JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Though we break our father's promise, we have nobler duties first;

The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed;

Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod Than be true to Church and State, while we are doubly false to God."

"Ez for war, I call it murder,

There you have it, plain and flat.”

LOWELL, Biglow Papers.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

I

"WHO reads an American book?" so once asked Sydney Smith. Lowell, an American to the core, stung to the quick, called this a scornful question. Such a question would not be asked now, for the readers of American books are many, and are increasing in number. As Lowell himself would have us consider, it is scarcely fair to expect so much in the way of Literature from a new country like America, as from an old country like our own. People there are so busy making their Iliad, that they have not as yet time to sing about it. In America there is an Apotheosis of Work, and if there be any Poetry, it is "like the waste of water over the dam."

"Those horn hands have as yet found small time,

For painting, and sculpture, and music, and rhyme;
These will come in due order; the need that pressed sorest,
Was to vanquish the seasons, the ocean, the forest."

The first thing that brought Lowell into notice was the publication, in 1848, of the First Series of the Biglow Papers. In these papers, altogether unique in Literature, Lowell, in Yankee dialect, and with great humour, expressed his indignation at the

Mexican War, which had arisen in the interests of the slave-holders. Not only did these Papers make him famous; they also made him a factor of the greatest importance and power in the political and social life of his country. By means of them he set the heather on fire.

They had an enormous circulation; were recited in the homes and workshops of the people, and determined elections. These Papers were published as Letters and Poems sent to the Boston Courier and other newspapers, "By Mr. Hosea Biglow, Jaalam, and Mr. Bird O'Freedom Sawin, Private in the Massachusetts Regiment, and all under the careful supervision, with elaborate annotations, of the Rev. Homer Wilbur, A.M., Minister of the Independent Chapel, at Jaalam." There was, for a time, considerable controversy regarding the author of them, Lowell himself having once heard the matter discussed, and the conclusion come to, that whoever the Author might be, "it was not that fellow Lowell," who, in the estimate of the speaker, was quite unequal to their production.

For twenty years Lowell was Professor of Modern Literature and "Belles Lettres" in the University of Harvard, succeeding his friend, the Poet Longfellow. Afterwards he was appointed Minister of the United States, proceeding first of all to Madrid, and afterwards to London. He died in 1891.

It might be said of Lowell, as he himself said of Agassiz, "His magic is not far to seek; he is so human." "He is so human"-here, in a single sentence, lies the secret of the charm, as well as of

the characteristics of Lowell's life and writings. He can be written down as one who loved his fellowmen,"—perhaps, after all, the highest tribute that can be paid to a human being. It is this enthusiasm for humanity which explains, as we think, the whole trend of Lowell's life-his antipathies, conflicts, and successes, his Essays, Poetry, Politics, and Religion. "There is," he writes, "one institution to which we owe our first allegiance, one that is more sacred and venerable than any other, and that is the soul, and constitution of Man".

“Though we break our father's promise, we have nobler duties first;

The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed;

Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod Than be true to Church and State, while we are doubly false to God."

Touring in Italy, Lowell declares that his favourite gallery was just the street, the men and women with whom he came into contact. These he found to be always entertaining at least. When in Edinburgh, at the Tercentenary of the University, he was most deeply interested in "dear old John Brown," the author of Rab.

We must not regard Lowell as a great genius, scarcely, perhaps, as a genius at all. He is not an Poet like his

Essayist like his own Emerson, nor a own Longfellow. He is neither a Thinker nor a Moral force, like Carlyle, lacking, as he does, that genetic faculty which goes along with genius of the first order.