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LETTEES OF
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

LETTERS

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

EDITED BY

CHARLES ELIOT NORTON

YOL. II, PART I

(Bound for Horatio N. Fraser)

NEW YOEK

HAEPEE & BEOTHEES, PUBLISHEES
1894

LETTERS OF

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

EDITED BY

CHARLES ELIOT NORTON

VOLUME II.

NEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1894

CONTENTS OF VOL II

1868-1872

LIFE AT ELMWOOD. — " UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER
POEMS." — "MY STUDY WINDOWS." — "AMONG MY BOOKS,"
FIRST SERIES. — "THE CATHEDRAL." — VISIT FROM THOMAS
HUGHES.

LETTERS TO C. E. NORTON, R. W. EMERSON, E. L. GODKIN, LES-
LIE STEPHEN, J. B. THAYER, W. D. HOWELLS, J. T. FIELDS,
MISS NORTON, MISS CABOT, T. B. ALDRICH, THOMAS HUGHES,
R. S. CHILTON, F. H. UNDERWOOD page I

VII

1872-1876

VISIT TO EUROPE I ENGLAND, RESIDENCE IN PARIS, ITALY,
PARIS, ENGLAND. — HONORARY DEGREE FROM OXFORD. —
ELEGY ON AGASSIZ. — RETURN TO ELMWOOD. — RESUMPTION
• OF PROFESSORIAL DUTIES. — CENTENNIAL POEMS AT CON-
CORD AND CAMBRIDGE. — " AMONG MY BOOKS," SECOND
SERIES. — ENTRANCE INTO POLITICAL LIFE. — DELEGATE
TO THE NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. — PRESI-
DENTIAL ELECTOR.

LETTERS TO MISS GRACE NORTON, GEORGE PUTNAM, MISS NOR-
TON, THOMAS HUGHES, C. E. NORTON, LESLIE STEPHEN, E. L.
GODKIN, T. B. ALDRICH, MRS. L. A. STIMSON, W. D. HOWELLS,

T. S. PERRY, MRS. , J. W. FIELD, R. S. CHILTON, R. W.

GILDER, JOEL BENTON, E. P. BLISS, H. W. LONGFELLOW . 8 1

IV CONTENTS OF VOL. II

VIII

1877-1880

VISIT TO BALTIMORE. — APPOINTED MINISTER TO SPAIN. — LIFE
IN MADRID. — JOURNEY IN SOUTHERN FRANCE. — VISIT TO
ATHENS AND CONSTANTINOPLE. — ILLNESS OF MRS. LOWELL.
— TRANSFERRED TO LONDON.

LETTERS TO MRS. , J. B. THAYER, C. E. NORTON, F. J. CHILD,

MISS NORTON, MRS. EDWARD BURNETT, MISS GRACE NORTON,
THOMAS HUGHES, H. W. LONGFELLOW, GEORGE PUTNAM,
J. W. FIELD, MRS. W. E. DARWIN, LESLIE STEPHEN, R. W.

GILDER page 186

1880-1885

IN LONDON. — VACATION TOUR TO GERMANY AND ITALY. —
DEATH OF MRS. LOWELL. — DEPARTURE FROM ENGLAND.

LETTERS TO C. E. NORTON, H. W. LONGFELLOW, MRS. W. E.
DARWIN, R. W. GILDER, J. W. FIELD, T. B. ALDRICH,
W. D. HOWELLS, F. J. CHILD, J. B. THAYER, GEORGE PUT-
NAM, MRS. W. K. ^CLIFFORD, O. W. HOLMES, MISS GRACE
NORTON 250

1885-1889

RETURN TO AMERICA. — LIFE IN SOUTHBOROUGH AND BOS-
TON.— SUMMER VISITS TO ENGLAND.

LETTERS TO W. D. HOWELLS, C. E. NORTON," R. W. GILDER,
J. W. FIELDS, R. S. CHILTON, MISS GRACE NORTON, THE
MISSES LAWRENCE, MRS. LESLIE STEPHEN, MRS. EDWARD
BURNETT, G. H. PALMER, T. B. ALDRICH, THOMAS HUGHES,
MISS E. G. NORTON, LESLIE STEPHEN, MISS SEDGWICK,
F. H. UNDERWOOD, MRS. J. T. FIELDS, MR. AND MRS. S. WEIR
MITCHELL, MRS. W. K. CLIFFORD, MRS. W. E. DARWIN . 297

CONTENTS OF VOL. II V

1889-1891

RETURN TO ELMWOOD. — DECLINING HEALTH. — VISIT FROM
LESLIE STEPHEN. — THE END.

LETTERS TO MRS. LESLIE STEPHEN, R. W. GILDER, JOSIAH
QUINCY, THE MISSES LAWRENCE, W. D. HOWELLS, THOMAS
HUGHES, S. WEIR MITCHELL, MRS. W. K. CLIFFORD, LESLIE
STEPHEN, E. L. GODKIN, MISS KATE FIELD, C. E. NORTON,
MISS E. G. NORTON, EDWARD E. HALE, MRS. F. G. SHAW,
E. R. HOAR, MRS. EDWARD BURNETT .... page 389

INDEX 441

LETTERS OF

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

1868-1872

LIFE AT ELMWOOD. — " UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER

POEMS." "MY STUDY WINDOWS." — "AMONG MY BOOKS,"

FIRST SERIES. — " THE CATHEDRAL." — VISIT FROM THOMAS
HUGHES.

TO C. E. NORTON

Elmwood, Oct. 7, 1868.

. . . " The summer is past, the harvest is ended," and
I have not yet written to you ! Well, I was resolved I
would not write till the printers had in their hands all
the copy of my new volume of old poerns. And that
has taken longer than I expected. I have been Mar-
thaized by many small troubles. But last night I fairly
ended my work. ... I had decided to put the "June
Idyl" in the forefront and call it "A June Idyl, and
Other Poems." But Fields told me that Whittier's new
volume was to be called " A Summer Idyl " — so I was
II.— i

2 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1868

blocked there. Then I took " Appledore," merely be-
cause it was a pretty name, though I did not wish to
put that in the van. So it was all settled for the second
time. Then I was suddenly moved to finish my " Voy-
age to Vinland," part of which, you remember, was writ-
ten eighteen years ago. I meant to have made it much
longer, but maybe it is better as it is. I clapt a
beginning upon it, patched it in the middle, and then
got to what had always been my favorite part of the
plan. This was to be a prophecy by Gudrida, a woman
who went with them, of the future America. I have
written in an unrhymed alliterated measure, in very
short verse and stanzas of five lines each. It does not
aim at following the law of the Icelandic alliterated
stave, but hints at it and also at the asonante, without
being properly either. But it runs well and is melo-
dious, and we think it pretty good here, as does also
Howells. Well, after that, of course, I was all for allit-
eration, and, as I liked the poem, thought no title so
good as " The Voyage to Vinland, and Other Poems."
But Fields would not hear of it, and proposed that I
should rechristen the Idyl " Elmwood," and name the
book after that. But the more I thought of it the less
I liked it. It was throwing my sanctuary open to the
public and making a show-house of my hermitage. It
was indecent. So I fumed and worried. I was riled.
Then it occurred to me that I had taken the name of
" June Idyl " as a pis-aller, because in my haste I could
think of nothing else. Why not name it over ? So I
hit upon " Under the Willows," and that it is to be. ...
But it is awfully depressing work. They call back so

1868] TO R. W. EMERSON AND E. L. GODKIN 3

many moods, and they are so bad. I think, though,
there is a suggestion of something good in them at
least, and they are not silly. But how much the public
will stand ! I sometimes wonder they don't drive all
us authors into a corner and make a battue of the whole
concern at once. . . .

TO R. W. EMERSON

Elmwood, Oct. 14, 1868.

My dear Sir, — If you had known what a poem your
two tickets contained for me, how much they recalled,
how many vanished faces of thirty years ago, how much
gratitude for all you have been and are to us younger
men (a debt I always love to acknowledge, though I
can never repay it), you would not have dreamed of
my not being an eager hearer during the whole course.
Even were I not sure (as I always am with you) of hav-
ing what is best in me heightened and strengthened, I
should go out of loyalty to what has been one of the
great privileges of my life. I, for one,

" Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime,"

and you may be sure of one pair of ears in which the
voice is always musical and magisterial too. . . .
I am gratefully and affectionately

Your liegeman,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO E. L. GODKIN

Elmwood, Nov. 20, 1868.

. . . The cause you advocate in the Nation is not
specially American — it is that of honest men every-

4 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1868

where, and acknowledges no limits of nationality. And
let me say for your comfort, that while I have heard
the criticism of the Nation objected to as ill-natured
(though I naturally don't think it so), I have never
heard its political writing spoken of but with praise.
The other day at a dinner-table some of its criticisms
were assailed, and I said that I might be suspected of
partiality if I defended them (though I think I am not
[open to the charge] ), but that " I deliberately thought
that its discussions of politics had done more good and
influenced opinion more than any other agency, or all
others combined, in the country." This, so far as I
could judge, was unanimously assented to. At any
rate, one of my antagonists agreed with me entirely,
and no one else dissented. The criticisms in the Nation
often strike me as admirable. I sometimes dissent, but
I am getting old and good-natured, and know, more-
over, how hard it is to write well, to come even any-
where near one's own standard of good writing. . . .

. . . For my own part I am not only thankful for the
Nation, but continually wonder how you are able to
make so excellent a paper with your material. I have
been an editor and know how hard it is. ...

I had forgotten the financial question. I insist on
my own view of it. I shall write from time to time till
I think we are square. What Fields pays me, I doubt
if anybody else would. He has always been truly gen-
erous in his dealings with me. If you feel any scruples,
you can make matters even by sending the Nation for
a year to John B. Minor, Professor in the University of
Virginia, Charlottesville. Accident has lately put me

1868] TO LESLIE STEPHEN 5

in correspondence with him and given me a strong feel-
ing of respect for his character. He lost everything by
the war, but was and is a Union man, though he went
with his State. I have often wished the Nation might
have some circulation at the South, and here is a good
chance to get at one sensible man there at any rate. I
don't wish him to know where it comes from. Perhaps
it would be better to send him a number now and then
at first, till he got used to it, omitting numbers that
might startle his natural prejudices in any way. I
think it would do good. I confess to a strong sym-
pathy with men who sacrificed everything even to a
bad cause which they could see only the good side of ;
and, now the war is over, I see no way to heal the old
wounds but by frankly admitting this and acting upon
it. We can never reconstruct the South except through
its own leading men, nor ever hope to have them on
our side till we make it for their interest and com-
patible with their honor to be so. At this moment in
Virginia, the oath required by the new Constitution
makes it impossible to get a decent magistrate. . . .

TO LESLIE STEPHEN

Elmwood, Thanksgiving Day, 1868.

My dear Stephen, — I hope that while I am writing
this, with my pipe in my mouth, you and Mrs. Stephen
are not suffering those agonies that come from being
rocked in the cradle of the deep. You are wallowing
along through this dreary rain towards drearier Halifax,
and I wish instead you were going to eat turkey with
us. I am truly glad to hear that Mrs. Stephen is so

6 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1868

much better, and that she could find something to like
among us. I don't wonder that she thought America
dull, if she judged it by Elmwood. It was dull, but I
couldn't help it, for I am as stupid as a public dinner.
A host should have nothing on his mind.

Had I known where, I should have sent you my book.
You will get it before long in London, and may like it
as little as you please, if you will keep on liking me.

M was delighted with her gift from England, and

has written to say so. She was especially pleased to
get a package from London addressed to herself and
not to my care. I immediately seized the last volume
(which I had not read) and went through it before I
" retired," as Mrs. Stowe would say. I was amazingly
taken with it, and am not ashamed to confess that I
blubbered over " Beauty and the Beast," and gulped
my heart down several times in " Little Red Riding-
hood." I am no great judge, but the book struck me
as simply delightful, which, after all, is something of a
literary merit. As for Mabel, her conceit is intolerable.
The books stand on her shelves, and when her young
friends come to see her she turns the conversation
adroitly upon Miss Thackeray, and then exhibits her
prize. I gave her my book, and she has not read it
yet. At so low an ebb is taste in a democracy! I
begin to suspect an immoral tendency in " The Story
of Elizabeth."

I was very much amused with your picture of those
wretched British swells in Washington. If it is dull dur-
ing the recess, what must it be when Congress gathers
into one focus the united rays of boredom from every

1 868] TO LESLIE STEPHEN 7

corner of the country? I am thankful that we can re-
venge ourselves on part of the British race for the wrongs
of the Alabama. You gave us the heroic Semmes, and
we let loose Sumner upon your embassy. I was not
sorry you should say a kind word for poor old Johnson.
I have never thought so ill of him as becomes an ortho-
dox Republican. The worst of him was that he meant
well. As for Chase, he is a weak man with an imposing
presence — a most unhappy combination, of which the
world has not wanted examples from Saul and Pompey
down. Such men as infallibly make mischief as they
defraud expectation. If you write about American poli-
tics, remember that Grant has always chosen able lieu-
tenants. My own opinion is (I give it for what it is
worth), that the extreme Republicans will be wofully dis-
appointed in Grant. At any rate, if he should throw
away his opportunity to be an independent President, he
is not the man I take him to be. No man ever had a
better chance to be a great magistrate than he. If he
shouldn't prove to be one — well, a democracy can bear a
great deal. . . .

It is raining drearily to-day, but my sister and a nephew
and niece and Rowse are to keep festival with me, and I
shall be quite patriarchal. It is by such fetches that I
supply the want of grandchildren. However, I have grand-
nephews, and so am a kind of grandfather by brevet.

1870, my dear boy, is a far cry, but I shall look for-
ward to it as the bringer of good gifts, if it bring you
back to me. You know the way to my door and my
heart, and won't stupidly go to the Tremont House
again. Perhaps I shall keep a coach by that time, who

8 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1868

knows? Give our kindest regards to Mrs. Stephen, and
be sure that, whatever happens, it will never come to
pass that I am not heartily and affectionately

Yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO JAMES B. THAYER

Elmwood, Dec. 8, 1868.

My dear Sir, — I have never meddled with any criti-
cism of what I write, nor am I very sensitive about it,
having long ago made up my mind that whatever was
good would make its own way at last. But how could
I be other than pleased with your "notice" of my
book in the Daily Advertiser? It was sympathetic,
and what more could one ask? A criticism meant to
be friendly would be resented by a man of self-respect
as an alms. I enclose you one of a kind I am used
to,* and leave you to guess whether I ought not to
be thankful for such as yours. I was pleased that you
should remember some old verses of mine, which I also
think better of than I commonly do of what I have
written — that about the bobolink, for example.

