Willows" and many of its companion pieces, and hardened their hearts against his truly splendid "Commemoration Ode," ringing from end to end with the note of passionate patriotism if ever that has been sounded by the human voice. Whatever be the cause, it is certainly the fact that for one Englishman of the average type who knows and appreciates Mr. Lowell as a lyrical and descriptive poet there are a hundred such men who could quote you Longfellow by the yard, and perhaps a sixths of Mr. Lowell's admirers in English | which he has given them in "Under the society have been almost avowedly paying to him. They have most of them a certain acquaintance, not with his worksfor in that respect a hackneyed gnome or two of Birdofredum Sawin's constitutes their whole equipment — but with the high estimation in which he is held by all competent English_critics who really are familiar with Mr. Lowell's writings, serious as well as comic, prose as well as verse; and hearing him spoken of by these authorities with "for all the world, as much respect as if he were an English-score (though Mr. Bright is to some exman," they ran at once into an excess of tent responsible for that) who are in a that sort of admiration which loses all its position to give, if desired by the comflattering quality in disclosing too large pany, a short recital from Whittier. Even and obvious an admixture of surprise. those who can recite (if that is the word The attitude of these foolish people to- for it) the poems (if that is the word for wards this veteran man of letters, this them) of Walt Whitman are perhaps more highly trained critic and most finished numerous; though there indeed the reliterary artist, would really almost re- citer is often assisted by a certain associmind one of the demeanor of some sim-ation of ideas. For in some of Whitman's ple but unlettered father towards a clever son. pieces (that, after all, is the best word), to give one line is sufficient to suggest the whole; just as if you were to undertake to describe a man's dress from his head downwards and began with his hat, you would have no excuse for any lapse of memory till you got to his boots. In this sense Whitman's poetic diction appears to possess in a high degree the quality known in the critical slang of the day as "inevitableness." Assisted by its internal memoria technica, admirers of the western bard of democracy have been found able to repeat whole paragraphs of his poetry; whereas it is rare to find any man who knows nearly as much of Mr. Lowell's verse as he might very profitably have got by heart. Mr. Lowell, however, has too much both of humor and of good-nature to be annoyed at Mrs. Leo Hunter's innocent weaknesses, or, indeed, to trouble himself much about her "point of view." He cares more, it may be presumed, for the criticism of the library than for that of the drawing-room, and for the rank of his work on the bookshelves of the student than for its precedence among subjects of talk at the dinner-table of "culture." And here one cannot help wondering, though it may perhaps be impertinent to wonder, whether he is satisfied to be known and popular as a humorist alone, or whether he would have preferred fame and remembrance as a serious poet. If he cares at In the few words of sympathetic critiall for reputation of the latter sort, he has cism to which Mr. Lowell gave utterance certainly a right to complain of the nig. at the Gray memorial ceremony at Camgardly spirit in which contemporary opin- bridge, he remarked, though in no disparion has behaved to him. It may be that aging way, on the extent to which the the "Biglow Papers" have exacted from element of the "commonplace" in Gray's him a converse penalty to that which John most famous poem had contributed to its Kemble's popularity as a tragedian im- world-wide popularity. It is to the lack posed upon him, according to Charles of this quality in Mr. Lowell's own verse Lamb, in his occasional attempts to sus- that it owes, one may suspect, its compartain a comic part. Smith, the "creator" atively narrow circle of admirers. The of Charles Surface, was, according to that American poet whom all Englishmen prince of dramatic critics, preferred by know, and than whom few Englishmen many playgoers to Kemble in that part know other, was assuredly master of this, because, unlike the tragedian, he had no not "golden," but plain, serviceable locksins of Hamlet or Richard to atone for. smith's-metal key to the popular heart. It may be that Mr. Lowell's sins as Ho- It need not be said it would, indeed, sea Biglow or Birdofredum Sawin have be foolish to say it in a sneering spirit, blinded the eyes of incurious readers to but the element of commonplace in Long. those exquisite vignettes of rurul life | fellow, the precipitate of salts insoluble in knows That Thou revisit'st all who wait for thee; And though Thy healing waters far withdraw, poetry which one finds at the bottom | Shall I less patience have than Thou, who of that pellucid verse, is extraordinarily large; and the average reader who prizes his poetry for the solid residuum it leaves behind it, after its purely poetic qualities have disappeared through the not very fine-meshed strainer of his imagination, appraises his Longfellow accordingly. The knack of infusing this ingredient into his poetry in the proportion approved of by the popular palate did not come naturally to Mr. Lowell, and he has never acquired it. His poetic faculty, as we trace it through some thirty years of productive effort, shares the healthy growth of a healthy mind, but has never developed that useful form of adipose tissue which serves, at the expense no doubt of the higher quality of beauty, to keep warm the poetry and the poet. On the other hand, it is but