and made him liable to question his art when he would
rather have expressed it unchecked. In connection with
Robert Carter, a littérateur who has lately died, he began,
in 1843, the publication of The Pioneer, a Literary and
Critical Magazine, which lived a brilliant life of three
months. A volume of poetry followed in 1844, and the
next year he published Conversations on Some of the Old
Poets, —a book which is now out of print, but interesting
as marking the enthusiasm of a young scholar, treading a
way
then almost wholly neglected in America, and intimat-
ing a line of thought and study in which he afterward made
most noteworthy ventures. Another series of poems fol-
lowed in 1848, and in the same year The Vision of Sir
Launfal. Perhaps it was in reaction from the marked sen-
timent 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
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme ;
He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders,
But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders;
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching
Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching;
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."

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 satirical poems which made him famous, The Biglow Papers, written in a spirit of indignation and fine scorn, when the Mexican War was causing many Americans to blush with shame at the use of the country by a class for its own ignoble ends. The true patriotism which marked these and

other of his early poems burned with a steady glow in after years, and illumined poems of which we shall speak presently.

After a year and a half spent in travel, Lowell was appointed in 1855 to the Belles Lettres professorship at Harvard, previously held by Longfellow. When the Atlantic Monthly was established in 1857 he became its editor, and soon after relinquishing that post he assumed part editorship of the North American Review. In these two magazines, as also in Putnam's Monthly, he published poems, essays, and critical papers, which have been gathered into vok umes. His prose writings, besides the volumes already. mentioned, include two series of Among my Books, histori cal and critical studies, chiefly in English literature; and My Study Windows, including, with similar subjects, observations of nature and contemporary life. During the war for the Union he published a second series of the Biglow Papers, in which, with the wit and fun of the earlier series, there was mingled a deeper strain of feeling and a larger tone of patriotism. The limitations of his style in these satires forbade the fullest expression of his thought and emotion; but afterward in a succession of poems, occasioned by the honors paid to student-soldiers in Cambridge, the death of Agassiz, and the celebration of national anniversaries during the years 1875 and 1876, he sang in loftier, more ardent strains. The interest which readers have in Lowell is still divided between his rich, abundant prose, and his thoughtful, often passionate verse. The sentiment of his early poetry, always humane, was greatly enriched by larger experience; so that the themes which he chose for his later work demanded and received a broad treatment, full of sympathy with the most generous instincts of their time, and built upon historic foundations.

In 1877 he went to Spain as Minister Plenipotentiary. In 1880 he was transferred to England as Minister Plenipotentiary near the Court of St. James. His duties as

American Minister did not prevent him from producing occasional writings, chiefly in connection with public events. Notable among these are his address at the unveiling of a statue of Fielding, and his address on Democracy.

Mr. Lowell returned to the United States in 1885, and was not afterward engaged in public affairs, but passed the rest of his life quietly in his Cambridge home, prevented by failing health from doing much literary work. He made a collection of his later poems in 1888, under the title Heartsease and Rue, and carefully revised his complete works, published in ten volumes in 1890.