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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: LOB-LUP |
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LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL (1819-1891) , American author and diplomatist, was horn at Elmwood, in Cambridge , Massachusetts, en the 22nd of February 1819, the son of Charles Lowell (1782-1860.1 On his mother's side he was descended from the Spences and Traills, who made their home in the Orkney Islands, his great-grandfather, Robert Traill, returning to England on the breaking out of hostilities in 1775. He was brought up in a neighbourhood bordering on the open country, and from his earliest years he found a companion in nature; he was also early initiated into the reading of poetry and romance, hearing Spenser and Scott in childhood, and introduced to old ballads by his mother. He had for schoolmaster an Englishman who held by the traditions of English schools, se that before he entered Harvard College he had a more familiar acquaintance with Latin verse than most of his fellowsa familiarity which showed itself later in his mock-pedantic accompaniment to The Biglow Papers and his macaronic poetry. He was a wide reader, but a somewhat indifferent student, graduating at Harvard without special honours in 1838. During his college course he wrote a number of trivial pieces for a college magazine, and shortly after graduating printed for private circulation the poem which his class asked him to write for their graduation festivities.He was uncertain at first what vocation to choose, and vacillated between business, the ministry, medicine and law. He decided at last to practise law, and after a course at the Harvard law school, was admitted to the bar. While studying for his profession, however, he contributed poems and prose articles to various magazines. He cared little for the law, regarding it simply as a distasteful means of livelihood, yet his experiments in writing did not encourage him to trust to this for support. An unhappy adventure in love deepened his sense of failure, but he became betrothed to Maria White in the autumn of 1840, and the next twelve years of his life were deeply affected by her influence. She was a poet of delicate power, but also possessed a lofty enthusiasm, a high conception of purity and justice, and a practical temper which led her to concern herself 1 See under LOWELL, JOHNin the movements directed against the evils of intemperance and slavery. Lowell was already looked upon by his companions as a man marked by wit and poetic sentiment; Miss White was admired for her beauty, her character and her intellectual gifts, and the two became thus the hero and heroine among a group of ardent young men and women. The first-fruits of this passion was a volume of poems, published in 1841, entitled A Year's Life, which was inscribed by Lowell in a veiled dedication to his future wife, and was a record of his new emotions with a backward glance at the preceding period of depression and irresolution. The betrothal, moreover, stimulated Lowell to new efforts towards self-support, and though nominally maintaining his law office, he threw his energy into the establishment , in company with a friend, Robert Carter, of a literary journal, to which the young men gave the name of The Pioneer
Pioneer
The venture confirmed Lowell in his bent towards literature. At the close of 1843 he published a collection of his poems, and a year later he gathered up certain material which he had printed, sifted and added to it, and produced Conversations on some of the Old Poets. The dialogue form was used merely to secure an undress manner of approach to his subject; there was no attempt at the dramatic. The book reflects curiously Lowell's mind at this time, for the conversations relate only partly to the poets and dramatists of the Elizabethan period; a slight suggestion sends the interlocutors off on the discussion of current reforms in church and state and society. Literature and reform were dividing the author's mind, and continued to do so for the next decade. Just as this book appeared Lowell and Miss White were married, and spent the winter and early spring of 1845 in Philadelphia. Here, besides continuing his literary contributions to magazines, Lowell had a regular engagement as an editorial writer on The Pennsylvania Freeman, a fortnightly journal devoted to the Anti-Slavery cause. In the spring of 1845 the Lowells returned to Cambridge and made their home at Elmwood. On the last day of the year their first child, Blanche, was born, but she lived only fifteen months. A second daughter, Mabel, was born six months after Blanche's death, and lived to survive her father; a third, Rose, died an infant. Lowell's mother meanwhile was living, sometimes at home, some-times at a neighbouring hospital, with clouded mind, and his wife was in frail health. These troubles and a narrow income conspired to make Lowell almost a recluse in these days, but from the retirement of Elmwood he sent forth writings which show how large an interest
York
contemporary writers, and in which, the publication being anony- I abundantly presented in the pages of The North American mous, he included himself; The Vision of Sir Launfal, a Review during the years 1862-1872, when he was associated with romantic story suggested by the Arthurian legendsone of his Mr Charles Eliot Norton in its conduct. This magazine especially most popular poems; and finally The Biglow Papers. gave him the opportunity of expression of political views during Lowell had acquired a reputation among men of letters and the eventful years of the War of the Union. It was in The a cultivated class of readers, but this satire at once brought Atlantic during the same period that he published a second him a wider fame. The book was not premeditated; a single series of The Biglow Papers. Both his collegiate and editorial poem, called out by the recruiting for the abhorred Mexican duties stimulated his critical powers, and the publication in the war, couched in rustic phrase and sent to the Boston Courier, two magazines, followed by republication in book form, of a had the inspiriting dash and electrifying rat-tat-tat of this I series of studies of great