JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 1819-1891. BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY. BY JOHN EBENEZER BRYANT. LOWELL is America's most virile poet. He fails of being greatest in the volume and range of his achievement, which is neither large nor wide. His work, too, is uneven. Its excellence is not sustained. It lacks artistic completeness and finish. But in its best phases it is strong, virile, and inspiring to a degree not reached by any other American poet; to a degree, too, not reached by any contemporary poet save Browning. Lowell's greatest work is his satire. As a satirist-that is to say, as a political satirist-he is unapproached by any contemporary-unapproached, indeed, by any modern. save Butler and Dryden. But while in strength and directness of wit he is superior to Butler, in charm of humour and fancy he is infinitely superior to Dryden. Lowell, indeed, unites the humour and grace of the one with the wit and strength of the other. In the complete effectiveness of his work he is not equalled by either. He thus stands unrivalled-the greatest political satirist of the English-speaking world. Lowell had the true poet's love of nature. In this love he was far more richly endowed than any other American poet save Bryant; far more richly endowed than even Bryant was, for in Lowell the passion did not abate, but rather grew with his years. It was the sustaining force in all his work, and after his wit and humour his most distinguishing characteristic. The passion, too, was real; flowers, trees, brooks, rivers, meadows, woods, glens, mountains, even birds and animals, were the companions of his soul. He knew them as a mother knows her children, as a lover knows his mistress—and no mood of theirs was ever unloved by him. Even in his satires it was his familiarity with nature that supplied him with his strongest and most captivating images and metaphors. In all his poems, indeed, it is his personal, individual familiarity with nature as manifested in his own clime and his own country that made him the real virile poet, the true new-world poet, that he is, and not the mere versewriting imitator of the poets of other lands and other climes which so many of his predecessors and contemporaries were. "Jes' so with poets; wut they've airly read Gits kind o' worked into their heart an' head,` Nor hev a feelin', ef it doosn't smack O' wut some critter chose to feel 'way back; |