Chapter James Russell Lowell of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

entering upon his duties at the college. In 1857, coincidently with the founding of the Atlantic Monthly, Mr. Lowell became editor-in-chief of that most notable of American magazines. This was also the year of his marriage to his second wife, Miss Frances Dunlap, of Portland, Maine. Four years later, Lowell resigned the editorial chair, but in 1864 became an associate editor, with his friend Charles Eliot Norton, of the North American Review, a position which he retained ten years. To these two periodicals, Lowell contributed most of his essays on literary and nature subjects, including those which appeared in the volumes Among My Books (two series, 1870, and 1876) and My Study Windows (1871). Fireside Travels, a volume of reminiscent sketches, among which is the delightfully humorous Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, appeared in 1864.

The Civil War.

During the years of conflict, Lowell was again moved to wield the pen of satire. The second series of the Biglow Papers appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, beginning in 1862; they were published collectively in 1867. While not so brilliant as the first series, there were nevertheless some notable examples of Yankee humor and patriotic feeling in this group. In The Courtin' and Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line, the poet exercises the homely dialect upon themes remote from those of war. The farm-boy's description of springtime in New England is worthy to stand with that famous picture of June in The Vision of Sir Launfal.

"Fust come the blackbirds clatt'in' in tall trees,
An' settlin' things in windy Congresses, --
. . . . .
Then saffern swarms swing off from all the willers
So plump they look like yaller caterpillars,
Then gray hossches'nuts leetle hands unfold
Softer'n a baby's be at three days old:
Thet's robin-redbreast's almanick; he knows
Thet arter this ther's only blossom-snows;
. . . . .
'nuff sed, June's bridesman, poet o' the year,
Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here;
Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings,
Or climbs against the breeze with quiverin' wings,
Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair,
Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air."¹

Fully in accord with the solemn and ominous spirit of the time are The Washers of the Shroud, written in 1861, On Board the '76, written for the seventieth birthday of the poet Bryant, in 1864, and the Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration, July 21, 1865. This last, one of Lowell's best compositions, was written at white heat in two days' time, after the poet had despaired of accomplishing anything worthy of the occasion; then, says he, "something gave me a jog and the whole thing came out of me with a rush."² Although not without technical defects, this sonorous Ode, which glows with the patriotic fire so characteristic of its author, has come to have a recognized place among the choicest compositions of American verse. The tribute to Lincoln in the poem is perhaps the best ever paid to the memory of the martyred President.

"Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face."

Verse on Other Themes.

Other poems, the accumulated compositions of these years, were included in a new edition of his poems, published in 1869. A volume, entitled Under the Willows, appeared in the same year and also The Cathedral, the most important of Lowell's subjective poems. When, in 1874, Louis Agassiz, the great scientist and teacher, died, the event drew from Lowell, who was then in Europe, another masterpiece, the poem Agassiz. After the poet's return, two historic anniversaries were the inspiration of two more notable odes: that read at the one hundredth anniversary of the fight at Concord bridge, and Under the Old Elm, on the centenary of Washington's taking command of the American army. An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1876, completed the group published under the title Three Memorial Poems, in 1876. These three compositions confirm their author's fame as the foremost of our patriotic poets. Lowell's later compositions were collected in the volume Heartsease and Rue (1888).