Perhaps you thought I shouldn't like what you said
about Mr. Emerson? Not a bit of it! I am and always

* This was the notice enclosed : — " Under the Willows, and
Other Poems." By James Russell Lowell, pp. viii., 286. Boston :
Fields, Osgood & Co.

" An introductory note to this work informs us that no collec-
tion of Mr. Lowell's poems has been made since 1848. All but
two of the shortest which appear here have been printed before,
either in whole or part, the greater number having been published
more than fifteen years ago. The author's taste and scholarship
will find attentive readers for all he writes, whether prose or
poetry."

1868] TO JAMES B. THAYER 9

shall be grateful for what I owe him, and glad to ac-
knowledge it on all occasions. As for originality, I have
read too much not to know that it is never absolute,
and that it will always take care of itself. When a man
begins to be touchy about it, he has already lost what
little he ever had. One might as well take out a patent
for the cut of his jib, when those who remember the
family know perfectly well that his grandfather invent-
ed it for him.

I don't agree with you about "weariless." In lan-
guage one should be nice but not difficult. In poetry,
especially, something must be " pardoned to the spirit
of liberty." I thought of the objection when I was cor-
recting my proofs, and let the word pass deliberately.
Shakespeare has " viewless " and " woundless " ; " tire-
less" is not without authority ('spite of the double-cnten-
dre)-, and I remember "soundless sea" somewhere""br
other. I think the form is utterly indefensible, but
good nevertheless.

I don't know how to answer your queries about my
" Ode." I guess I am right, for it was matter of pure
instinct— except the strophe you quote, which I added
for balance both of measure and thought. I am not
sure if I understand what you say about the tenth stro-
phe. You will observe that it leads naturally to the
eleventh, and that I there justify a certain narrowness
in it as an expression of the popular feeling as well as
my own. I confess I have never got over the feeling of
wrath with which (just after the death of my nephew
Willie) I read in an English paper that nothing was to
be hoped of an army officered by tailors' apprentices

10 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1868

and butcher-boys. The poem was written with a vehe-
ment speed, which I thought I had lost in the skirts of
my professor's gown. Till within two days of the cele-
bration I was hopelessly dumb, and then it all came
with a rush, literally making me lean (mi fece magro),
and so nervous that I was weeks in getting over it. I
was longer in getting the new (eleventh) strophe to my
mind than in writing the rest of the poem. In that I
hardly changed a word, and it was so undeliberate that
I did not find out till after it was printed that some of
the verses lacked corresponding rhymes. All the " War
Poems " were improvisations, as it were. My blood was
up, and you would hardly believe me if I were to tell
how few hours intervened between conception and com-
pletion, even in so long a one as " Mason and Slidell."
So I have a kind of faith that the " Ode " is right be-
cause it was there, I hardly knew how. I doubt you are
right in wishing it more historical. But then I could not
have written it. I had put the ethical and political view
so often in prose that I was weary of it. The motives
of the war? I had impatiently argued them again and
again — but for an ode they must be in the blood and
not the memory. One of my great defects (I have
always been conscious of it) is an impatience of mind
which makes me contemptuously indifferent about argu-
ing matters that have once become convictions.

It bothers me sometimes in writing verses. The germ
of a poem (the idte-mlre) is always delightful to me, but
I have no pleasure in working it up. I carry them in
my head sometimes for years before they insist on be-
ing written. You will find some verses of mine in the

1 868] TO JAMES B. THAYER II

next Atlantic* the conception of which tickles me — but
half spoiled (and in verse half is more than whole) in the
writing. But what can a poor devil do who must gather
a stick here and another there to keep the domestic pot
a-boiling? My eggs take long in hatching, because I
need to brood a good while — and if one is called away
from the nest long enough to let it grow cold ?

And the " Nooning." Sure enough, where is it ? The
"June Idyl" (written in '51 or '52) is a part of what I
had written as the induction to it. The description of
spring in one of the " Biglow Papers " is another frag-
ment of the same, tagged with rhyme for the nonce. So
is a passage in " Mason and Slidell," beginning " Oh,
strange new world." The "Voyage to Vinland," the
"Pictures from Appledore," and " Fitz-Adam's Story"
were written for the " Nooning," as originally planned.
So, you see, I had made some progress. Perhaps it will
come by and by — not in the shape I meant at first, for
something broke my life in two, and I cannot piece it
together again. Besides, the Muse asks all of a man,
and for many years I have been unable to give myself
up as I would. You will have noticed that many of
the poems in my book are moody — perhaps unhealthy
(I hope you may never have reason to like " After the
Burial" better than you do), and I was mainly induced
to print them that I might get rid of them by shutting
them between two covers. Perhaps I am not very
clear, but I know what I mean.

I meant to have written you a note, but, enticed by

• * "The Flying Dutchman."

12 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1868

your friendly warmth, I have expatiated into a letter.
Forgive me, and set it down to your own friendly
warmth. It will be a warning to you in future. Mean-
while, it is some consolation that I am cheating dear
Gurney, for I ought to be doing the politics of the next
North American Review.

I remain very cordially yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

P. S. Since this was written (for it was written last
Sunday, and I have rewritten it to get rid of some too
expansive passages) Motley has given me the beginning
of one of my poems, which I had lost. I thought you
might like to have it, so I copy it on the next leaf that
you may paste it in before the poem called " A Mood,"
where it belongs. Hamilton Wild wrote it down for
Motley from memory, and as it has stuck in his head
so many years I think it must have some good in it.
I rather like it myself. I found the poem as it stands
in an old note-book. I knew that it had been printed
(part of it), and that it did not begin rightly — but could
not remember where to look for it.

I go to the ridge in the forest

Which I haunted in days gone by ;
But thou, O Memory, pourest

No magical drop in mine eye,
Nor the gleam of the secret restorest

That has faded from woodland and sky.
A presence more sad and sober

Invests the rock and the tree;
And the aureole of October

Lights the maples, but darkens me.

1868] TO JAMES T. FIELDS 13

TO J. T. FIELDS

Elmwood, Dec. 20, 1868.

My dear Fields, — ... I read your advertisement in
the Nation, and discovered with some surprise what a
remarkable person I was. It is lucky for Dante and
them fellers that they got their chance so early. I hope
I shall still be able to meet my friends on an easy foot-
ing. I trust I can unbend without too painful an air of
condescension. But make the most of me, my dear
Fields, while you have me. I begin to fear an untimely
death. Such rare apparitions are apt to vanish as unex-
pectedly as they come. There is no life-insurance for
these immortals. They have their length of days on
t'other side. For my part I don't understand how Bryant
holds out so long. Yet it was pleasant to see him re-
newing his youth like the eagles, in that fine poem
about the trees. He deserves to have a tree planted
over his grave, which I wouldn't say of many men. A
cord of wood should be a better monument for most.
There was a very high air about those verses, a tone
of the best poetic society, that was very delightful.
Tell Mrs. Fields that I think they justify his portrait.

Your January Atlantic was excellent. O. W. H. never
wrote more to my mind, so genial, so playfully tender.
And Howells. Barring a turn of phrase here and there,
I think that as good a thing as you ever printed.* It
had the uncommon merit of being interesting. That
boy will know how to write if he goes on, and then we
old fellows will have to look about us. His notice (I

* A paper entitled " Gnadenhiitten."

14 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

suppose it was his) of Longfellow's book was a master-
piece of delicate handling. How fair it was, and yet
what a kindly discretion in turning all good points to the
light ! Give my love to him, and tell him I miss him
much. Also, in noticing my book, to forget his friend-
ship, and deal honestly with me like a man.

With kind regards to Mrs. Fields and a merry Xmas
to both of you (you have made more than one of mine

merrier before now),

Yours ever,

J. R. L.

TO E. L. GODKIN

Elm wood, New Year, 1869.

My dear Godkin, — Thinking you might not otherwise
see it, I enclose you a paragraph from an harangue of Miss
Dickinson's at the Boston Music Hall last night — 3ist
December. I don't send it because you will care for
what she says about the Nation — which is weak enough
— but because it will give you a chance to say a timely
word on an important subject. This theory of settling
things by what anybody may choose to consider " hu-
manity," instead of trying to find out how they may be
settled by knowledge, is a fallacy too common in this
country. When one recollects that the Scythians (who-
ever they were) used to eat their grandfathers out of
humanity, one gets a little shy of trusting himself to it
altogether, especially as one grows older. It is awful
to contemplate — and yet profoundly instructive — that,
when we talk of the " moral nature of man," we mean
the disposition that has been bred in him by habit — that
is, by respect for the opinion of others become a habit :

1869] TO E. L. GODKIN 15

97^09, mores, mceurs, costumbri, costumi, sitte (connected, I
suppose, with the suet in suetus) — it is so in all tongues.
One must swallow the truth, though it makes one's eyes
water. Nor does this hinder one from believing in the
higher Reason, as I for one firmly do. We have an in-
stinct to prefer the good, other things being equal, and
in exact proportion to our culture we know better what
is good, and prefer it more habitually.

For your guidance, I add that there were some very
good points in the lecture — better, indeed, than I ex-
pected. But it is very droll to me that Miss Dickinson
shouldn't see that her " humanity " style of setting things
right (by instinct, namely) is the very shillelah method she
condemns so savagely in the Irish. Is it not?

The Nation continues to be a great comfort to me. I
agree so entirely with most of its opinions that I begin
to have no small conceit of my own wisdom. You have
made yourself a Power (with a big p), my dear Fellow,
and have done it honestly by honest work, courage, and

impartiality. . . .

Yours always,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO THE SAME

Elmwood, Jan. 8, 1869.

My dear Godkin, — Don't think I have gone mad that
I so pepper you with letters — I have a reason, as you
will see presently. But in the first place let me thank
you for the article on Miss Dickinson, which was just
what I wanted and expected, for (excuse me) you preach
the best lay-sermons I know of. I know it is a weak-
ness and all that, but I was born with an impulse to

1 6 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

tell people when I like them and what they do, and I
look upon you as a great public benefactor. I sit
under your preaching every week with indescribable
satisfaction, and know just how young women feel tow-
ards their parson — but let Mrs. Godkin take courage, I
can't marry you ! . . .

My interest in the Nation is one of gratitude, and
has nothing to do with my friendship for you. I am
sure, from what I hear said against you, that you are
doing great good and that you are respected. I may
be wrong, but I sincerely believe you have raised the
tone of the American press.

I don't want to pay for the Nation myself. I take a
certain satisfaction in the large F. on the address of my
copy. It is the only thing for which I was ever dead-
headed. But I wish to do something in return. So I
enclose my check for $25, and wish you to send the pa-
per to five places where it will do most good to others
and to itself. Find out five College reading-rooms, and
send it to them for a year. Those who read it will want
to keep on reading it. I can think of no wiser plan.
Send one to the University of Virginia and one to
the College of South Carolina. One, perhaps, would do
good if sent to Paul H. Hayne, Augusta, Georgia. He
was a rebel colonel, I believe, but is in a good frame
of mind, if I may judge from what he has written to
me. . . .

TO W. D. HOWELLS

Elmwood, Under the Rain, 1869.
My dear Boy, — You know very well that I would

V H.B.Hall *

FORDS, HOWARD & H U

1869] TO J. T. FIELDS 17

rather have you fond of me than write the best essay
that ever Montaigne conceived as he paced to and fro in
that bleak book-room of his. But for all that, I am
grateful for what you say, since a gray beard brings self-
distrust — at least in my case, who never had any great
confidence in anything but Truth.

But what I write this for is only to say that to be sure
I knew who the " young Vermont sculptor " was,* and
pleased myself with alluding to him for your sake ; for
when my heart is warm towards any one I like all about
him, and this is why I am so bad (or so good) a critic,
just as you choose to take it. If women only knew how
much woman there is in me, they would forgive all my
heresies on the woman-question — I mean, they would if
they were not women.

But then I am a good critic about one thing, and I
see how you have mixed me and my essay. Why, I
was thinking only this morning that if I could have you
to lecture to I could discourse with great good-luck, for
you always bring me a reinforcement of spirits.

Well, whatever happens, you can't be sorry that I
thought so much of you as I do.

With kindest regards to Mrs. Howells,

Always affectionately yours,

J. R. L.

TO J. T. FIELDS

Elmwood, March 23, 1869.

My dear Fields, — I don't see why the New York poets
should have all the sonnets to themselves, nor why

* Mr. Larkin G. Mead, the brother-in-law of Mr. Howells.
II.— 2

1 8 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

we shouldn't be littery now and then as well as they.
With the help of Walker's "Rhyming Dictionary"
and Lempriere, I have hammered out fourteen lines
to you, which I honestly think are as much like Shake-
speare's sonnets as some others I have seen. Your
name does not consent so kindly to an invocation as
Stoddard or Taylor or Boker or Richard or Bayard,
which, albeit trochees, may well displace an iambus
in the first foot.

" Richard, thy verse that like molasses runs," launch-
es your sonnet without a hitch. I tried at first to evade
the difficulty by beginning boldly,

James T., the year, in its revolving round,
Hath brought once more the tributary pig —

but it wants that classical turn which lends grace to
your true sonnets as shaped by the great masters in this
kind of writing. So I have hit on another expedient,
which I think will serve the turn. As I find some of
my critics blame me as too scholarly and obscure be-
cause I use such words as microcosm — which send even
well-read men to their dictionaries — I have added a
few notes :

Poseidon1 Fields, who dost the8 Atlantic* sway,

Making it swell, or flattening at thy will !

O glaucous* one, be thou propitious still

To me, a minnum6 dandled on thy spray!'

Eftsoons* a milk-white porkerlet8 we slay.

No sweeter e'er repaid Eumasus' 9 skill ;

A blameless Lamb10 thereon might feed his fill,

Deeming he cropped the new-sprung herb11 of May.

1869] TO J. T. FIELDS 19

Our board do thou and Amphitrite" grace;

Archbishop18 of our literary sea,

Lay by thy trident-crozier for a space,

And try our forks; or, earless14 to our plea,

Let this appease thee and the frown displace :

The Gurneys come and John16 — then answer, Ouif™

1 "Poseidon," a fabulous deity, called by the Latins Neptunus ; here
applied to Fields as presiding over the issues of the Atlantic.