just to Mr. Lowell to add that he has not allowed his verse to run, in revenge, into that angularity of manner which too many poets not accepted by the multitude are wont to cultivate of malice prepense the overstrained protest of classic severity of outline against the too buxom contours of the "popular" muse. Mr. Lowell's poetry has simply gone on perfecting itself in form and finish, until now he is as complete a specimen of "a literary man's poet," of the consummate artist in expression whom the lover of the art of expression is hard put to it to judge impartially, from sheer delight in his workmanship as it would be easy to find in a summer day's hunt through a well-filled library. It is not difficult to trace the literary influences which have moulded this highly wrought, this artless-artful poetic manner. In the introduction to the "Biglow Papers" Mr. Lowell observes with pride that the nineteenth century New Englander "feels more at home with Fulke Greville, Herbert of Cherbury, Quarles, George Herbert, and Browne than with his modern English cousins." And the studies to which the ancestry of this New England poet has attracted him have done almost as much for his verse as the Scrip tural training of Quakerism has done for the oratory of the famous English orator. Take these stanzas from a little poem entitled "Seaweed: "" Not always unimpeded can I pray, One Imagery, construction, choice of words, the "conceit" which has suggested the poem, and the kind of fancy which gives us the "pale shepherdess " for the moon ; the kind of diction which gives us the "dear recurrence of Thy law; "the continuous maintenance of that contrast which Coleridge has so acutely noticed in George Herbert and his contemporaries, between a somewhat far-fetched thought and its nobly simple expression, - all recall the period in which Mr. Lowell evidently loves to dwell. We seem to catch the very breath of the seventeenth century. can hardly expect, however, that a poet of this description and taste should ever become popular. It is not that there is anything demonstrably incompatible between the power over such forms of thought and expression as the above extract illustrates, and the capacity to move the emotions or arrest the ear of average humanity with a broader and fuller, if less sweet and penetrating note; it is simply that one seems to have found by way of rough rule of thumb generalization, that the poets to whom the aforesaid forms of thought and expression appeal most strongly, and who cultivate them to the highest point of perfection, yield more and more every year to the domination of that intruder, criticism, the cuckoo in the nest of poetry, who, when she has once fairly established her self there, will never again be displaced by the original owner, but will remain and rear there her own brood. In the "Fable for Critics" Mr. Lowell, its then anonymous author, in discussing his own place among the poets, appears to show a shrewd perception of the fact that he carried too many impedimenta for hopeful mountaineering up the height of the Muses. The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching, Till he learns the distinction between singing and preaching. His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well, But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell, they would give of Mr. Lowell to any one as a sort of humoristic " unacquainted with the "Biglow Papers Single Speech Hamilton." Chance usually determines what phrase of an author shall first obtain universal popular currency, and chance has been unusually capricious in this case. The "Biglow Papers" brim over with happy hits, which are perhaps to be found in the greatest plenty in the long-lined metres, and where the free play of a quaint imagination is not restricted by a which nevertheless abound in stanza after too frequent recurrence of rhyme, but stanza of such pieces as "What Mr. Rob And rattle away till he's as old as Methusalem, salem. The allusion in this last couplet of course, as well as in the line about "sing. ing " and "preaching," is to the "Biglow Papers," published in this same year 1848, and to their endeavor to lead the American people to a sense of the unrighteousness of "political wars. But the ism which really prevented him scaling Parnassus, or at least that particular peak of the mountain which is visible to the common eye, was not, it seems to me, any one of a political or religious character. It was surely that most exigent and masterful ism to which I have referred above, and the service of which, if it has not been perfect freedom in the case of this admirable poet-critic, has certainly been signalized by very brilliant achievements. The popular instinct which has seized upon the "Biglow Papers" and will insist on regarding Mr. Lowell as the author of that comic masterpiece and of nothing else, is in one sense a sound one. For while it is just open to argument whether Mr. Lowell is an actual or an adopted son of the Muses, he is unquestionably a born humorist. He possesses a humor of thought which is at once broad and subtle; his humor of expression is his American birthright. The mere characterization of the "Biglow Papers" has perhaps been overpraised, though Birdofredum Sawin certainly appears original and typical to an outsider, whatever may be said of Parson Homer Wilbur; but the graphic power of statement, the gnomic faculty of sententious utterance, the extraordinary fluency and facility of the versification, make the book a perpetual delight. Mr. Lowell pays the penalty of all aphorismmakers in having his phrases seized upon and hackneyed, until they become a weariness to the flesh; but nothing could be more unjust than the impression which Creed." So do they too in that most