a greater success in England. He was respected for his literary attainments and for his ability as a speaker. He had the reputation of being one of the very best speakers in the Kingdom, and he was in much demand to speak at banquets and on special occasions. Many of his articles and speeches were on political subjects, the greatest of these being his address on Democracy, at Birmingham, in 1884.

Although his later years showed his great achievements in prose, he did not cease to produce poetry. The second series of the Biglow Papers was written during the Civil War. His Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration in 1865, in honor of those who fell in freeing the slave,

"Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse," his three memorial poems: (1) Ode Read at the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Fight at Concord Bridge (1875), (2) Under the Old Elm (1875), written in commemoration of Washington's taking command of the Continental forces under that tree, a century before, and (3) Ode for the Fourth of July, 1876, are well-known patriotic American poems.

After returning from England and passing from the excitement of diplomatic and social life to a quiet New England home, he wrote:

"I take my reed again and blow it free

Of dusty silence, murmuring, Sing to me.'
And, as its stops my curious touch retries,
The stir of earlier instincts I surprise,
Instincts, if less imperious, yet more strong,

And happy in the toil that ends with song."

In 1888 he published a volume of poems called Heartsease and Rue. He died in 1891 and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, near his "Elmwood" home, not far from the last resting place of Longfellow.

Poetry.

Lowell wrote many short lyrical poems, which rank high. Some of them, like Our Love is not a Fading Earthly Flower, O Moonlight Deep and Tender, To the Dandelion, and The First Snow-Fall are exquisite lyrics of nature and sentiment. Others, like The Present Crisis, have for their text, "Humanity sweeps onward," and teach high moral ideals. Still others, like his poems written in commemoration of some event, are instinct with patriot

ism.

He is best known for three long poems, The Biglow Papers, A Fable for Critics, and The Vision of Sir Launfal. All of these, with the exception of the second series of The Biglow Papers, appeared in his wonderful poetic year, 1848.

He will, perhaps, be longest known to posterity for that remarkable series of papers written in what he called the Yankee dialect and designed at first to stop the extension of slavery and afterwards to suppress it. These are called "Biglow Papers" because the chief author is represented to be Hosea Biglow, a typical New England farmer. The immediate occasion of the first series of these Papers was the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846. Lowell said in after years, "I believed our war with Mexico to be essentially a war of false pretences, and that it would result in widening the boundaries and so prolonging the life of slavery." The second series of these Papers, dealing with our Civil War, began to be published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862. The poem lives to-day, however, not for its censure of the war or for its attack on slavery, but for its expression of the mid-nineteenth century New England ideals, hard common sense, and dry humor. Where shall we turn for a more incisive statement of the Puritan's attitude toward pleasure?

"Pleasure doos make us Yankees kind o' winch,

Ez though 't wuz sunthin' paid for by the inch;
But yit we du contrive to worry thru,

Ef Dooty tells us thet the thing's to du,
An' kerry a hollerday, ef we set out,

Ez stiddily ez though 't wuz a redoubt."

The homely New England common-sense philosophy is in evidence throughout the Papers. We frequently meet such expressions as :

"I like the plain all wool o' common-sense

Thet warms ye now, an' will a twelve-month hence."

"Now's the only bird lays eggs o' gold."

"Democ'acy gives every man

The right to be his own oppressor."

"But Chance is like an amberill, — it don't take twice to lose it."

"An' you've gut to git up airly,

Ef you want to take in God."

In the second series of the Papers, there is one of Lowell's best lyrics, The Courtin'. It would be difficult to find another poem which gives within the compass of four lines a better characterization of many a New England maiden :

"... she was jes' the quiet kind

Whose natur's never vary,

Like streams that keep a summer mind,

Snowhid in Jenooary."

This series contains some of Lowell's best nature poetry. We catch rare glimpses of

"Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill

All silence an' all glisten,"

and we actually see a belated spring

"Toss the fields full o' blossoms, leaves, an' birds."

The Vision of Sir Launfal has been the most widely read of Lowell's poems. This is the vision of a search for the Holy Grail. Lowell in a letter to a friend called the poem "a sort of story and more likely to be popular than what I write about generally." But the best part of the poem is to be found in the apotheosis of the New England June, in the Prelude to Part I. : —

"And what is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days;

Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays.”

The poem teaches a noble lesson of sympathy with suffering :

"Not what we give, but what we share, -
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, —
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me."

Lowell said that he "scrawled at full gallop" A Fable for Critics, which is a humorous poem of about two thousand long lines, presenting an unusually excellent criticism of his contemporary authors. In this most difficult type of criticism, Lowell was not infallible; but a comparison of his criticisms with the verdicts generally accepted to-day will show his unusual ability in this field. Not a few of these criticisms remain the best of their kind, and they serve to focus many of the characteristics of the authors. of the first half of the nineteenth century. It will benefit. all writers, present and prospective, to read this criticism. on Bryant :

"He is almost the one of your poets that knows

How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in Repose;
If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar

His thought's modest fulness by going too far;
'Twould be well if your authors should all make a trial
Of what virtue there is in severe self-denial,

And measure their writings by Hesiod's staff,

Who teaches that all has less value than half."

Especially humorous are those lines which give a recipe for the making of a Washington Irving and those which describe the idealistic philosophy of Emerson : —

"In whose mind all creation is duly respected
As parts of himself - just a little projected."