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his future. He had promised his father that he would "give up poetry and go to work." So he plunged into the study of the law. He completed his studies, - for he was diligent, and even went so far as to rent an office and hang out a sign. Rumor reports that he had a client. It appears from his letters that he wrote some verses that were to win for his broken-hearted Carolinian client the affections of some cold Southern beauty, but this " case was not strictly professional. Whatever his success, his inclinations soon led him to forsake the law for literature.

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In the very small Boston of 1838, where everybody knew everybody, it was not hard for a writer of merit to gain recognition. To gain a livelihood was another matter. Except for the North American Review· which unfortunately was not yet in accord with the new spirit-few magazines then paid for articles. Young writers must make magazines for themselves, apologetic magazinelettes that tried to live without advertising' matter, and that died promptly of sheer starvation. The Miscellany was one of these. The Pioneer followed it to a speedy death. Yet both contained names that would make the fortune of a modern publisher, Lowell, Hawthorne, Poe, - of writers then unrecognized, but sure of future recog nition.

More important than the actual publication of work was the intimate association of the young authors. What the secret society had done in their college days was carried on by another organization of young men and young women -boys and girls, one might almost say-united in such wholesome companior ship as Miss Alcott loves to depict in her stories. The girls called this society the "Band"; the boys preferred to call it the "Club." It was not so much a society as a friendship. The home of each was the home of all. "Among the ten there was the simplest and most absolute personal friendship." Their meetings were informal, and their entertainment ranged from ecstacy over the sonnets of Shakespeare to tuneless and obstreperous choruses of nonsense-songs. was a group of young people, full of alert life, filled, too, with ardent enthusiasm and high aspiration.

It

A group so spiritual could not fail to be moved by the anti-slavery agitation. Lowell at first had cared little about this, but we find his interest increasing, till, partly through the influence of Maria White, he became an active worker, closely associated with Garrison, Whittier, and other outspoken abolitionists.

It is about this time that Maria White becomes prominent in his life. At their very first meeting she seems to have impressed him deeply. All who knew her seem to have felt the charm of her personality

Her picture shows a delicate girlish face, spiritual, nobly beautiful. Lowell tells of a talk with a farmer, a brown-faced giant, whose simple nature was profoundly moved by her spiritual beauty. He had never seen such a face. There was, he felt, as he told Lowell, "something supernatural" about it, something "heavenly and angelic."

It was in the time of his engagement and in the earlier years of his marriage that we find Lowell's poetic powers most active. His first volume of poems was published in 1841. It was called A Year's Life. It included little of his best work. In fact, his genius had still to "find itself," his writings were still imitative and experimental. Yet in this volume one finds such strong feeling as that of Threnodia, such delicacy as is shown in the Sirens, for all its reminiscence of Tennyson, and the sparkling delight of the Fountain. A second series followed a few years later, with decided gain in poetic individuality. There was a practical need for such gain. It was no longer a matter of small concern what work the His father's affairs had young poet should take up. become such that he must make money or go hungry. And this practical necessity seems to have operated as a not unkindly stimulus." He plunged into his work with a new energy, an energy that resulted in the production of some of his best work.

The period of the writing of Sir Launfal was for Lowell, what the year of the production of the Ancient Mariner was for Coleridge. In it he awakened to fuller realization of his own powers. His marriage, in 1844, had brought into his life a new sympathy, a new confidence and ambition. It had brought, too, a livelier interest in public affairs, an influence that was to lead to the composition of the Biglow Papers. We find him, at once, in several rôles, the dreamer and preacher of the Sir Launfal, the humorist of the Fable for Critics, and the patriot and reformer of the Biglow Papers.

Let us

The Fable

At the Sir Launfal we shall look later. glance for a moment at his other works. for Critics was satire aimed at a real evil. American literature had been stationary, resting complacently on a mistaken sense of achievement. Read Griswold's American Poets and you will get some idea of the nobodies that were put on a level with the great masters of literature. The worst of it was that it was held to be patriotic to support their pretensions. Our literary circles were mere mutual admiration societies.

With this spirit Lowell had no sympathy. In his Fable, after an introduction, rollicking in puns, conceits, and fantastic rhymes, he takes up one writer after another and points out his merits and demerits, -nor does he spare himself.

"There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme.
His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well,
But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell,
And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem

At the head of a march to the last New Jerusalem."

With regard to the comparison with English au thors, we find:

But what's that? a mass meeting? No, there come in lots
The American Disraelis, Bulwers, and Scotts,
And, in short, the American everything-elses,
Each charging the others with envies and jealousies;
By the way, 'tis a fact that displays what profusions
Of all kinds of greatness bless free institutions,
That while the Old World has produced barely eight
Of such poets as all men agree to call great. . .
With you every year a whole crop is begotten,
They're as much of a staple as corn is, or cotton.
I myself know ten Byrons, one Coleridge, three Shelleys,
Two Raphaels, six Titians, (I think) one Apelles,
Leonardos and Rubenses plenty as lichens,
One (but that one is plenty) American Dickens,
A whole flock of Lambs, any number of Tennysons,
In short, if a man has the luck to have any sons,
He may feel pretty certain that one out of twain
Will be some very great person over again."

...

Lowell believed, and this belief was one of the foundation-beliefs of his character, that the best