog trotting silent more characteristic is to be found in any underneath,......brought all the wares and of Lowell's varied and splendid writings. products of the country to Boston. These The Biglow Papers end appropriately filled the inn yards, or were ranged side with a comic glossary and index. It must by side under broad-roofed sheds, and far be repeated, by way of emphasis, that from into the night the mirth of the lusty drivthe first fly-leaf to the colophon this is the ers clamored from the red-curtained baronly complete and perfect piece of gro-room, while the single lantern swaying tesque comedy in existence. As the Yankee peculiarities of the Biglow Papers are evidently fresh studies, it might appear strange that they could be wrought out by a resident of Cambridge. For that city, though rural, is not in the least rustic. The primeval Yankee has become scarce everywhere; he is hardly obtainable as a rare specimen; he is a tradition, like the aurochs or the great bustard; he and his bucolic manners and speech are utterly gone. There is not the echo of a haow in any of the pretentious 66 to and fro in the black cavern of the stables made a Rembrandt of the group of hostlers and horses below." Commencement was the great day, to which the Governor came in state, with military escort. The annual muster of the militia, which took place sometimes at Cambridge and sometimes in other neighboring towns, brought together all the boys of the county to see the various shows, and the hilarious sport called a "Cornwallis." The provincial tone was evident. You |