authors, gave him an important place new recruiting sergeant in the little army of Anti-Slavery re- as a critic. Shakespeare, Dryden, Lessing, Rousseau, Dante, formers. Lowell himself *discovered what he had done at the Spenser, Wordsworth, Milton, Keats, Carlyle, Thoreau, Swinburne, same time that the public did, and he followed the poem with Chaucer, Emerson, Pope, Graythese are the principal subjects eight others either in the Courier or the Anti-Slavery Standard. of his prose, and the range of topics indicates the catholicity of He developed four well-defined characters in the processa his taste. He wrote also a number of essays, such as " My Garden country farmer, Ezekiel Biglow, and his son Hosea; the Rev. Acquaintance," " A Good Word for Winter," " On a Certain Homer Wilbur, a shrewd old-fashioned country minister; and Condescension in Foreigners," which were incursions into the Birdofredum Sawin, a Northern renegade who enters the army, field of nature and society. Although the great bulk of his together with one or two subordinate characters; and his writing was now in prose, he made after this date some of his stinging satire and sly humour are so set forth in the vernacular most notable ventures in poetry. In 1868 he issued the next of New England as to give at once a historic dignity to this collection in Under the Willows and other Poems, but in 1865 form of speech. (Later he wrote an elaborate paper to show he had delivered his " Ode recited at the Harvard Commemorathe survival in New England of the English of the early 17th tion," and the successive centennial historical anniversaries century.) He embroidered his verse with an entertaining drew from him a series of stately odes. apparatus of notes and mock criticism. Even his index was In 1877 Lowell, who had mingled so little in party politics spiced with wit. The book, a caustic arraignment of the course that the sole public office he had held was the nominal one of taken in connexion with the annexation of Texas and the war elector in the Presidential election of 1876, was appointed by with Mexico, made a strong impression, and the political philo
drawn
quick
confession of political faith as hopeful as it was 18J3) released him from the strain of anxiety, there came with wise and keen. The close of his stay in England was saddened the grief a readjustment of his nature and a new intellectual by the death of his second wife in 1885. After his return to activity. At the invitation of his cousin, he delivered a course America he made several visits to England. His public life had of lectures on English poets before the Lowell Institute in Boston made him more of a figure in the world; he was decorated with in the winter of 1855. This first formal appearance as a critic the highest honours Harvard could pay officially, and with and historian of literature at once gave him a new standing degrees of Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, Edinburgh and in the community, and was the occasion of his election to the Bologna. He issued another collection of his poems, Heartsease Smith Professorship of Modern Languages in Harvard College, and Rue, in 1888, and occupied himself with revising and re-then vacant by the retirement of Longfellow. Lowell accepted arranging his works, which were published in ten volumes in the appointment, with the proviso that he should have a year 1890. The last months of his life were attended by illness, and of study abroad. He spent his time mainly in Germany, visiting he died at Elmwood on the 12th of August 1891. After his Italy, and increasing his acquaintance with the French, German, death his literary executor, Charles Eliot Norton, published a Italian and Spanish tongues. He returned to America in the brief collection of his poems, and two volumes of added prose, summer of 1856, and entered upon his college duties, retaining besides editing his letters.his position for twenty years. As a teacher he proved himself The spontaneity of Lowell's nature is delightfully disclosed a quickener of thought amongst students, rather than a close in his personal letters. They are often brilliant, and sometimes and special instructor. His power lay in the interpretation of very penetrating in their judgment of men and books; but the literature rather than in linguistic study, and his influence over most constant element is a pervasive humour, and this humour, his pupils was exercised by his own fireside as well as in the by turns playful and sentimental, is largely characteristic of his relation, always friendly and familiar, which he held to them poetry, which sprang from a genial temper, quick
Mabel. is of a more simple character. There was an apparent conflict In the autumn of 1857 The Atlantic Monthly was established, in him of the critic and the creator, but the conflict was superficial. and Lowell was its first editor. He at once gave the magazine The man behind both critical and creative work was so genuine, the stamp of high literature and of bold speech on public affairs. that through his writings and speech and action he impressed He held this position only till the spring of x861, but he continued himself deeply upon his generation in America, especially upon to make the magazine the vehicle of his poetry and of some the thoughtful and scholarly class who looked upon him as prose for the rest of his life; his prose, however, was more especially their representative. This is not to say that he was a man of narrow sympathies. On the contrary, he was demo- ' loom. Experiments were successfully carried on at Waltham in cratic in his thought, and outspoken in his rebuke of whatever seemed to him antagonistic to the highest freedom. Thus, without taking a very active part in political life, he was recognized as one of the leaders of independent political thought. He found expression in so many ways, and was apparently so inexhaustible in his resources, that his very versatility and the ease with which he gave expression to his thought sometimes stood in the way of a recognition of his large, simple political ideality and the singleness of his moral sight. WaIrINGS.The Works of James Russell Lowell, in ten volumes (Boston and New York
Mifflin
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