2 " the Atlantic," to be read " th' Atlantic," in order to avoid the hiatus
or gap where two vowels come together. Authority for this will be found
in Milton and other poets.

3 "Atlantic '," a well-known literary magazine.

4 " Glaucus," between blue and green, an epithet of Poseidon, and an
editor who shows greenness is sure to look blue in consequence.

6 " Minnum," vulgo pro minnow, utpote species minima piscium.

6 " Dandled on thy spray." — A striking figure. Horace has piscium et
summa genus haesit ttlmo, but the poverty of the Latin did not allow this
sport of fancy with the double meaning of the word spray.

7 ' ' Ef tsoons. " — This word (I think) may be found in Spenser. It means
soon after, i. e., before long.

8 " Porkerlet," a pretty French diminutive, as in roitelet.

9 " Eumseus," the swineherd of Ulysses, a character in Homer.

10 " Lamb," a well-known literary character of the seventeenth centuxy,
chiefly remembered for having burnt his house to roast a favorite pig. He
invented mint-sauce.

11 "Herb" — grass. — Borrow a Bible, and you will find the word thus
used in that once popular work.

18 " Amphitrite," the beautiful spouse of Poseidon.

13 "Archbishop."— This is the Elizabethan style. (N. B., the play is
upon sea and see.) This term is beautifully, may I not say piously, appro-
priate, since the Grecian gods have all been replaced by Christian saints,
and St. Anthony of Padua converted the finny nomads of the deep. He
found a ready herring^ I suppose.

14 " Earless." — This is not to be taken literally, as in the case of Defoe,
or as Hotspur misinterprets Glendower's " bootless." It means simply deaf.

15 "John." — It is hardly necessary to say that there is but one John —
to wit, J. Holmes, Esq., of Holmes Place.

" " Out," a neat transition to the French tongue, conveying at once a
compliment to the learning of the person addressed and an allusion to his
editorial position. Editors and kings always say We.

20 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

There ! I think I have made that clear enough ex-
cept in one particular, namely, its meaning. I don't
admit that a sonnet needs anything so vulgar — but this
one means that I want you and Mrs. Fields to eat a
tithe-pig ('tis an offering of William's) with us in about
ten days from now. I will fix the day as soon as I find
out when the fairy creature will be ripe.

I have corrected nearly all of one volume, and dreary
work it is. I know nothing more depressing than to
look one's old poems in the face. If Rousseau's brats
had come back upon his hands from the Enfans Trouvfc,
he would have felt just as I do.

Always yours,

J. R. L.

TO THE SAME

Elmwood, April i, 1869.

My dear Fields, — The late Governor Gore, of pious
memory, having issued his proclamation for a fast, in-
continently thereafter sent out invitations for a dinner
upon the same day, and thereby lost as much credit for
piety as he gained praise for hospitality. As a politician,
the balance was clearly against him in a community
whose belief in immortality was not based upon mate-
rial nutriment. But as a man, it may be suspected that
he lost nothing except in the opinion of those who were
not invited. If Governor Claflin (if I am right in the
name of our present illustrious chief magistrate) had
known that my pig would have been exactly ripe on
the 8th day of April, and that twenty-four hours (not
to speak of forty -eight) would convert him into vulgar
pork, he would have doubtless chosen another occasion

1869] TO J. T. FIELDS

for proving his devotion to the principles of our Puritan
forefathers. That sense of culinary propriety which led
Moses to forbid the seething of a kid in its mother's
milk would have induced him to spare my suckling the
vulgarization of a single day longer amid the multitu-
dinous temptations of the sty. Fancy that object of
our tender solicitude exposed, like Eve, to the solicita-
tion of an apple, still worse of some obscener vegetable!
I will not even suggest a turnip, for that were too hor-
rible. Even an unbeliever in the literal inspiration of
Scripture would reject such an hypothesis with disgust.
Deeply revolving these things, and also the fact that Gur-
ney can't come either on Wednesday or Friday, I must
fix on Thursday next as the day of consummation.

Those who have read the excellent Claflin's proclama-
tion (I have not) can take their measures accordingly.
They can deny themselves the second helping. They
can leave a bit of untasted cracklin on their plates, or,
defying the wrath of an offended deity with a tant de
bruit pour une omelette, they can eat their fill. At any
rate, Thursday the 8th is the day — if I have a house
over my head.

I say this because we have been April-fooled with an
alarm of fire to-day. The house was thick with smoke
to the coughing-point, and I sent for a carpenter to rip
up here and there. We were undoubtedly afire, but,
thank God, we went out. It was not pleasant while it
lasted, but Vulcan showed a consideration I can't thank
him too much for in coming by daylight. But fancy
seeing smoke come up through the chinks of your gar-
ret-floor in a house like this ! Yet this we saw. I con-

22 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

fess I expected to spend the night at my sister's in Rox-
bury, and even now I am almost afraid to go to bed lest
it may begin again. I had a vision of our two chimneys
standing like the ruins of Persepolis.

Therefore, if we don't burn down, we shall expect you
on Thursday ; and if we do, why, then we will invite our-
selves to dine with you.

Yours always,

J. R. L.

TO THE SAME

Elmwood, April 5, 1869.

My dear Fields, — If it had been as hard for Eve to eat
her apple as for me to get my pig eaten, we should all
be at this moment enjoying an income of a million a
minute and our expenses paid — with roast pig growing
on every bush. The Greeks thought a great man strug-
gling with the storms of fate the sublimest spectacle
offered to mortal eyes; but if QEdipus begging a meal's
meat be an awful sight, is there not even something
more pathetic in the case of him who strives in vain to
give away a dinner? The pleasure of eating roast pig
on Fast Day, in such company as I reckoned on, could
only have been increased by adding a stray Jew to our
commensals. But, alas, " What is this life ? What asken
man to have?" Our cook is gone! And though Le-
nore's mother said many sensible things to console her
for a far lighter loss — that of a dragoon — yet the answer
was conclusive,

" O Mutter, Mutter, hin ist hin /"
If hin isn't hin, what is? In short, we must postpone

1869] TO MISS NORTON 33

our dinner. That pig, like Hawthorne's youth asleep by
the fountain, will never know how near Fate came to
him and passed on.

I hope by Thursday week to have supplied the place
of the delinquent — perhaps to our common advantage.
Mary was a cook merely by a brevet conferred by her-
self, and I doubt whether she had the genius for that
more transcendental touch which such a subject of un-
fallen innocence demands. The little creature might
have been heathenishly sacrificed instead of being served
up with that delicacy which befits Xtians. In such
cases, a turn more or a turn less may lose all, and one
who might afterwards have grown up into a learned pig
(who knows but into a Professor !) is cut off untimely to
no good purpose. Let us hope for the best — let us hope
that if we can't have him, the world may gain a Bacon
or a Hogg or a Pig-ault Lebrun. If we get a cook —
and we already hear of one — our festival is but pro-
rogued ; luckily, he will not be too old, even with an
added week. I shall send word at once, so think of a
dinner being put off because there won't be a death in
the family ! My heart feels like a pig of lead ;

But I am always affectionately yours,

J. R. L.

Don't think I have had a paralysis; I have only
bought a gold pen.

TO MISS NORTON

Elmwood, April 6, 1869.

. . . Authors, my altogether dear woman, can't write
letters. At best they squeeze out an essay now and

24 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

then, burying every natural sprout in a dry and dreary
sand-flood, as unlike as possible to those delightful fresh-
ets with which your heart overflows the paper. They
are thinking of their punctuation, of crossing their fs
and dotting their ?s, and cannot forget themselves in
their correspondent, which I take to be the true recipe
for a letter. . . . Now, you know that the main excel-
lence of Cambridge is that nothing ever happens there.
Since the founding of the College, in 1636, there has
been, properly speaking, no event till J. H. began to
build his shops on the parsonage-lot. . . . Elmwood is
Cambridge at the fifth power, and indeed one of the
great merits of the country is that it narcotizes instead
of stimulating. Even Voltaire, who had wit at will,
found Ferney an opiate, and is forced to apologize to
his cleverest correspondent, Mme. du Deffand (do you
remark the adroitness of the compliment in my italicized
pronoun?) for the prolonged gaps, or yawns, in his let-
ter-writing. Cowper, a first-rate epistolizer, was some-
times driven to the wall in the same way. There is
something more than mere vacancy, there is a deep
principle of human nature, in the first question of man
to man when they meet — "What is the news?" A
hermit has none. I fancy if I were suddenly snatched
away to London, my brain would prickle all over, as a
foot that has been asleep when the blood starts in it
again. Books are good dry forage ; we can keep alive on
them ; but, after all, men are the only fresh pasture. . . .

We have had a very long winter with very little snow.
It is still cold, but the birds are come, and the impa-
tient lovers among them insist on its being spring. I

1869] TO LESLIE STEPHEN 2$

heard a bluebird several weeks ago, but the next day
came six inches of snow. The sparrows were the first
persistent singers, and yesterday the robins were loud.
I have no doubt the pines at Shady Hill are all a-creak
with blackbirds by this time. . . .

I have nothing else in the way of novelty, except an
expedient I hit upon for my hens who were backward
with their eggs. On rainy days I set William to read-
ing aloud to them the Lay-sermons of Coleridge, and
the effect was magical. Whether their consciences were
touched or they wished to escape the preaching, I know
not. . . .

TO LESLIE STEPHEN

April 24, 1869.

My dear Stephen, — By what system of mnemonics
you contrived to remember those melon-seeds, I can't
conjecture. I was glad to find that they were " Queen
Anne's pocket-melons," because I was a subject of her
most gracious majesty. I had not then established my
independence. It pleased me also to have the fruit as-
sociated with some definite name. The former vague-
ness evaporated imagination (as Dr. Johnson might say)
into a mere mist of conjecture. Now I can fancy Miss
Hyde's august daughter pacing the gardens at Ken-
sington, her pockets graced with the fruit which bore
her name, and giving one to Harley or Bolingbroke
or whatever purse-proud aristocrat happened to be the
moment's favorite.

Within an hour after the seeds arrived they were in
the ground, and already I watch with an almost paternal

26 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

solicitude the gradual expansion of their leaves. Thus
far they are doing well, and if they escape the diseases
of infancy, I hope you will sit down at table with their
children's children. It was very good of you to remem-
ber them, and therefore just like you. They came like
a fairy godmother's gift just as I was wishing I had
them.

The great sensation of the day is Sumner's speech
on the rejection of the treaty with Great Britain. I
think he has expressed the national feeling of the mo-
ment pretty faithfully. Mind, I say of the moment.
The country was blushing at the maudlin blarney of
Reverdy Johnson, and that made the old red spot,
where we felt that our cheek had been slapped, tingle
again. If Mr. Adams had remained in England, I be-
lieve the whole matter might have been settled to the
satisfaction of both parties. Now for some time to
come that will unhappily be impossible. But our sober-
est heads do not think that Sumner is right in his state-
ment of the law, and I think that the discussion which
is likely to follow will clear the way for some reasonable
settlement of the difficulty. That there is any annex-
ation-cat under Sumner's meal I, for one, do not in the
least believe. The absorption of Canada would be sim-
ply the addition of so much strength to the Democratic
party — no bad thing in itself, by the way, but certainly
not to the taste of the party now in power. Meanwhile,
fools talk as glibly of a war with England as if it would
not be the greatest wrong and calamity to civilization
in all history. But I will not suffer myself to think of
such an outrage. If the English government behave

1869] TO LESLIE STEPHEN 27

with discretion and show a kindly feeling towards us
whenever they have a chance, I think all will come out
right. It was the tone of Palmerston's cabinet, more
than anything else during the war, that made the sore.
The speech 6f Chandler of Michigan, by the way, is a
sample of our folly in the same way. It may do harm
in England — here it has no significance whatever. . . .

In certain respects you can say nothing worse of us
than we deserve. The power of " Rings " in our poli-
tics is becoming enormous. Men buy their seats in the
Senate, and, of course, expect a profit on their invest-
ment. This is why the Senate clung so to the Tenure-
of-Office bill. Grant means well, but has his hands tied.
We are becoming a huge stock -jobbery, and Repub-
licans and Democrats are names for bulls and bears.
Pitch into us on all these matters as you will. You will
do us good, for English papers (except by a few bar-
barians like me) are more read here than ever before,
and criticism — no matter how sharp if it be honest — is
what we need.

Whatever happens, my dear Stephen, nothing can
shake or alter the hearty love I feel for you. I was
going to say affection, but the Saxon word has the truer
flavor. If you should ever be called upon to receive
my sword hilt foremost, I am sure you will share your
tobacco-pouch and canteen with me; and if ever I
should take you prisoner, the worst you will have to
fear will be to be made to eat too many pocket-
melons. . . .

Always yours,

J. R. L.

28 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

TO E. L, GODKIN

Elmwood, May 2, 1869.