broadly comic paper of the whole series, the third letter, in which Birdofredum Sawin recounts his experiences as a slavecaptor, and for a very brief period slaveowner. It is the fashion to talk of the second series of the papers, published from thirteen to sixteen years afterwards during the progress of the American Civil War, as inferior to its predecessor; but it would be hard to find any better ground for this opinion than the particular fact that it was a second series, and the general truth that seconds are not firsts. no respect save that of novelty does it seem to me inferior in workmanship to the earlier volume, while its occasion and the topics which suggest the various poems are certainly far more interesting, though often in a somewhat unpleasant way, to English readers than the controversy about the Mexican War. The tarring and feathering of Mr. Sawin down South and his ride "across a Southern chestnut horse sharper 'n a baby's screech;" his release from the jail to which he had been consigned on suspicion of stealing a "yeller chettle," and the imprisonment of the real criminal, "to see how he liked pork 'n' pone flavored with wa'nut saplin'; and nary social priv'ledge but a one-hoss, starn-wheel chaplin ; "his subsequent marriage to the Widder Shennon, whose "thirds was part in cotton-land, part in the curse o' Canaan;" these things and their sequel are related with as rich a humor as any of the hero's earlier adventures in Mexico. It is true, of course, that the anti-English sallies of this series, the Bridge and Monument dialogue, and the address of Jonathan to John, give a touch of sternness to the volume from which its predecessor was free. The satirist was too much in earnest in the strokes which he delivered at England in that day of bitterness to be able to smile; and though the satire is always such as the objects | Percival was a professor of poetry rather of it can respect if not admire, it is not of that kind which provokes a smile from men at their own expense. What gives to it its chief interest in these days, as it does to more than one passage in the es say quoted from at the outset of this article- - an interest one is glad to feel of a purely pleasurable character is the very striking contrast between the sentiments which inspire it and those by which, as we have now every reason to believe, they have been replaced in the writer's mind. than a poet, and "we are not surprised," adds his critic, "at the number of lectures he reads us when we learn that in early life he was an excellent demonstrator of anatomy, whose subject must be dead before his business with it begins." Very pungent is the satire upon the unanimous resolution of Mr. Percival's contemporaries that Americans "must and would have a national literature. England, France, Spain, and Italy each already had one; Germany was getting one ready as fast as possible, and Ireland vowed that she once had one far surpassing them all. country was what we must and would have. Given the number of square miles, the length of the rivers, the size of the lakes, and you have the greatness of the literature we were bound to produce without further delay. If that little dribble of an Avon had succeeded in engendering Shakespeare, what a giant might we not look for from the mighty womb of the Mississippi!" The mention of the essay "On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners" recalls to one's memory the delightful little vol-. . . A literature adapted to the size of the ume in which this paper appeared, and with it that particular department of literature the department of criticism and discourse to which Mr. Lowell, one fears (it is not every poet-critic who can escape the phrase "one hopes "), will in all likelihood confine his future work. As a critic of belles-lettres he has scarcely any living equal; and if we are allowed as surely we should be to give more marks for sanity than for any other quality of The author of these self-detached criticriticism, he ranks higher, perhaps, than cisms (as one may call them, perhaps, if a any rival. Great delicacy of perception man's country be regarded as his larger and a discriminative faculty, "piercing, self) was at the time they were written a even to the dividing asunder of soul and very indignant censor of this country, as spirit," in a piece of literary work, are near indeed to a positive Anglophobist as accompanied, in Mr. Lowell's case, by a it would be possible for any man of so most commendable freedom from crotchet good a head and heart to be. It is pleasand affectation, and a consistent sobriety ant to think that he has lived to spend six of judgment. His paper on Chaucer in years in England as, politically and so"My Study Windows "is at once as stim- cially, the most successful and popular ulating and satisfying, as suggestive of representative of the United States that new ideas, and as adequate in its devel- any one not anxious to advertise his adopment of familiar ones, as any paper of vanced years would confess to rememberforty odd octavo pages on an almost in- ing; pleasant, too, to know that though he exhaustible subject well could be. Nor is may and indeed must smile, however there anywhere out of Charles Lamb (who, good-naturedly, at the purely "fashion. moreover, as a cockney, could not have able" element in his popularity, he warmly written it) a more charming piece of En- reciprocates the more genuine feelings glish prose writing of the half poetic, half which he has inspired. Mr. Lowell is no humorous, wholly nature-loving order, doubt too good a patriot to regret that in than a "Good Word for Winter" in the his country's cause and at an hour of susame columns. Mr. Lowell's strong good preme crisis in her destinies, he spoke