always clear. Prodigality and profusion is a rich fault, even though it may yield an embarrassment of material, but Lowell has always the sudden wit to take us back— and after all we have had a delightful escapade.

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His diction is often freighted with words of other languages, both new and old, but he knew so many languages he could not help unconsciously drawing on them for his purpose. Everywhere you can find some happy critical characterisation condensed with a phrase or epithet, as: Spenser's style is Venetian"; "the poet's fatally chosen words." And his critical estimates were independent and sure. No one could judge better what was original, for no man knew better what had been said once, and by whom. This was the reason why he could use the comparative method to the best advantage. In his essay on Milton he treats of the modes of Shakespeare, Milton, and Tasso. How prophetic this gift of analogy made him is instanced in the comparison he made between Lincoln and Henry IV. of France. This comparison was made before the assassination of the president had completed the parallelism of the two lives.

As a critic he is catholic and cosmopolitan, as much so as Edward Dowden. He is equally at home with the formality of Pope, and the mysticism of Dante; with Spenser, Carlyle, Keats, Goethe, Molière, Thoreau, and Emerson-his range only measures his sympathies. The essay on Dante gathers up all his personal communing with the exiled Florentine-and strengthens it by a knowledge of Italian history, literature, and atmosphere such as few people possess. To read his essays gives you

contact with the ripest culture-and a criticism that does not make the school-boy blunder of denying one kind of perfection because it is another. We cannot be too proud of Lowell, our typical man of letters, who has been the American apostle to bring the good tidings of "sweetness and light," and we may add freshness, into English literature.

REMINISCENCES AND CRITICAL STUDIES.

SELECTED

LOWELL'S FAMILY AND ANCESTRAL HOME.

THE family [of the poet] was in comfortable circumstances; the father was prudent and saving, and the children, though brought up in old-fashioned simplicity, never knew want. The house counted for much in the family happiness. It is sombre and without architectural beauty, but spacious and comfortable. It is set in an ample grassy field near Mount Auburn, just away from the travelled road, and is surrounded by tall, thick, sheltering trees and flowering shrubs. It is a fit retreat for a dreamer or philosopher, since no sound breaks the stillness except that of the wind in the pine boughs, and the songs of the many birds that lodge in the thick coverts. The place which this garden held in the poet's mind is shown in many poems and essays.-DR. FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD, in "The Poet and the Man: Recollections and Appreciations of James Russell Lowell" (Hou.).

LOWELL AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE.

Lowell attended a good private school, and 'entered Harvard College in his sixteenth year; but he was a lag

ging student, indifferent to reproof, and at last was rusticated. The place of his rustication was Concord, and he refers to it in "The Biglow Papers":

"I know the village, though: was sent there once
A-schoolin', cause to home I played the dunce."

He was still in banishment when the course was ending; and it is said he saw the out-door festivities of his class through a rift in the cover of a wagon in which he had surreptitiously returned. He had written verse while in college, and had been chosen class-poet, but, as the authorities refused to remit his sentence, the poem was printed and was not read by its author.

Lowell often spoke of this, but without bitterness; he felt that the action of the faculty was just. He said to the writer that while in college he was in the habit of reading all the books he came across, excepting those prescribed for his course of study, and that he was sure he would never have been allowed to take his degree if he had not been his father's son. He lamented this early perverseness, because there remained so much more to do before he could become a scholar.-DR. FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD. (Cf. above.)

LOWELL'S EARLY KNOWLEDGE OF LITERATURE AND BOOKS.

In his father's library Lowell came to know every rood in the long highway of English literature, besides making

some excursions in foreign territory. He had the prescience of genius, and assimilated all his eager eyes fell upon and his instinctive judgment approved. He read all manner of out-of-the-way things; and it was seldom in his maturer years that a book was named of which he did not know something.-DR. FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD,

LOWELL'S CONVERSION TO THE ANTI-SLAVERY
CAUSE.

Another development was in progress. From a gay youth, fond of chaffing, and ready to jeer at abolitionists, Lowell became a reformer and a devotee to spiritual life. No more complete renunciation of the "world" was ever made, as succeeding years were to show; and it was not an easy thing for a favourite of fortune, especially for one with such a buoyant nature. Love was the agent in this conversion. He had become enamoured of Miss Maria White, a young lady of rare beauty and noble character. She wrote poems of unusual merit, and one of them, "The Alpine Sheep," is widely known. Chiefly she was devoted to the anti-slavery cause, and made her influence felt. The change on the part of Lowell was not the passing whim of a lover, but became the steadfast purpose of He came to see that slavery was a contradiction and lie in the constitution of a free country, and from that time his best efforts were devoted to its overthrow.-DR. FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD. (Cf. above.)

a man.