My dear Godkin, — ... I note particularly (as mer-
chants say) your remarks on British manners and our
opinion of them. I would have said it myself — if only
I had thought of it ! A frequent cause of misappre-
hension is their not being able to understand that while
there is no caste here, there is the widest distinction of
classes. O my dear Godkin, they say we don't speak
English, and I wish from the bottom of my heart we
didn't — that we might comprehend one another! Im-
pertinence and ill-will are latent in French — the Gaul
can poison his discourse so as to give it a more agree-
able flavor; but we clumsy Anglo-Saxons stir in our
arsenic so stupidly it grits between the teeth. I wrote
the essay you allude to, mainly with the hope of bring-
ing about a better understanding. My heart aches with
apprehension as I sit here in my solitude and brood
over the present aspect of things between the two coun-
tries. We are crowding England into a fight which
would be a horrible calamity for both — but worse for us
than for them. It would end in our bankruptcy and
perhaps in disunion. (When I remember that both Ire-
land and Scotland have been the allies of France, I don't
feel sure which side the South would take.) As for Can-
ada— I doubt if we should get by war what will fall to
us by natural gravitation if we wait. We don't want
Canada; all we want is the free navigation of the St.
Lawrence, and that England will yield us ere long. We
have no better ground of action than Dr. Fell would

1869] TO E. L. GODKIN 29

have had because people didn't like him. It is not so
much of what England did as of the animus with which
she did it that we complain — a matter of sentiment
wholly incapable of arbitration. Sumner's speech ex-
pressed the feeling of the country very truly, but I fear
it was not a wise speech. Was he not trying rather to
chime in with that feeling than to give it a juster and
manlier direction? After all, it is not the Alabama that
is at the bottom of our grudge. It is the Trent that
we quarrel about, like Percy and Glendower. That was
like an east wind to our old wound and set it a-twinge
once more. Old wrongs are as sure to come back on
our hands as cats. England had five thousand Ameri-
cans (she herself admitted that she had half that num-
ber) serving enforcedly aboard her fleets. Remember
what American seamen then were, and conceive the tra-
ditions of injustice they left behind them with an exo-
riare aliquis ! That imperious despatch of Lord John's
made all those inherited drops of ill blood as hot as
present wrongs. It is a frightful tangle — but let us
hope for the best. I have no patience with people who
discuss the chances of such a war as if it were between
France and Prussia. It is as if two fellows half way
down the Niagara rapids should stop rowing to debate
how far they were from the fall. As for Butler's " Wait
till I catch you in a dark lane !" I have no words for it.
I could not at first think what book about Rome you
meant. At length I recollected Duppa's " Papal Subver-
sion." This, I take it, is the passage you mean. Tis a
note on p. 79. " Such was the mild, or rather corrupt,
state of the Roman government, that during the late

30 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

pontificate culprits were rarely punished with death for
any crime : hence the slightest offence between individu-
als was a sufficient plea to justify any atrocity, and each
often became avenger of his own wrong by assassina-
tion. [Hang the fellow ! what a talent of prolongation
he has!] To such an excess was this arrived that,
during twenty-two years of the late reign, not less than
eighteen thousand persons were murdered in public and
private quarrels in the Ecclesiastical State alone, accord-
ing to the bills of mortality in the governor's office,
where from every district a return was annually made.

" It was a common opinion that it was the Pope's
particular aversion to capital punishment that produced
this laxity in the administration of justice, but I have
it from high authority that he never saved any man
from death who had been condemned by the law. Jus-
tice, indeed, would seem not to have been worse admin-
istered by the officers of the State in this reign than in
that of his penultimate predecessor Rezzonico, in whose
pontificate, which comprehended a period of little more
than eleven years, ten thousand murders were commit-
ted in the papal dominions, of which at least one third
were perpetrated in the city of Rome."

That is all I find to your purpose. Is this what you
meant? While I am copying, I send you an extract
from the " Letters of an American Farmer" (1782), by
H. St. John Crevecoeur — dear book, with some pages in
it worthy of Selborne White. . . . Perhaps it will help
you to a paragraph. 'Tis a consolation to see that the
gloomy forebodings of the Frenchman have not yet
been realized.

1869] TO E. L. GODKIN 31

" Lawyers ... are plants that will grow in any soil
that is cultivated by the hands of others, and, when
once they have taken root, they will extinguish every
vegetable that grows around them. The fortunes they
daily acquire in every province from the misfortunes of
their fellow-citizens are surprising ! The most ignorant,
the most bungling member of that profession will, if
placed in the most obscure part of the country, pro-
mote litigiousness, and amass more wealth without
labor than the most opulent farmer with all his toils.
They have so dexterously interwoven their doctrines
and quirks with the laws of the land, or rather they are
become so necessary an evil in our present constitu-
tions, that it seems unavoidable and past all remedy.
What a pity that our forefathers, who happily extin-
guished so many fatal customs, and expunged from
their new government so many errors and abuses, both
religious and civil, did not also prevent the introduction
of a set of men so dangerous! . . . The nature of our
laws, and the spirit of freedom, which often tends to
make us litigious, must necessarily throw the greatest
part of the property of the colonies into the hands of
these gentlemen. In another century the law will pos-
sess in the north what now the Church possesses in
Peru and Mexico." — There's a gloomy prospect for us !
We have only thirteen years' grace, and the century
of prophecy will have dribbled away to the last drop.

Pray give Henry Wilson a broadside for dipping his
flag to that piratical craft of the eight-hour men. I
don't blame him for sympathizing with his former fel-
low-craftsmen (though he took to unproductive Indus-

32 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

try at the first chance), but I have a thorough contempt
for a man who pretends to believe that eight is equal
to ten, and makes philanthropy a stalking-horse. Jove!
what a fellow Aristophanes was! Here is Cleon over
again with a vengeance.

It troubles me to hear that you of all men should be
in low spirits, who ought to have store of good spirits
in the consciousness that you are really doing good.
The Nation is always cheering to me ; let its success be
a medicine to you. . . .

Affectionately yours,

J. R. L.

TO W. D. HOWELLS

Elmwood, May 12, 1869.

My dear Howells, — I have just got a letter from Miss
Norton, in which she says, "What an enchanting little
paper that is on * My Doorstep Acquaintance,' by Mr.
Howells ! The pretty pictures in it come up before me
as I write, and I am not quite sure whether Cambridge
is in Italy — though, now I think of it, I know Italy is
sometimes in Cambridge! When you see Mr. Howells,
please tell him how much we all liked his sketches of
our old friends."

There's for you I Put that in your pipe and smoke it !
I liked it as much as they did.

Always affectionately yours,

J. R. L.

TO E. L. GODKIN

Elmwood, July 16, 1869.
My dear Godkin, — I have long been of that philoso-

1869] TO E. L. GODKIN 33

pher's opinion who declared that " nothing was of much
consequence" — at least when it concerned only our-
selves, and certainly my verses were of none at all. I
copied them ior you, not for myself.

But the Nation is of consequence, and that's the
reason I am writing now, instead of merely melting, to
which the weather so feelingly persuades. You have
never done better than in the last six months. Indeed,
I think that you have improved with your growing con-
viction of your own power — a fact which has, if possible,
increased my respect for you. At any rate, it proves
that you are to be counted among the strong and not
the merely energetic. Most editors when they feel their
power are like beggars on horseback. / don't see why
everybody doesn't take the Nation. I always read it
through, and I never read the editorials in any other
paper. My opinion is worth as much as the next man's,
at least, and I see no paper that is so uniformly good.
I was looking over some numbers of the Pall Mall
yesterday, and didn't think it at all up to your (I
mean E. L. G.'s) standard. This is not loyalty, but
my deliberate opinion. Your reception* the other
day should show you (and that is all I value it for)
that your services to the cause of good sense, good
morals, and good letters are recognized. You have
hit, which is all a man can ask. Most of us blaze away
into the void, and are as likely to bring down a cheru-
bin as anything else. Pat your gun and say, " Well
done, Brown Bess!" For 'tis an honest, old-fashioned

* At the Commencement Dinner at Harvard University.
II— 3

34 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

piece, of straightforward short-range notions, and carries
an ounce ball. 4

And in other respects the Nation has been excellent
lately. I haven't seen a better piece of writing than that
French atelier. It is the very best of its kind. Cherish
that man, whoever he is. Whatever he has seen he can
write well about, for he really sees. Why, he made me
see as I read. The fellow is a poet, and all the better
for not knowing it.

It is the unsettled state of affairs that is hurting you, if
anything, though your advertising pages look prosperous.
Wells, I am told, prophesies a crash for 1870, and fears
that Congress will be weak enough to water the currency
again — in other words, the national stock. I am not yet
cured of my fear of repudiation, I confess. Democracies
are kittle cattle to shoe behind. It takes men of a higher
sense of honor than our voters mostly are to look at na-
tional bankruptcy in any other than a business light —
and whitewash of all kinds is so cheap nowadays. Still,
in spite of my fears, I think we shall come out all right,
for a country where everybody does something has a
good many arrows in its quiver. And though I believe
that property is the base of civilization, yet when I look
at France, I am rather reconciled to the contempt with
which we treat its claims. There are, after all, better
things in the world than what we call civilization even.

Always yours,

J. R. L.

TO W. D. HOWELLS

Elm wood, Aug. n, 1869.
My dear Howells, — Up to time, indeed ! The fear

1869] TO W. D. HO WELLS 35

is not about time, but space. You won't have room
in your menagerie for such a displeaseyousaurus. The
verses if stretched end to end in a continuous line
would go clear round the Cathedral they celebrate, and
nobody (I fear) the wiser. I can't tell yet what they
are. There seems a bit of clean carving here and there,
a solid buttress or two, and perhaps a gleam through
painted glass — but I have not copied it out yet, nor in-
deed read it over consecutively.

As for the poem you sent me, I should have printed it
when I sat in your chair. I will not criticise it further
than to say that there is a great deal too much epithet.
The author has wreaked himself on it. I should say
//wself, for I guess 'tis a gal.

Here was I, who have just written an awfully long
thing,* going to advise the shortening of this other. But
such is human nature, capable, I am thankful to say, of
every kind of inconsistency. However, I am always con-
sistently yours,

J. R. L.

TO THE SAME

Elmwood, Thursday.

. . . Thank you from the bottom of my heart, old fel-
low, for your note. If I divine that it is partly me that
you like in the poem, I am all the more pleased. I don't
care how much or how long we mutually admire each
other, if it make us happier and kindlier, as I am sure it
does. No man's praise, at any rate, could please me
more than yours, and your affectionate messages will

* "The Cathedral."

36 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

send me to my college lecture this afternoon with a
better heart. God t)less you ! Keep on writing, and
among other things billets-doux like this, which made
my eyelids tremble a little with pleasure.

Always affectionately yours,

J. R. L.

P. S. I haven't a minute to spare, but I am just going
to read it over again, lest I missed any of the sweetness.

TO MISS NORTON

Elmwood, Sept. 6, 1869.

1. You order me, dear Jane, to write a sonnet.

2. Behold the initial verse and eke the second ;

3. This is the third (if I have rightly reckoned),

4. And now I clap the fourth and fifth upon it

5. As easily as you would don your bonnet ;

6. The sixth comes tripping in as soon as beckoned,

7. Nor for the seventh is my brain infecund;

8. A shocking rhyme ! but, while you pause to con it,

9. The eighth is finished, with the ninth to follow ;

10. As for the tenth, why, that must wedge between

11. The ninth and this I am at present scrawling;

12. Twelve with nine matches pat as wings of swallow;

13. Blushingly after that comes coy thirteen ;

14. And this crowns all, as sailor his tarpauling.

I confess that I stole the idea of the above sonnet
from one of Lope de Vega's, written under similar cir-
cumstances. Now, in that very sonnet Lope offers you
a bit of instruction by which I hope you will profit and
never again ask for one in twelve lines. He says, in so
many words,

1869] TO MISS NORTON 37

" Catorce versos dicen que es soneto,"

one more than even the proverbial baker's dozen, which
shows the unthriftiness of poets in their own wares — or,
perhaps you will say, their somewhat tiresome liberality.
I dare say most sonnets would be better if cut off, like
the cur's tail, just behind the ears. Having given you
this short and easy lesson in the essential element of Pe-
trarch's inspiration, I now proceed to do another sonnet
in the received sentimental style of those somewhat arti-
ficial compositions.

Ah, think not, dearest Maid, that I forget !

Say, in midwinter doth the prisoned bee

Forget the flowers he whilom held in fee ?

In free-winged fantasy he hovers yet

O'er pansy-tufts and beds of mignonette.

And I, from honeyed cells of memory

Drawing in darkened days my stores of thee,

Seek La Pacotte on dream-wings of regret.

I see thee vernal as when first I saw,

Buzzing in quest of sugar for my rhyme ;

And this, my heart assures me, is Love's law,

That he annuls the seasons' frosty crime,

And, warmly wrapped against Oblivion's flaw,

Tastes in his garnered sweets the blossoming thyme.

Perhaps the eighth verse would be better thus,
Fly on dream-wings to La Pacotte, you bet !

That, at least, has the American flavor, which our poetry
is said to lack. ... I do not mean by the twelfth verse
to insinuate anything unfeeling. It is merely to be in
keeping with the laws of the sonnet, and to bring the

38 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

thought back to where it set out, like a kitten playing
with its own tail. B*t I will confess to you that I am
getting so gray that / see it ; so you may be sure there
is not much to choose between me and the traditional
badger. Happily, I am grown no stouter, though already
" more fat than bard beseems."

But why have I not written all this while? . . . For
all August I have a valid excuse. First, I was writing a
poem, and second, a pot-boiler. The poem turned out to
be something immense, as the slang is nowadays, that is,
it ran on to eight hundred lines of blank verse. I hope
it is good, for it fairly trussed me at last and bore me
up as high as my poor lungs will bear into the heaven
of invention. I was happy writing it, and so steeped in
it that if I had written to you it would have been in
blank verse. It is a kind of religious poem, and is called
" A Day at Chartres." I remember telling Charles once
that I had it under my hair. ... I can't tell yet how it
will stand. Already I am beginning to — to — you know
what I mean — to taste my champagne next morning.
However, you will see it in the January Atlantic, and
you must try to like it and me. I can't spare either. . . .

TO MISS CABOT

Elmwood, Sept. 14, 1869.

. . . The advantage of study, I suspect, is not in the
number of things we learn by it, but simply that it
teaches us the one thing worth knowing — not what, but
how to think. Nobody can learn that from other people.
Apart from the affection I feel for you, I have always

1869] TO MISS CABOT 39

liked in you a certain independence of character and a
tendency to judge for yourself. Both these are excellent
if kept within bounds, if you do not allow the one to de-
generate into insubordination of mind and the other into
hastiness of prejudice. Now, I am inclined to think that
one may get a reasonably good education out of any first-
rate book if read in the right way. Take Dante or Milton,
for example. If you like or dislike a passage, insist with
yourself on knowing the reason why. You are already un-
consciously learning rhetoric in the best way. Then ask
yourself what is contemporary and what perdurable in his
theology and the like. You are not only studying the
history of his time, but also, what is vastly more import-
ant, [learning] to look with deeper insight at that of your
own time. You see what I mean. If all roads lead to
Rome, so do all roads lead out of Rome to every province
of thought. What one wants is to enlarge his mind, to
make it charitable, and capable of instruction and enjoy-
ment from many sides. When one has learned that, he
has begun to be wise — whether he be learned or not is of
less consequence. How is it possible, I always ask my-
self in reading, that a man could have thought so and so,
and especially a superior man ? When I have formed to
myself some notion of that, I understand my contempo-
raries better, for every one of us has within ten miles'
circuit specimens of every generation since Adam.

