JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL BY FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD - 1899 - CONTENTS . CONTENTS . PARSO W N ILBUR . . . . . . . . YAKKEEH UMOR A ND PATHOS . . . IIOSEA A S AN ORATOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . TIIE ARGYMUN T RECOITSTRUCTI . ON . . . . . . . THE DECAY OF THE YANKEE DIALECT C H A U C E R - B o c c c c o . . . . . . THE P ROFESSO SU R P PLANTS THE POET UNDER T HE VILLOJ . S . . . . . VILLA FRAXCA . . . . FOR AN AUTOGRAPH . . . . IETAPHPSI S C U A BT L I LT I Y K POETRY CO ER ORXT O I D ON E . . . . . . Two FRIEND . S . . . . . . . THE CATHEDRAL . - CONSERVATISN . COSCORD, CAMBRIDGE. VIRGINIA . . CLASSIC IS . . . . . . . . . . T PERO SE O F POETS . . . . . LOWELL P S R OSE . . . . . . . . GOLD IN QUARTZ . . . . PERSOKATRLA ITS A ND ANECDOTES . THE WHIST CLUB . . . . . . . HINTS O F FRIENDSHIP . S . . . . A CHARACTER . . . . . . . . . ED IUK Q D UIX CY . . . . . . . . BEGINSP UBLIC L IFE AT THE TOP . LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . JA IE R S U SSELL OWEL . L . . . . . . . Fr ontispiece ELBIWOO . D . . . . . . . . . . . See page 10 E nrwoo R EAR VIEW . . . . . . . . 66 6 t 11 BEAVERB ROOK . . . . . . . . . . . 6 6 61 THE M ILL W HEEL . . . . . . . . . . t t 62 THET VAVERLE O Y A KS . . . . . . . . 66 66 63 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. THE essence of poetry eludes analysis, and like some of the forces of nature is known only by its effects. These effects are so various that any uniform standard is impossible. At times poetry lurks in satire and in images of the grotesque sometimes it swells in the fervor of religion or of patriotism sometimes it creates for itself an interior world, as the Inferno or the Paradise Lost solmetimes it expresses emotion in view of the beautif l or the sublime in nature again it shines in pict reosf hunlan life, as in the Canterbury Tales or the Arthuriad or it unfolds the mysteries of the soul and touc, hes the universal analogies, as in Shakespeare. 1 Since the time of Wordsworth, poets of the English race have been strongly infloenced by natural scenery. The poets of old made mau tlie snbject of verse. Vigil wrote like a modern of woods and fountains, but in this respect he is alone. Homer knew the blue Olympus and tlie wooded Ida, and Horace could behold the snowy summit of Soracte from his Sabine farm but all the scenery in the classical poems of antiquity excepting the Zneid would not make a page of a modern magazine. We llare been having in our time a surfeit of landscape art, as in TVords vortlih iillself and in his followers, including Bryant and other Americans. Many modern poets have been scarcely more than literal scene-painters, and hare neglected to put human figures in the foreground. Poetry reaches the soul through the intellect and through the emotions. Purely intellectual poetry may be in a sense classic, but it has no life. Poetry makes men feel, rather than nnderstand, and it suggests thoughts and emotions not expressed in words. As History is only ceremony and costume until genius connects it with the vital interests of the race, so the most artistic landscape is only a vapid picture of still-life until man appears in it, informing it with his own hbpes and fears. Poetry, in its essential quality, is disengaged from the products of the ordinary mental faculties. It is something wholly apart, not a summary nor an epigram. It never expounds, comments, nor exhorts. It teaches, if it teaches at all, by what it suggests, by subtile hints, and by apt parables. It is only a truism to say that poetry is the highest and rarest of the productions of mind. But few poets are vhollyp oetical, or of imagination all compact. Some dross is fused with their gold. The temptation to discuss is very strong with men who live and bear their part in the world...