A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JAMES RUS SELL LOWELL I ELMWOOD ABOUT half a mile from the Craigie House in Cambridge, Mass., on the road leading to the old town of Watertown, is Elmwood, a spacious square house set amongst lilac and syringa bushes, and overtopped by elms. Pleasant fields are on either side, and from the windows one may look out on the Charles River winding its way among the marshes. The house itself is one of a group which before the war for independence belonged to Boston merchants and officers of the crown who refused to take the side of the revolutionary party. Tory Row was the name given to the broad winding road on which the houses stood. Great farms and gardens were attached to them, and some sign of their roomy ease still remains. The estates fell into the hands of various persons after the war, and in process of time Longfellow came to occupy Craigie House Elmwood at that time was the property of the Reverend Charles Lowell, minister of the West Church in Boston; and when Longfellow thus became his neighbor, James Russell Lowell was a Junior in Harvard College. He was born at Elmwood February 22, 1819. Any one who will read An In dian-Summer Reverie will discover how affectionately Lowell dwelt on the scenes of nature and life amidst which he grew ap. Indeed, it would be a pleasant task to draw from the full storehouse of his poetry the golden phrases with which he characterizes the trees, meadows, brooks, flowers, birds, and human companions that were so near to him in his youti and so vivid in his recollection. In his prose works also especially My Garden Acquaintance and A Good Word for Winter, Lowell has given glimpses of the outdoor life in the midst of which he grew up; and in Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, many reminiscences of his early life. II EDUCATION Lowell's acquaintance with books and his schooling began early. He learned his letters at a dame school. Mr. William Wells, an Englishman, opened a classical school in one of the spacious Tory Row houses near Elmwood, and, bringing with him English public school thoroughness and severity, gave the boy a drilling in Latin, which he must have made almost a native speech, to judge by the ease with which he handled it afterward in mock heroics. Of course he went to Harvard College. He lived at his father's house, more than a mile away from the college yard; but this could have been no great privation to him, for he had the freedom of his friends' rooms, and he loved the open air. Lowell was but fifteen years old when he entered college in the class which graduated in 1838. He was a reader, as so many of his fellows were, and the letters which he wrote shortly after leaving college show how intent he had been on making acquaintance with the best things in literature. He began also to scribble verse, and he wrote both poems and essays for college magazines. His class chose him their poet for Class Day, and he wrote his poem; but he was careless about conforming to college regulations respecting attendance at morning prayers, and for this was suspended from college the last term of his last year, and not allowed to come back to read his poem. He was sent to Concord for his rustication, and so passed a few weeks of his youth Amongst scenes dear to every lover of AmericaL letters. III FIRST VENTURE After his graduation he set about the study of law, and for a short time was even a clerk in a counting-room; but his bent was strongly toward literature. There was at that time no magazine of commanding importance in America, and young men were given to starting magazines with enthusiasm and very little other capital. Such a one was the Boston Miscellany, launched by Nathan Hale, Lowell's college friend, and for this Lowell wrote gayly. It lived a year, and shortly after Lowell himself, with Robert Carter, essayed The Pioneer in 1843. It lived just three months; but in that time printed contributions by Lowell, Hawthorne, Whittier, Story, Poe, and Dr. Parsons, a group which it would be hard to match in any of the little maga zines that hop across the world's path to-day. Lowell had already collected, in 1841, the poems which he had written and sometimes contributed to periodicals into a volume entitled A Year's Life; but he retained very little of the contents in later editions of his poems. The book has a special interest, however, from its dedication, in veiled phrase, to Maria White. He became engaged to this lady in the fall of 1840, and the next twelve years of his life were profoundly affected by her influence. Herself a poet of delicate power, she brought into his life an intelligent sympathy with his work; it was, however, her strong moral enthusi asm, her lofty conception of purity and justice, which kindled his spirit and gave force and direction to a character which was ready to respond, and yet might otherwise have delayed active expression. They were not married until 1844; but they were not far apart in their homes, and during these years Lowell was making those early ventures in literature, and first raids upon political and moral evil. which foretold the direction of his later work, and gave some hint of its abundance. About the time of his marriage, he published two books which by their character show pretty well the divided interest of his life. His bent from the beginning was more decidedly literary than that of any contemporary American poet. That is to say, the history and art of literature divided his interest with the production of literature, and he carried the unusual gift of a rare critical power, joined to hearty spontaneous creation. It may indeed be guessed that the keenness of judgment and incisiveness of wit which characterize his examination of literature sometimes interfered with his poetic power, and made him liable to question his art when he would rather have expressed it unchecked. One of the two books was a volume of poems; the other was a prose work, Conversations on Some of the Old Poets. He did not keep this book alive; but it is interesting as marking the enthusiasm of a young scholar treading a way then almost wholly neglected in America, and intimating a line of thought and study in which he afterward made most noteworthy venture. Another series of poems followed in 1848, and in the same year The Vision of Sir Launfal. Perhaps it was in reaction from the marked sentiment of his poetry that he issued now a jeu d'esprit, A Fable for Critics, in which he hit off, with a rough and ready wit, the characteristics of the writers of the day, not forgetting himself in these lines: "There is Lowell, who 's striving Parnassus to climb At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem." This, of course, is but a half-serious portrait of himself, and it touches but a single feature; others can say better that Lowell's ardent nature showed itself in the series of |