But I am preaching, my dear Lilla, and you don't like
any preaching but Dr. Clarke's perhaps ? What I mean
is that our aim should be not to get many things into
one's head, but to get muck, and one gets that when he
has learned the relations of any one thing to all others ;

40 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

because in so doing he has got the right way of looking
at anything. I have no fear that your education will be
neglected, because I am sure that you will look after it
yourself — because, moreover, you have an alert nature
and a scorn of ignoble things. . . .

TO THOMAS HUGHES

Elmwood, Cambridge, Sept. 18, 1869.

My dear Hughes, — We are all very well satisfied with
the result of the match.* For my own part, I have al-
ways thought that " magnis tamen excidit ausis " was
not a bad kind of epitaph. I should only be sorry if our
defeat were attributed to want of bottom. Our crew had
already pulled a four-mile race on their own water and
won it against a crew of professional oarsmen. I think
that in private we may claim a little on the score of
change of climate, though, of course, they had to take
their chance of that. I am particularly glad to know
that you thought it a good pull, because you have a right
to an opinion. I did not expect them to win, though I
hoped they would. Especially I hoped it because I
thought it would do more towards bringing about a
more friendly feeling between the two countries than
anything else. I am glad to think it has had that result
as it is. It isn't the Alabama claims that rankle, but the
tone of the English press, or the more influential part of
it. There is a curious misapprehension about us over
there, as if we had been a penal colony. For example :

* The race between an Oxford and a Harvard four-oar crew,
on the Thames, of which Mr. Hughes was the umpire.

1869] TO THOMAS HUGHES 41

when Longfellow was in Rome he drove out to some
races on the Campagna. There his carriage chanced to
be abreast of one in which two English ladies were dis-
cussing the manners of American girls. At last one of
them summed up thus : " Well, you know, what can be
expected of people who are all descended from laboring
men or convicts ?" Now, between ourselves, one of the
things that has always amused me in my brother New-
Englanders is their fondness for family trees. You will
remember that I made a little fun of it in the introduc-
tion to the first series of the " Biglow Papers." It is a
branch of arboriculture in which I take no great interest
myself, but my father was as proud of his pedigree as a
Talbot or a Stanley could be, and Parson Wilbur's gene-
alogical mania was a private joke between us. Now, you
can understand how the tone I speak of would be re-
sented. I think Sumner's speech as an argument a mere
colander, but it represented the temper of our people
pretty exactly. On your side, it was all along assumed
that England had a point of honor to maintain, and all
along implied that this was something of which we natu-
rally had no conception, and to which, of course, our side
could lay no claim. Don't you see ? Now, our point of
honor runs back to the Little Belt and the President, as
long ago as 1809 or so. In those days American sea-
men belonged to the very best class of our population,
and there were five thousand such serving enforcedly
on board your ships-of-war. Put it at half the number
(which was admitted on your side), and fancy what a
ramification of bitter traditions would thread the whole
country from these men and their descendants. You

42 LETTERS OF^JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

know that such little chickens always come home to
roost, and these are just beginning to flock in now. I
am writing all this that you may understand something
of the feeling here.

I think that all we want is to be treated in a manly
way. We don't want to be flattered, and some of us
thought your newspapers went quite far enough in that
direction just after the war. Tell us the truth as much
as you like, it will do us good ; but tell it in a friendly
way, or at least not quite so much de haut en bas. Your
letter in accepting the umpireship in the race hit precisely
the right key. There are plenty of sensible men on this
side of the water (more, I think, than I have found in any
other country) — men, I mean, who are governed rather
more, in the long run, by reason than by passion or prej-
udice. I did not like Sumner's speech, nor did the kind
of men I speak of like it (and their opinions, though less
noisily expressed, have more influence on our politics
than you would suppose) ; but I am inclined to think it
has done more good than harm. It served as a vent for
a great deal of fire-damp that might have gone off with
an explosion, and satisfied that large class who need the
"you're another" style of argument. If only some man
in your government could find occasion to say that Eng-
land had mistaken her own true interest in the sympathy
she showed for the South during our civil war ! No na-
tion ever apologizes except on her knees, and I hope
England is far enough from being brought to that — no
sane man here expects it — but she could make some harm-
less concessions that would answer all the purpose. I
have pretty good authority for thinking that Motley was

1869] TO W. D. HO WELLS 43

instructed to make no overtures on the Alabama matter,
and perhaps it is as well to let things subside a little first.
Still, I dread to have the affair left unsettled a moment
longer than can be helped. Your greatest safeguard
against us would be a settlement of the Irish land ques-
tion. It is a heroic remedy, but you must come to it
one day or other. I never believed in the efficacy of
disestablishment. Arthur Young told you where the real
trouble was eighty odd years ago. My fear is (as things
stand now) that if England should get into a war, we
could not (with our immense length of coast) prevent
privateers from slipping out, and then! It would be
a black day for mankind.

You ask me who " Bob Wickliffe " was. He was a
senator from Kentucky, and Kentucky undertook to be
neutral. It was a bull I thought we should take by the
horns at once, as we had at last to do.

I have been writing a poem which I think you will
like. It will be published in the Atlantic Monthly for
January, and I shall send you a copy. I did not send
you my last volume, because I knew you would get it
earlier from Macmillan, and you did not need it to as-
sure you of my friendship. Mabel gives us hope of a
visit from you next year. I need not say how welcome

you will be.

Always heartily yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO W. D. HOWELLS

Elmwood, Sept. 22, 1869.
My dear Howells, — Forgive this purple ink. It was

44 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

palmed upon me the other day, who in my simple con-
servatism thought all the ink in the world was made by
Maynard & Noyes, as it used to be. I have a horrible
suspicion that it may be a " writing fluid " — still worse,
that it may treacherously turn black before you get this,
and puzzle you as to what I am driving at. It is now,
on my honor, of the color of pokeberry juice, whereof we
used to make a delusive red ink when we were boys. I
feel as if I were writing ancient Tyrian, and becoming
more inscrutable to you with every word. Take it for
" the purple light of love," and it will be all right.

I have a great mind (so strong is the devil in me, de-
spite my years) to give you an awful pang by advising
you not to print your essay. It would be a most refined
malice, and pure jealousy, after all. I find it delightful,
full of those delicate touches which the elect pause over
and the multitude find out by and by — the test of good
writing and the warrant of a reputation worth having.
As Gray said of the romances of Cr£billon Jits, I should
like to lie on a sofa all day long and read such essays.
You know I would not flatter Neptune for his trident —
as indeed who would, that did not toast his own bread ?
— but what you write gives me a real pleasure, as it
ought; for I have always prized in you the ideal ele-
ment, not merely in your thought, but in your way of
putting it.

And one of these days, my boy, you will give us a lit-
tle volume that we will set on our shelves, with James
Howell on one side of him and Charles Lamb on the
other — not to keep him warm, but for the pleasure they
will take in rubbing shoulders with him. What do you

1869] TO W. D. HOWELLS 45

say to that ? It's true, and I hope it will please you to
read it as much as it does me to write it. Nobody
comes near you in your own line. Your Madonna
would make the fortune of any essay — or that pathetic
bit there in the graveyard — or your shop of decayed
gentilities — or fifty other things. I do not speak of the
tone, of the light here and shade there that tickle me.

You were mighty good to procure me that little acces-
sion of fortune.* It will give Madam a new gown — a
luxury she has not had these thr.ee years — and will just
make the odds between feeling easy and pinched. It
may be even a public benefaction — for I attribute the
late gale in large part to my frantic efforts at raising the
wind in season for my autumnal taxes. Yet a dreadful
qualm comes over me that I am paid too much. When
a poet reads his verses he has such an advantage over
types ! You will gasp when you see me in print. But
never fear that I shall betray my craft. Far from me
the baseness of refunding ! Indeed I seldom keep money
long enough for Conscience to get her purchase on me
and her lever in play. What a safety there is in impe-
cuniosity! And yet — let me read Dryden's Horace's
" Ode to Fortune," lest if a million come down upon
me I should be so in love with security as to put aside
the temptation.

Now to the important part of my note. I want you
to eat roast pig with me on Saturday next at half-past
four P. M. Your commensals will be J. H., Charles Storey,
and Professor Lane — all true blades who will sit till Mon-

* An additional payment for " The Cathedral."

46 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

day morning if needful. The pig is just ripe, and so
tender that he would drop from his tail if lifted by it,
like a mature cantaloupe from its stem. With best
regards to Mrs. Ho wells,

Affectionately yours,

J. R. L.

TO MISS NORTON

Elmwood, Sept. 28, 1869.

My dearest old Friend, — ... I am very busy. It is
a lovely day, cool and bright, and the Clerk of the
Weather has just put a great lump of ice in the pitcher
from which he pours his best nectar. Last night, as I
walked home from Faculty Meeting, the northern lights
streamed up like great organ-pipes, and loveliest hues of
pink, green, and blue flitted from one to another in a
silent symphony. To-day, consequently, is cold and
clear, with a bracing dash of north-west. Cutler is ill,
and I am shepherding his flocks for him meanwhile — now
leading them among the sham-classic pastures of Cor-
neille, where a colonnade supplies the dearth of herb-
age; now along the sunny, broad -viewed uplands of
Goethe's prose. It is eleven o'clock, and I am just back
from my class. At four I go down again for two hours
of German, and at half-past seven I begin on two hours
of Dante. Meanwhile I am getting ready for a course
of twenty University lectures, and must all the while
keep the domestic pot at a cheerful boil. I feel some-
how as if I understood that disputed passage in the
"Tempest," where Ferdinand says,

Wallaer del «*•

GEORGE SAND

Jouvet et C1? Editeurs Paris.
Imp. Char don -Wittmann.

1869] TO T. B. ALDRICH 47

" Most busy least when I do it " —

for I am busy enough, and yet not exactly in my own
vocation. ... As for the Rousseau article, I was look-
ing it over a few days ago — I am going to make a vol-
ume this fall, and it is not one of my best. I have not
confidence enough in myself to write my best often.
Sometimes in verse I forget myself enough to do it,
but one ought to be popular. If ever I become so, you
shall see a better kind of J. R. L. To me Rousseau is
mainly interesting as an ancestor. What a generation
lay hidden in his loins! and of children so unlike as
Cowper and Wordsworth and Byron and Chateaubriand
and Victor Hugo and George Sand ! It is curious that
the healthier authors leave no such posterity. . . .

Your ever constant

J. R. L.

TO T. B. ALDRICH

Elmwood, Nov. 30, 1869.

My dear Aldrich, — It is a capital little book * — but I
had read it all before, and liked it thoroughly. It has
been pretty much all my novel reading all summer. I
think it is wholesome, interesting, and above all, natural.
The only quarrel I have with you is that I found in it
that infamous word " transpired." E-pluribus-unum it !
Why not " happened " ? You are on the very brink of
the pit. I read in the paper t'other day that some
folks had " extended a dinner to the Hon." Somebody
or other. There was something pleasing to the baser

* " The Story of a Bad Boy."

48 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

man in fancying it held out in a pair of tongs, as too
many of our Hon'bles deserve — but consider where Eng-
lish is going !

I know something about Rivermouth myself — only
before you were born. I remember in my seventh
year opening a long red chest in the " mansion " of the
late famous Dr. Brackett, and being confronted with a
skeleton — the first I had ever seen. The " Mysteries of
Udolpho " were nothing to it, for a child, somehow, is apt
to think that these anatomies are always made so by foul
means, a creed which I still hold to a certain extent.

However, I am not writing to tell you about myself
— but merely to say how much I like your little book.
I wish it had been twice as large ! I shall send you a
thin one of my own before long, and shall be content
if it give you half the pleasure. Make my kind remem-
brances acceptable to Mrs. Aldrich, and tell the twins
I wish they may both grow up Bad Boys.

Cordially yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO E. L. GODKIN

Elmwood, Dec. 3, 1869.

... I think the article in the last Quarterly settles
the Byron matter — and settles it as I expected. After
this, any discussion of the particular charge in ques-
tion seems to me a mere waste of pen and ink, per-
haps (worse) of temper too. I doubt, even if this were
not so, if I could at present treat it with the all-round-
ness it deserves. With four lectures a week, I am as
busy as I can bear just now.

1869] TO C. E. NORTON 49

But I write to ask a favor of you. I read in my
newspaper this morning that the dramatic critic of the
Daily News has been giving a list of John Kemble's
odd pronunciations. I should much like to see it, and
thought it not unlikely that you might have a copy of
the paper which you could spare me. If not, could
you not get me one ? I should be greatly obliged. . . .

TO C. E. NORTON

Elmwood, Dec. 10, 1869.

. . . My vacation was pretty well occupied with writ-
ing and rewriting my new poem, and then as usual com-
ing back to the first draught as by far better than any
after-thought. Those who have seen it think well of it.
I shall contrive to send it you, and beg you not to read it
in the Atlantic — for I have restored to it (they are print-
ing it separately) some omitted passages, besides correct-
ing a phrase here and there whose faultiness the stronger
light of print revealed to me. How happy I was while I
was writing it ! For weeks it and I were alone in the
world, till Fanny well-nigh grew jealous. You don't
know, my dear Charles, what it is to have sordid cares, to
be shivering on the steep edge of your bank-book, beyond
which lies debt. I am willing to say it to you, because
I know I should have written more and better. They
say it is good to be obliged to do what we don't like, but
I am sure it is not good for me — it wastes so much time
in the mere forethought of what you are to do. And
then I sometimes think it hard that I, who have such an
immense capacity for happiness, should so often be un-
II.-4

50 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

happy. I recoil, to be sure, with a pretty good spring,
but I have learned what it is to despond. You know I
don't sentimentalize about myself or I would not write
this. You used to laugh when I told you I was growing
dull, but it was quite true. A man is dull who can't give
himself up without arriere-pensee to the present. I do
lose myself (to find myself) in writing verse, and so I
mean in some way to shape myself more leisure for it,
even if I have to leave Elmwood. ... I agree with Eu-
ripides that it is fitting —

2000V £e . . .

roV 0* V^IVOTTOIOV, O.VTOQ O.V TlKTTj

ovrot SVVCLLT ai>, otKoQlv y
Ttpireiv av aXXovg * ouc*£ yap

You will find this amplified in Juvenal's. Seventh Sat-
ire. You see I am suffering a professor change ! No ;
the truth is, I read Euripides through very carefully last
winter, and took a great fancy to him. ^Eschylus for
imagination (perhaps 'twas his time did it for him),
Sophocles for strength, and Euripides for facility, inven-
tion, and go. I guess him to be the more simply poet
of the three. Anyhow, he delights me much as Calde-
ron does, not for any power of thought, but for the per-
haps rarer power of pleasing. As one slowly grows able
to think for himself, he begins to be partial towards the
fellows who merely entertain. Not that I don't find
thought too in Euripides. . . .