sense, his inexorable independence of bitter words against England and Englishcriticism triumphing easily over very vig- men. But though he may still think — orous national prejudices, is signally illus- and it is not for us to gainsay him if he trated in his essay on the "Life and Let- does that he did well in those days to be ters of James Gates Percival," a whilom angry, he cannot but rejoice to feel that American celebrity, greeted by his con- the better understanding that has since temporaries as the poet of America, but grown up between the two nations, renwhose pretensions Mr. Lowell disposesders the recurrence of such causes of of concurrently with the assumption, to which, indeed, Mr. Percival mainly owed a premature enthronement, that at the date of his appearance America was in a condition to produce any great poet at all. righteous anger on either side an indefi nitely less probable contingency than it was. To the development and solidification of that understanding he himself has been no slight contributor, and he may From Chambers' Journal. A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. CHAPTER XXVI. honestly pride himself on having contributed to it, not only without abatement of the just claims of his nationality, but in exact proportion to the self-respecting consistency with which those claims have in his person been quietly and unobtrusively THERE were voices in the drawing room upheld. It may be well enough to be all as Frances ran up-stairs, which warned things to all men, but the best way we can her that her own appearance in her mornbehave to some men is to be simply our- ing dress would be undesirable then. She selves and no one else. It is no paradox went on with a sense of relief to her own to say that Mr. Lowell would have been room, where she threw aside the heavy less English if he had been less American. cloak lined with fur, which her aunt had He would have been less English in the insisted on wrapping her in. It was too sense of appealing less to those deeper grave, too ample for Frances, just as the sympathies which, beneath the strata of other presents she had received were too national prejudice, unite the two peoples. rich and valuable for her wearing. She The Anglicized, or rather, for that is the took the emerald brooch out of her pocket more common variety, the Frenchified in its little case, and thrust it away into a American, is really further removed from drawer, glad to be rid of it, wondering the Englishman than what he would prob- | whether it would be her duty to show it, ably call the "old time" Yankee, who to exhibit her presents. She divined that flourished, or did not flourish, in the days Lady Markham would be pleased, that of Martin Chuzzlewit. For in ridding she would congratulate her upon having himself of his natural and national self, he made herself agreeable to her aunt, and deliberately effaces those characteristics perhaps repeat that horrible encouragewhich the two races possess in common, ment to her to make what progress she in order to simulate certain peculiarly could in the affections of the CavendishEnglish traits which are no more imitable es, because they were rich and had no by him than their American analogues are imitable by us. Missing these peculiarly English traits, he succeeds only in hitting off a certain general Europeanism of tone in which, as has been said, the Parisian element, the farthest removed of all from the English, most frequently obtains preeminence. It is not by Americans of that description that that process which Mr. Lowell rightly describes as the only sure way of bringing about a healthy relation between the two countries is at all likely to be facilitated. If Englishmen are to be enabled to clear their minds of the notion that Americans are "to be treated as a kind of inferior and deported Englishman," Americans themselves must not deliberately pose in that character, but must bear in mind their countryman's sound dictum that they "are worth nothing except in so far as they have disinfected themselves of Anglicism." Mr. Lowell has supplied the positive proof of it himself, but I hope that he will not regard it as another instance of the condescension of foreigners if, while recognizing his sturdy American patriotism as, at least, one good quality which is not wholly English," we should be able to trace some of his excellencies as man and writer which I have here inadequately examined, to an intellectual ancestry which he shares with ourselves. 66 H. D. TRAILL. heirs. If, instead of saying this, Lady Markham had but said that Mrs. Cavendish was lonely, having no children, and little good of her husband's society, how different it might have been! How anxious then would Frances have been to visit and cheer her father's sister! The girl, though she was very simple, had a great deal of inalienable good sense; and she could not but wonder within herself how her mother could make so strange a mistake. It was late before Lady Markham came up-stairs. She came in shading her candie with her hand, gliding noiselessly to her child's bedside. "Are you not asleep, Frances? I thought you would be too tired to keep awake." "O no. I have done nothing to tire me. I thought you would not want me down-stairs, as I was not dressed." There “I always want you," said Lady Markham, stooping to kiss her. "But I quite understand why you did not come. was nobody that could have interested you. Some old friends of mine, and a man or two whom Markham brought to dine; but nothing young or pleasant. And did you have a tolerable day? Was poor Charlotte a little less gray and cold? But Constance used to tell me she was only cold when I was there." "I don't think she was cold. She was - very kind; at least that is what she |