* " It is well that the poet, if he produce songs, should produce
them with joy, for if, being troubled in himself, he felt it not, he
could not delight others — the means would not be his." — The
Suppliants, 182-85.

1869] TO C. E. NORTON 51

I sometimes feel a little blue over the outlook here,
with our penny-paper universal education and our work-
ingmen's parties, with their tremendous lever of suf-
frage, decrying brains. . . . But the more I learn, the
more am I impressed with the wonderful system of
checks and balances which history reveals (our Consti-
tution is a baby-house to it !), and the more my confi-
dence in the general common-sense and honest inten-
tion of mankind increases. When I reflect what changes
I, a man of fifty, have seen, how old-fashioned my ways
of thinking have become, that I have lived quietly
through that awful Revolution of the Civil War (I was
cutting my hay while such a different mowing went on
at Gettysburg) ; in short, that my whole life has been
passed in what they call an age of transition, the signs
of the times cease to alarm me, and seem as natural
as to a mother the teething of her seventh baby. I
take great comfort in God. I think he is considerably
amused with us sometimes, but that he likes us, on the
whole, and would not let us get at the match-box so
carelessly as he does, unless he knew that the frame of
his Universe was fire-proof. How many times have I
not seen the fire-engines of Church and State clanging
and lumbering along to put out — a false alarm ! And
when the heavens are cloudy what a glare can be cast
by a burning shanty ! . . .

Our new President* of the College is winning praise
of everybody. I take the inmost satisfaction in him,
and think him just the best man that could have been
chosen. We have a real Captain at last.

* President Eliot.

52 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1869

I was very glad to get your account of Ferney. No,
I never was there. I was too foolishly true to my faith
in the blessing of Unexpectedness to visit many shrines.
If I stumbled on them, well and good. But I would
give a deal now that I had seen old Michel Eyquem's
chateau — the first modern that ever confronted those
hectoring ancients without casting down his eyes, bless
his honest old soul ! Yes, and Ferney, too. For we
owe half our freedom now to the leering old mocker
with an earnest purpose in spite of himself.

I wish, with all my heart, I could see you for a mo-
ment ! For a while last spring I thought it possible I
might be sent abroad. Hoar was strenuous for it, and
I should have been very glad of it then. . . . However,
it all fell through, and I am glad it did, for I should not
have written my new poem, and I hope to go abroad
on my own charges one of these days, if I can only sell
my land before I am too old. . . .

Well, I have been getting on with my University
lectures as well as I could. Cutler was ill, and I had
to take his classes in French and German — losing five
weeks thereby. And then I worried myself out of sleep
and appetite — and then I concluded to do the best I
could under the circumstances. So I have been read-
ing to my class with extempore commentary. I wrote
out four lectures on the origin of the romance lingo
and romantic poetry, and then took up Ferabras and
Roland, and am now on the Trouveres. Twenty lect-
ures scared me, and now my next is the sixteenth and
I am not half through ! . . .

We are having the most superb winter weather —

1869] TO CHARLES NORDHOFF 53

though I have lost two of the noblest days of it before
my fire. (I am burning Goody Blake fuel, by the way,
supplied by the new September gale.) I do not envy you
your olive-trees, nor even your view of Florence, when
I look out on the smooth white of my fields, with the
blue shadows of the trees on it. Jane's feeling allusion
to the Perseus gave me a twinge, though. I should like
to see the lovely arches of that loggia again ! Tell her
not to turn up her dear nose at a statue the story of
whose casting is worth half the statues in the world-
yes, and throw in the poems too. . . .

TO CHARLES NORDHOFF

Elmwood, Dec. 15, 1869.

. . . You cannot set too high a value on the character
of Judge Hoar. The extraordinary quickness and acute-
ness, the flash of his mind (which I never saw matched
but in Dr. Holmes) have dazzled and bewildered some
people so that they were blind to his solid qualities.
Moreover, you know there are people — I am almost in-
clined to call them the majority — who are afraid of wit,
and cannot see wisdom unless in that deliberate move-
ment of thought whose every step they can accompany.
I have known Mr. Hoar for more than thirty years, in-
timately for nearly twenty, and it is the solidity of the
man, his courage, and his integrity that I value most
highly. I think with you that his loss would be irrep-
arable, if he should leave the cabinet for a seat on the
bench. But I do not believe this to be so probable as
the Washington correspondents would persuade us. I

54 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1870

do not speak by authority, but only upon inference
from what I know. If any change take place, it will
be one in which Judge Hoar heartily concurs and which
he is satisfied will be for the good of the country. If
any one is the confidential adviser of the President, I
guess it is he. . . .

TO E. L. GODKIN

Elmwood, Jan. 24, 1870.

"... I am very glad you found anything to like in
my poem, though I am apt to be lenient with my
friends in those matters, content if they tolerate me,
and leaving what I write to that perfectly just fate
which in the long run awaits all literature. The article
of Renan I had not then read, but have read it since
with a great deal of interest. I think I see what you
mean.

I should have written you long ago but for the scrap
I enclose — which may now come too late to be of any
use. But after writing that, it occurred to me that a
somewhat longer article, giving some account of the
different theories as to what the Grail was, might be
interesting. For that I wanted a book which I had
sent as a pattern to the binder, and which he had prom-
ised me on Friday last. Of course it did not come,
and so I send my correction of Sir G. B.'s nonsense as
it stands.

You cannot choose a subject into which you will not
infuse interest by thought and knowledge. The one
you mention seems to me a remarkably good one, and
I hope I shall be here to see and hear you. A Boston

ERNEST RENAN

Imp A- Quanii

1870] TO R. S. CHILTON 55

audience is like every other in this — that they like a
serious discussion of any topic, and have an instinct
whether it will be well handled or no. We have had a
course of mountebanks this winter, and people will be
all the more hungry for something serious and instruc-
tive. That I am sure you will give them, whatever you
talk about. . . .

Many thanks for the cutting from the Daily News. It
was just what I wanted. Every one of Kemble's pro-
nunciations is a Yankeeism, confirming me in my belief
that these are mostly archaisms and not barbarisms. . . ..

TO R. S. CHILTON

Elmwood, March 17, 1870.

... I had no notion what a conundrum I was making
when I used the word " decuman"* — or decumane, as I
should have spelt it. Where I got the word I am sure
I don't know, nor had I the least doubt that it was to
be found in all the dictionaries, till some one asked me
what it meant. " Oh," I said, " you'll find it sure
enough in Ovid somewhere." But no : Ovid speaks
only of the tenth wave. " Well, then," I insisted, "try
Lucan." He said ditto to Ovid. Then I hunted it up,
and my Ducange defines it fluctus vehementior sic nude
dictus, citing examples from Festus and Tertullian.
Perhaps neither a lexicographer nor a Father of the
Church is very good authority for Latin, but in Eng-

* In " The Cathedral,"

"... shocks of surf that clomb and fell,
Spume-sliding down the baffled decuman."

56 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1870

lish I have my right of common, and I wanted the word
for its melodic value. So I used it. I don't write
verses with the dictionary at my elbow — but I think I
shall probably come across the word somewhere in Eng-
lish again, where I no doubt met with it years ago. A
word that cleaves to the memory is always a good
word — that's the way to test them. . . .

TO LESLIE STEPHEN

Elmwood, March 25, 1870.

My dear Stephen, — Your letter found me with a pipe
in my mouth and a quarto volume containing La Che-
valerie Ogier FArdenois on my knee — a mediaeval cu-
cumber from which I hope to extract more sunbeams
than from many others on which I have experimented.
The fields all about us are white with snow (thermome-
ter 1 8° this morning), and the weather is paying us off
for the violets we had in blossom on the 6th January.
We are all well and unchanged. Mrs. Lowell and I
have been gadding as far as Washington — our business
being to deliver some lectures in Baltimore. In Wash-
ington we spent three days — quite long enough — and if
the country depended on its representatives for its sal-
vation, I should despair of it. I liked Grant, and was
struck with the pathos of his face ; a puzzled pathos, as
of a man with a problem before him of which he does
not understand the terms. But Washington left a very
bad taste in my mouth, and I was glad to be out of it
and back again with pleasant old Mrs. K in Balti-
more. Of course, I had a good time with Judge Hoar.

1870] TO LESLIE STEPHEN 57

He and Mr. Cox struck me as the only really strong
men in the Cabinet.

I am glad you liked " The Cathedral," and sorry for
anything in it you didn't like. The name was none of
my choosing. I called it "A Day at Chartres," and
Fields rechristened it. You see with my name the
episode of the Britons comes in naturally enough (it is
historical, by the way). The truth is, I had no notion
of being satirical, but wrote what I did just as I might
have said it to you in badinage. But, of course, the
tone is lost in print. Anyhow, there is one Englishman
I am fond enough of to balance any spite I might have
against others, as you know. But I haven't a particle.
If I had met two of my own countrymen at Chartres,
I should have been quite as free with them. . . .

How I should like to come over and pay you a visit !
But it seems more and more inaccessible, that other
side of the water. Whenever I can turn my land into
money I shall come across, but at present it is all I
can do to pay the cost of staying where I am. What
with taxes and tariffs, and the general high prices in-
duced by the vulgar profuseness of my countrymen, a
moderate income is fast becoming a narrow one in
these parts. If I only had a few cadetships to sell !
However, maybe one of these days a gray old boy
will be trying to make out through his double eye-
glass which is No. 16 in Onslow Gardens, and about
half an hour thereafter Mrs. Stephen will be wonder-
ing whence comes that nasty smell of tobacco.

Affectionately ever,

J. R. L.

58 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 1870]

TO W. D. HOWELLS

Elmwood, Friday.

My dear Howells, — Who writes to me casts his bread
on the waters. The carrier handed me your note on
the road. I put it into my pocket and straightway
forgot all about it.

We are told in a book (which I still look on as quite
up to the level of any that have come out in my time)
to do whatever we do with all our might. That's the
way I forget my letters, and I hope I shall find my re-
ward in the next world, for I certainly don't in this.

On the contrary, happening to thrust my hands into
my pockets (I don't know why — there is seldom any-
thing in them), I found your note, and it stuck into me
like an unexpected pin in the girdle of Saccharissa. If
you didn't want our company, you might want our
room ! Therefore, to be categorical, / am coming, as
I said I would.

Mrs. Lowell has unhappily an inflamed eye, and is
very sorry (for she prefers " My Summer in a Garden,"
I fear, to some more solid works done under her imme-
diate supervision), and Miss Dunlap is in Portland. So
the whole of our family can sit in one chair, like St.
Thomas Aquinas's angels.

With kind regards to Mrs. Howells,

Affectionately yours always,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO THOMAS HUGHES

Elmwood, June n, 1870.
My dear Hughes, — The papers tell me you are com-

1870] TO THOMAS HUGHES 59

ing hither, but I fear the news is too good to be true.
But if you are, you know who will be delighted to take
you by the hand and to say " Casa usted" with more
than Spanish sincerity.

If this reaches you in time, pray let me hear from
you as to your plans.

Our newspapers read like an old-fashioned Newsletter
with their rumors of war. The spirit of all the defunct
quidnuncs seems to have entered the man who makes
up the telegrams for the American press. But what
an impudent scoundrel Louis Napoleon is, to be sure !

Come early and come often, as they say to the voters
in New York.

In great haste

Affectionately yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO THE SAME

Elmwood, July 18, 1870.

My dear Hughes, — I hope you will come hither as
early as you can, for it will be vacation, and I can see
more of you. And I want you to see my trees with
the leaves on — especially my English elms, which I
think no small beer of. I hope by the middle of Au-
gust our worst heats will be over, for they began early
this year. As I write the thermometer is 92 deg.

Already I have an invitation for you from a friend
of mine at Newport (our great watering-place) whom I
would like you to know. It is a good place to see our
people — "shoddy" and other. While you are here, I
will take you to Concord and show you such lions as

60 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1870

we have. We shall be delighted to see you and keep
you as long as you can stay.

By the way, I was truly sorry not to see your friend
Mr. Lawson again. He interested me very much with
his simple sincere ways. I owe you a great deal also for
letting me know Stephen, whom I soon learned to love.

This war in Europe shocks me deeply. But I can
now understand better than before, perhaps, the feel-
ing of so many Englishmen about "our" war. How-
ever, I never quarrelled with the feeling, but with the
brutal way in which it was expressed.

"This" war seems begun in the most wanton selfish-
ness, and I hope that the charlatan who has ridden
France for so many years will at least get his quietus.
I have never credited him with any greatness but un-
scrupulousness, an immense advantage with five hun-
dred thousand bayonets behind it.

I have been deeply interested in your Irish Land bill.
It concerns us also, for one of the worst diseases we
have to cure in the Irish who come over here is their
belief that the laws are their natural enemies. Give
them property (or a chance at it) in the land, " coute
qu'il coute." Fixity of tenure is only a palliative. It
won't stand against the influences that are in the air
nowadays. It was tried here on the Van Rensselaers'
property in New York, and led to the " Anti-rent war."
You are doing noble things, and in that practical and
manly way which must always make England respect-
able in the eyes of foreigners. England is the only
country where things get a thorough discussion before
the people and by the best men.

1870] TO THOMAS HUGHES 6 1

Good-by and God bless you till I take you by the

hand.

Always heartily yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO THE SAME

Elmwood, Aug. 13, 1870.

My dear Hughes, — On one account alone can I say
I am glad you are coming later. I hope by the time
you get here it will be cooler. The three children in
the furnace never saw anything worse than we have
had for a month.

Of course, you must suit your plans to your change
of route. All I ask is to have you here before vaca-
tion is over, 2Qth Sept. As to lecturing — the only ar-
gument in its favor is that it is the easiest way of
turning an honest penny for a man who is used to
speaking in public. If you should look at it from
this point of view, you might easily make an inter-
esting and instructive lecture on the labor -reform
movements in England. But I would not do it un-
der five hundred dollars a night.

I enclose a letter for you which came this morning
from Mr. Forbes,* whom perhaps you saw in England.
At any rate, he is a man worth knowing in every way.

It is very pleasant to be writing to you on this side
of the water.

Quebec, by the way, is better than most things in
Europe by its startling contrast. A bit of Louis Qua-

* Mr. John M. Forbes.

62 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1870

torze set down bodily in the middle of the nineteenth
century.
The sooner you come the better, is all I have to

say.

Yours always,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO C. E. NORTON

Elmwood, Aug. 28, 1870.

... I had hoped during vacation to fill some gaps
in my " Cathedral," but work has been out of the ques-
tion. I have read a good deal of mediaeval French po-
etry in the way of business — and nothing more. But
my hopes of freedom brighten a little. Already there
are inquiries after my land, and whenever I can sell it
for enough to live on modestly I shall do it. One can't
write poetry unless he give his whole life to it, and I
long to do something yet that shall be as good as I
can. Now and then I get a bit impatient, and I fear
I wrote you last winter in some such mood. But you
know I am pretty reasonable, and always strive to look
at myself and my fortune from another man's point of
view. I do not think it so hard for a solitary to see
himself as others see him — the difficult thing is to act
in accordance with your knowledge, an art I have never
acquired. I believe no criticism has ever been made
on what I write (I mean no just one) that I had not
made before, and let slip through my fingers. . . .

The war in Europe has interested me profoundly,
and if the Prussians don't win, then the laws of the
great game have been changed, for a moral enthusiasm

1870] TO MISS NORTON 63

always makes battalions heavier than a courage that
rises like an exhilaration from heated blood. More-
over, as against the Gaul I believe in the Teuton.
And just now I wish to believe in him, for he repre-
sents civilization. Anything that knocks the nonsense
out of Johnny Crapaud will be a blessing to the world.
How like a gentleman the King of Prussia shows in
his despatches alongside of that fanfaron Napoleon !
It refreshes me wonderfully, also, to see that the
French don't show the quiet front under reverses that
we did, and our trial was one of years.

. . . My only news (we never have any in Cam-
bridge, and my cordon sanitaire of trees secludes me
from such gossip as buzzes down in the village) is a
visit from Tom Hughes, who is as frank and hearty
and natural a dear good fellow as could be wished.
He is now at Naushon, and comes back to us on Tues-
day. Wednesday we go to Concord, to dine with Hoar.
Hughes will leave us sooner than I like, in order to be
back here for the laying of the corner-stone of Memorial
Hall, 2Qth September. . . .

TO MISS NORTON

Elmwood, Oct. 14, 1870.

. . . We have been having a truly delightful visit
from Hughes, who was as charming as man can be —
so simple, hearty, and affectionate. He was with us a
fortnight, off and on, and we liked him better and bet-
ter. His only fault is that he will keep quoting the
" Biglow Papers," which he knows vastly better than

64 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1870

I. I was astonished to find what a heap of wisdom
was accumulated in those admirable volumes. There
never was an Englishman who took this country so
naturally as Hughes. I was really saddened to part
with him — it was saying good -by to sunshine. We
have had other agreeable Britons here this autumn.
Bryce I especially liked, and Hughes brought with him
a very nice young Rawlins.

All summer I have been studying old French metrical
romances and the like, and have done an immense deal
of reading — for which I have a talent, if for nothing
else. During vacation — a good part of it — I must have
averaged my twelve hours a day. And the use of it all?
— for some lectures which I am reading to about a score
of young women twice a week during the term. Think
of me with thirty-six lectures on my mind, and you will
understand why I am getting a little thin. . . . What
good all this lumber will do me I find it hard to say. I
long to give myself to poetry again before I am so old
that I have only thought and no music left. I can't
say, as Milton did, " I am growing my wings." I held
back a copy of " The Cathedral," that I might write
into it a passage or two, and now, after all, I have sent
it by Theodora without them. My vein would not flow
this summer. The heat dried up that with the other
springs. . . .

TO C. E. NORTON

Elmwood, Oct. 15, 1870.

... Of course it could not but be very pleasant to me
that Ruskin found something to like in " The Cathedral."

1870] TO C. E. NORTON 65

There is nobody whom I would rather please, for he is
catholic enough to like both Dante and Scott. I am
glad to find also that the poem sticks. Those who liked
it at first like it still, some of them better than ever,
some extravagantly. At any rate, it wrote itself ; all of
a sudden it was there, and that is something in its favor.
Now Ruskin wants me to go over it with the file. That
is just what I did. I wrote in pencil, then copied it out
in ink, and worked over it as I never worked over any-
thing before. I may fairly say there is not a word in it
over which I have not thought, not an objection which I
did not foresee and maturely consider. Well, in my sec-
ond copy I made many changes, as I thought for the
better, and then put it away in my desk to cool for three
weeks or so. When I came to print it, I put back, I
believe, every one of the original readings which I had
changed. Those which had come to me were far better
than those I had come at. Only one change I made (for
the worse), in order to escape a rhyme that had crept
in without my catching it.

Now for Ruskin's criticisms. As to words, I am some-
thing of a purist, though I like best the word that best
says the thing. (You know I have studied lingo a little.)
I am fifty-one years old, however, and have in some sense
won my spurs. I claim the right now and then to knight
a plebeian word for good service in the field. But it will
almost always turn out that it has after all good blood in
its veins, and can prove its claim to be put in the saddle.
Rote is a familiar word all along our seaboard to express
that dull and continuous burden of the sea heard inland
before or after a great storm. The root of the word may

n.-s

66 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1870

be in rumpere, but is more likely in rotare, from the
identity of this sea-music with that of the rote — a kind
of hurdy-gurdy with which the jongleurs accompanied
their song. It is one of those Elizabethan words which
we New-Englanders have preserved along with so many
others. It occurs in the " Mirror for Magistrates," " the
sea's rote" which Nares, not understanding, would change
to rore ! It is not to be found in any provincial glos-
sary, but I caught it alive at Beverly and the Isles of
Shoals. Like " mobbled queen," 'tis " good."

W%*y Ruskin calls " an American elevation of English
lower word." Not a bit of it. I have always thought
" the whiff 'and wind of his fell sword " in " Hamlet " rath-
er fine than otherwise. Ben also has the word. " Down-
shod " means shod with down. I doubted about this word
myself — but I wanted it. As to " misgave," the older poets
used it as an active verb, and I have done with it as all
poets do with language. My meaning is clear, and that is
the main point. His objection to "spume-sliding down
the baffled decuman " I do not understand. I think if he
will read over his "ridiculous Germanism" (p. 13 seq.)
with the context he will see that he has misunderstood
me. (By the way, " in our life alone doth Nature live "
is Coleridge's, not Wordsworth's.) I never hesitate to
say anything I have honestly felt because some one
may have said it before, for it will always get a new
color from the new mind, but here I was not saying the
same thing by a great deal. Nihil in intellectu quod non
prius in sensu would be nearer — though not what I
meant. Nature (inanimate), which is the image of the
mind, sympathizes with all our moods. I would have

1870] TO THOMAS HUGHES 67

numbered the lines as Ruskin suggests, only it looks
as if one valued them too much. That sort of thing
should be posthumous. You may do it for me, my dear
Charles, if my poems survive me. Two dropt stitches
I must take up which I notice on looking over what
I have written. Ruskin surely remembers Carlyle's
" whiff of grapeshot." That is one. The other is that
rote may quite as well be from the Icelandic at hriota
= to snore ; but my studies more and more persuade me
that where there is in English a Teutonic and a Ro-
mance root meaning the same thing, the two are apt to
melt into each other so as to make it hard to say from
which our word comes. .

TO THOMAS HUGHES

Elmwood, Oct. 18, 1870.

My dear old Friend, — Parting with you was like say-
ing good-by to sunshine. As I took my solitary whiff
o' baccy, after I got home, my study looked bare, and
my old cronies on the shelves could not make up to
me for my new loss. I sat with my book on my knee
and mused with a queer feeling about my eyelids now
and then. And yet you have left so much behind that
is precious to me, that by and by I know that my room
will have a virtue in it never there before, because of
your presence. And now it seems so short — a hail at
sea with a God-speed and no more. But you will come
back, I am sure. We all send love and regret.

The day after you left us Rose discovered your thin
coat, which she called a " duster." I had half a mind

68 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1870

to confiscate it, it was such a good one; but on sec-
ond thoughts concluded that that was, on the whole,
as good a reason for sending it back as for keeping
it.

Letters continue to pour in, and I enclose them with
the coat to No. 9 Lexington Avenue. There came
also a telegram from Montreal, which I felt justified
in opening. From what you had told me, I had no
doubt that you had already answered in a letter. It
only said that they should expect you on Tuesday.

As you will no doubt see Bryce and Dicey in Lon-
don, pray tell them how sorry I was not to see more of
them. They left many friends in Cambridge. If all
Englishmen could only take America so "naturally"
as you did ! I think, if it could be so, there would
never be any risk of war. That reminds me that I am
sure your address has done great good. It has set peo-
ple thinking, and that is all we need. I enclose a little
poem from to-day's Advertiser which pleased me. I
do not know who " H. T. B." is, but I think his verses
very sweet, and Mrs. Hughes may like to see them.
I would rather have the kind of welcome that met you
in this country than all the shouts of all the crowds on
the "Via Sacra" of Fame. There was "love" in it,
you beloved old boy, and no man ever earns that for
nothing — unless now and then from a woman. By
Jove ! it is worth writing books for — such a feeling as
that. . . .

I am holding " Good-by " at arm's length as long as
I can, but I must come to it. Give my kindest regards
to Rawlins, and take all my heart yourself. God bless

1871] TO THOMAS HUGHES 69

you. A pleasant voyage, and all well in the nest when
you get back to it.

Always most affectionately yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO THE SAME

Elmwood, Feb. 7, 1871.

My dear Friend, — That friendship should be able to
endure silence without suspicion is the surest touch-
stone of its sufficiency. I did not expect to hear from
you very soon after your return, for I knew how busy
you must be in many ways. But I was none the less
glad to get your letter with assurance of your welfare.
I should have written you, indeed, before this, but that
I have been away from home three weeks reading some
lectures in Baltimore.

We are all well except Mabel's Meg, who has fallen
lame. After our warm autumn, Winter, as usual, has
put his screws on, and when I walk it is over five feet
thick of cast iron — for we have little snow. Several
times within the last fortnight the thermometer has
marked — 8° Fahrenheit. But Cambridge is odd in
this respect. Owing to our ice-trade the poorer peo-
ple always bless a hard winter, which gives them work
when other sources fail. Mild weather is always
looked on as a misfortune.

I was much interested in your mutual-enlightenment
scheme, though I am not at all clear as to its doing
good here — I mean, whether a similar committee would
be advisable on this side. Our people are so sensitive-
ly jealous just now that I fear it might arouse opposi-

70 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1871

tion of an ignorant sort, and so do more harm than
good. I think they are settling down to a more ration-
al view of the Alabama matter, and if you can keep
the hotheads in Canada within bounds, all will go well.
A very little more folly on their part would make " a
pretty kettle of fish," if I know my countrymen. Even
granting the claim of the Dominion to be legally ad-
missible (which I doubt), you can no more persuade the
bulk of our people of it than you were able to convince
the English peasant of the righteousness of game laws.
Moreover, and this heightens the danger, our fishermen
are the class which among us most nearly resembles
the borderers of the West, and they are the direct de-
scendants of the men who suffered by British impress-
ment before 1812. They have inherited a very bitter
legacy of hatred, and might too easily be led by an un-
scrupulous demagogue like Butler to make reprisals.
When I remember how like thunder out of a clear sky
war comes nowadays, I wish to get drawn off from the at-
mosphere as much of the ominous electricity as may be.

I think it fortunate that Schenk (pronounced Skenk)
is a Western man, because he will be free at least from
any commercial animosity. He is said to be able, and he
will represent an administration just now especially hos-
tile to Sumner and his theory of constructive damages.

The Senate (who are the real arbiters after all) may
be suspected of being in somewhat the same mood.
Except for the fishery business, I am not inclined to
agree with those who see danger in delay. Already
the discussion of the law -points of neutrality has
brought our people to a more reasonable frame of

(/'fcyKj^f

1871] TO J. T. FIELDS 71

mind about the rights and duties of neutrals. The
Irish element, I think, will never affect our foreign
politics — nor our domestic, for that matter, except
that through New York it may turn the scale of the
next national election in favor of the Democrats ; but
the Democrats, once m power, will be in no more dan-
ger of rushing into a war with England than the Re-
publicans— whom office has already largely corrupted. I
still think (as I told you here) that a war would be more
disastrous to us than to you, though the direst misfor-
tune for both and for the advance of enlightened freedom.

As for the war in Europe, I am a Prussian, and be-
lieve it to be in the interest of civilization that a pub-
lic bully (as France had become) should be soundly
thrashed. The French will never be safe neighbors
till the taint of Louis XIV. is drawn out of their blood.
If the Prussian lancet shall effect this I shall rejoice.
The misery I feel as keenly as anybody, but I remember
that it might have been, but for German energy and cour-
age, even worse on the other side of the Rhine. The
Gaul has never been an amiable conqueror, and the Teu-
ton has the longest historical memory among men. . . .

Elmwood expects you longingly again. With the

heart's affection,

Yours always,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO J. T. FIELDS

Elmwood, Feb. n, 1871.

... I am looking forward to your next installment
of Hawthorne. I read the first with great interest, and

72 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1871

wish you would give us more rather than less — espe-
cially in extracts from his letters. We don't seem
likely to get a biography, and these in some sort sup-
ply it. ... Be sure and don't leave out anything be-
cause it seems trifling, for it is out of these trifles only
that it is possible to reconstruct character sometimes,
if not always. I think your method is above criticism,
and you have hit the true channel between the Cha-
rybdis of reticence and the Scylla of gossip, as Dr. Parr
would have said. . . .

TO LESLIE STEPHEN

Elmwood, July 31, 1871.

... I have been selling my birthright for a mess of
pottage, and find it so savory that I side with Esau
more than ever. I don't know whether you ever sus-
pected it (I hope you didn't — for I have noticed that
you English use "beggar" as a clincher in the way of
contempt), but I have been hitherto pretty well pinched
for money. Our taxes are so heavy that nobody since
Atlas ever carried such a burthen of real estate as I,
and he wouldn't if he had been compelled to pay for it.
Well, I have just (2Qth July was the happy date) been
selling all that I held in my own right for enough to
give me about $5000 a year and Mabel about $1400
more. This isn't much, according to present standards,
but is as much as I want. It is a life-preserver that
will keep my head above water, and the swimming I
will do for myself. Then, I am going to have Elmwood
divided. It is a bitter dose, but I have made up my
mind to it, and make myself believe that I shall like

1871] TO LESLIE STEPHEN 73

the house with a couple of acres as well as I do now
with twelve times as much. The city has crept up to
me, curbstones are feeling after and swooping upon
the green edges of the roads, and the calf I used to
carry is grown to a bull. I have gone over to the
enemy and become a capitalist. I denounce the Com-
mune with the best of them, and find it extremely
natural that I should be natus consumer e fruges — which
means that I shall now grow consumedly frugal. I have
weighed out the reasons (so far as I could decipher
them) which you give me for coming over, and think
them excellent — especially does your lavish offer of five
shillings to sit in a certain chair weigh with me, and I
shall certainly claim it. The reasons I couldn't read
(for you became particularly runic or cuneiform or
something worse in this passage) I took to be of some
loving sort or other, and reciprocate them heartily. If
everything goes well I mean to go abroad in a year
from last June — that is, at the end of our next college
year, and if I do, you will see a youth you never saw
before. Property, sir, is the Ponce-de-Leon fountain
of youth. I am already regenerate. I am the master
of forty legions. I will kick the vizier's daughter, my
wife, for a constitutional. And now cometh L. S. (I
relish your initials now, and mentally add a D. to
them), and prayeth that I would write some verses for
his magazine!* I am given to understand by several
gentlemen in easy circumstances (with whom I discuss
the prices of stocks and the dangers of universal suf-

* Mr. Stephen had lately become editor of the Cornhtll Maga-
zine.

74 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1871

frage) that poets are notorious for nothing so much as
the smallness of their balance at the banker's. Is there
no danger of my losing caste by meddling in such mat-
ters— I who am casting about where I can steal a rail-
way and share with Jem Fisk the applauses of my
grateful countrymen ? Bethink yourself, my dear Ste-
phen. Put yourself for a moment in my position. I
have a great affection for you, and shall lay it to the
small experience of the world natural to the remote
corner in which you dwell. I have no doubt it was
kindly meant. A few Latin versicles, fruits of an ele-
gant leisure, I might send you perhaps — but English —
I must ask Vanderbilt's opinion. I will bear it in mind.
I should have sent " My Study Windows " (a hateful
name, forced upon me by the publishers), but was wait-
ing for a new edition, in which the misprints are cor-
rected. I quite agree with you about Carlyle, and
perhaps was harder on him than I meant, because I
was righting against a secret partiality. I go off also
in a day or two on a fishing jaunt, to get rid of a pain
in the head that has been bothering me. . . .

TO C. E. NORTON

Elmwood, Sept. 5, 1871.

. . . Yesterday, as I was walking down the Beacon
Street mall, the yellowing leaves were dozily drifting from
the trees, and the sentiment of autumn was in all the air ;
though the day, despite an easterly breeze, was sultry.
I enjoyed the laziness of everything to the core, and
sauntered as idly as a thistledown, thinking with a

1871] TO C. E. NORTON 75

pleasurable twinge of sympathy that the fall was be-
ginning for me also, and that the buds of next season
were pushing our stems from their hold on the ever-
renewing tree of Life. I am getting to be an old fel-
low, and my sheaves are not so many as I hoped ; but I
am outwardly more prosperous than ever before — indeed,
than ever I dreamed of being. If none of my stays
give way, I shall have a clear income of over four thou-
sand a year, with a house over my head, and a great
heap of what I have always found the best fertilizer of
the mind — leisure. I cannot tell you how this sense
of my regained paradise of Independence enlivens me.
It is something I have not felt for years — hardly since
I have been a professor. . . . Meanwhile I am getting a
kind of fame — though I never valued that, as you know
— and what is better, a certain respect as a man of
some solid qualities, which I do value highly. I have
always believed that a man's fate is born with him, and
that he cannot escape from it nor greatly modify it —
and that consequently every one gets in the long run
exactly wnat he deserves, neither more nor less. At
any rate, this is a cheerful creed, and enables one to
sleep soundly in the very shadow of Miltiades* trophy.
What I said long ago is literally true, that it is only
for the sake of those who believed in us early that we
desire the verdict of the world in our favor. It is the
natural point of honor to hold our endorsers harmless.
... It is always my happiest thought that with all
the drawbacks of temperament (of which no one is
more keenly conscious than myself) I have never lost
a friend. For I would rather be loved than anything

76 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1871

else in the world. I always thirst after affection, and
depend more on the expression of it than is altogether
wise. And yet I leave the letters of those I love un-
answered so long! It is because the habits of author-
ship are fatal to the careless unconsciousness that is
the life of a letter, and still more, in my case, that I
have always something on my mind — an uneasy sense
of disagreeable duties to come, which I cannot shake
myself free from. But worse than all is that lack of
interest in one's self that comes of drudgery — for I
hold that a letter which is not mainly about the writer
of it lacks the prime flavor. The wine must smack a
little of the cask. You will recognize the taste of
my old wood in this ! . . .

TO E. L. GODKIN

Elmwood, Dec. 20, 1871.

My dear Godkin, — I haven't looked into Taine's
book since it first appeared seven years ago, and as I
had no thought of reviewing it, I find that I did not
mark it as I read. To write a competent review I
should have to read it all through again, for which I have
neither the time nor the head just now. I have just
been writing about Masson's " Life of Milton," for the
North American, and the result has convinced me that
my brain is softening. You are the only man I know who
carries his head perfectly steady, and I find myself so
thoroughly agreeing with the Nation always that I am
half persuaded I edit it myself ! Or rather, you always
say what I would have said — if I had only thought of it.

1871] TO MISS NORTON 77

I am thinking of coming on to New York for a day
or two next week, to see you and a few other friends.
Somehow my youth is revived in me, and I have a
great longing for an hour or two in Page's studio, to
convince me that I am really only twenty-four, as I
seem to myself. So get ready to be jolly, for I mean
to bring a spare trunk full of good spirits with me and
to forget that I have ever been professor or author or
any other kind of nuisance. Just as I was in fancy
kicking off my ball and chain, a glance at the clock
tells me I must run down to College ! But when I
come to New York (since I can't get rid of them) I
shall wear 'em as a breastpin. I have seen some near-
ly as large. Dickens had one when I first saw him in
'42. Give my kindest regards to Mrs. Godkin.
Always affectionately yours,

J. R. L.

Give Schenck another shot. Also say something on
the queer notion of the Republican party that they can
get along without their brains. " Time was that when
the brains were out the man would die" but nous avons
changt tout cela.

TO MISS NORTON

Elmwood, Dec. 21, 1871.

... You forget that I know Dresden better than any
other city except Rome, and I wish to know whether
you are in the Altstadt or the Neustadt, and in what
part of either, that I may figure you to myself the more
comfortably. Is the theatre rebuilt? Are the Schloss

7 8 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1871

and the Japanische Palast in their old places? Does
the sandstone statue of the reforming Elector still keep
watch and ward at the corner of the little garden on
which my room opened, where I heard the first Euro-
pean thrush, and had my daily breakfast-party of spar-
rows? Is there still a Victoria regia in the little green-
house? Are there yellow-coated chairmen yet? And
do the linkmen run before the royal coaches at night?
And will the postman who brings you this wear a scarlet
jacket as he should ? And is it dreadfully cold, and do
you worry yourself every morning by reducing Reau-
mur to Fahrenheit before you know how cold you can
conscientiously feel ? Dear me, how I should like to be
over there just for an hour on Christmas eve, to stroll
about with you and see again the prettiest sight I ever
saw — the innocent jollity in the houses of the poor, and
the dancing shadows of the children round the frugal
Christmas-tree !

Here we are having winter in earnest. Thermometer
four below zero this morning, and the whole earth shin-
ing in the sun like the garments of the saints at the Res-
urrection. Presently I shall walk down to the village to
post this and drink a beaker full of the north-west — the
true elixir of good spirits. . . .

George Curtis has just sent in his report on the Civil
Service, and I expect much good from it. A man like
him who knows the value of moderation, and who can
be perfectly firm in his own opinions without stroking
those of everybody else against the fur, was sure to do
the right thing. I am glad his name will be associated
with so excellent a reform. He deserved it.

1872] TO MISS NORTON AND F. H. UNDERWOOD 79

TO THE SAME

Elmwood, Feb. 17, 1872.

. . . Everything goes on here as usual. Three times
a week I have my classes, one in Nannucci, " Letteratura
del Primo Secolo," the other in Bartsch, " Chrestomathie
de 1'Ancien Francais." On Wednesdays I have besides a
University class, with whom I have read the " Chanson de
Roland," and am now reading the " Roman de la Rose."
On my off-days, the first thing in the morning I go over
my work for the next day, and then renew my reading
of Old French. The only modern book I have read for a
long while is Comte Gobineau's " La Philosophic et les
Religions de 1'Asie Centrale," which I think one of the
most interesting works I ever read. It tells you a great
deal you did not know, and in a very lively way. If you
have not read it I advise you to do so forthwith. . . .

... As for my being in low spirits, I haven't been so
this long while. I thought it was constitutional with
me, but since I have had no pecuniary anxieties I am as
light as a bird. No, you are quite right ; you wouldn't
suspect it from my letters. But, my dear Jane, it takes
a good while to slough off the effect of seventeen years
of pedagogy. I am grown learned (after a fashion) and
dull. The lead has entered into my soul. But I have
great faith in putting the sea between me and the stocks
I have been sitting in so long. . . .

TO F. H. UNDERWOOD

Elmwood, May 12, 1872.
. . . Don't bother yourself with any sympathy for me

80 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1872

under my supposed sufferings from critics. I don't need
it in the least. If a man does anything good, the world
always finds it out, sooner or later ; and if he doesn't,
why, the world finds that out too — and ought to. ...

'Gainst monkey's claws and ass's hoof
My studies forge me mail of proof.
I climb through paths forever new
To purer air and broader view.
What matter though they should efface,
So far below, my footstep's trace ?

TO MISS NORTON

Elmwood, July 2, 1872.

. . . We have had Commencement week, too, but I
saw little of it, being hard at work all the while upon
an article about Dante, with Miss Rossetti's book for
a text. I have not made so much of it as I should if
my time had been less broken. As it was, I had to keep
the press going from day to day. Charles will smile at
this, remembering his editorial experience of me. . . .

We sail in a week from to-day, and I have as yet no
plans. J. H. goes with us ! Frank Parkman and Henry
Adams are also fellow-passengers, so that we shall have
a pleasant ship's company. We shall contrive to meet
you somewhere, you may be sure. Write to care of
Barings whether you are still at St. Germain. I asso-
ciate the name pleasantly with the old homonymous
pear which used to be in our garden. . . .

VII

1872-1876

VISIT TO EUROPE : ENGLAND, RESIDENCE IN PARIS, ITALY, PARIS,
ENGLAND. — HONORARY DEGREE FROM OXFORD. — ELEGY ON
AGASSIZ. RETURN TO ELMWOOD. — RESUMPTION OF PROFES-
SORIAL DUTIES. — CENTENNIAL POEMS AT CONCORD AND CAM-
BRIDGE.— " AMONG MY BOOKS/' SECOND SERIES. — ENTRANCE
INTO POLITICAL LIFE. DELEGATE TO THE NATIONAL RE-
PUBLICAN CONVENTION. — PRESIDENTIAL ELECTOR.

LETTERS TO MISS GRACE NORTON, GEORGE PUTNAM, MISS
NORTON, THOMAS HUGHES, C. E. NORTON, LESLIE STEPHEN,
E. L. GODKIN, T. B. ALDRICH, MRS. L. A. STIMSON, W. D.

HOWELLS, T. S. PERRY, MRS. , J. W. FIELD, R. S. CHIL-

TON, R. W. GILDER, JOEL BENTON, E. P. BLISS, H. W. LONG-
FELLOW.

TO MISS GRACE NORTON

ii Down Street, Piccadilly, Aug. 4, 1872.

. . . Our voyage was as smooth as the style of the
late Mr. Samuel Rogers of happy memory. . . . We
landed at Queenstown on the morning of the eleventh
day out. . . .

Dublin interested me much. I can describe it in one

word by calling it Hogarthian. I walked pretty well

over it while there, and was continually struck with its

last-century look. I saw even a genuine Tom O'Bed-

II.— 6

82 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1872

lam one day. Beggars are as thick as in Italy and quite
as pertinacious. One pretty little scene I shall never
forget. It was a drizzly day, and the sidewalks were
covered with a slippery black paste. Near the Tholsel
(City Hall) sat a woman on some steps nursing her
baby, and in front of her a ring of barefoot children
(the oldest not more than five years) were dancing
round a little tot who stood bewildered in the middle,
and singing as they whirled hand in hand. They were
as dirty and as rosy and as ragged as could be, and as
pretty as one of Richter's groups. The ballad- singer
with her baby and lugubrious song I met several times.
At the National Gallery we saw a portrait by Morone
as good as anything south of the Alps, and at the Na-
tional Exhibition lots of Irish portraits and other inter-
esting things. I went to the library of Trinity College,
where the librarian, Dr. Malet, was very civil, and prom-
ised to send some books to the good old Sibley.* I was
interested in the College as being Godkin's, whom I cel-
ebrated to Dr. Malet, you may be sure. From Dublin to
Chester, where we stayed five days, and where Charles
Kingsley (who is a canon there) was very kind. We
had the advantage of going over the Cathedral with
him, and over the town with the chief local antiquary.
We fell quite in love with it and with the delightful
walk round the walls. We arrived in London night
before last. . . .

Affectionately yours,

LLUMBAGO LLOWELL.

* The Librarian of Harvard University.

d by C H. Jeensfrom-a Photograph

ZondoTiPublisbedby MacmtLlan &. C^287C

1872] TO MISS NORTON 83

TO MISS NORTON
ii Down Street, Piccadilly, Aug. 19, 1872.

... I do not mean to say that I am not enjoying
myself. I suppose I am, in an indolent kind of fashion,
but I caught myself being homesick before I had been
a week in England. Some little solace I got out of an
Anglo-Norman poem which I picked up here, and I
can't help laughing when I think of it. So, then, my
nature, like a dyer's hand, has been subdued to what it
has been working in, and the curious dulness I am sen-
sible of in myself is a fair standard of how much there
must be in the literature whence I drew it. It worries
me, though, this slowness. You have always laughed
at me when I talked about it, but what I said of myself
years ago (I could not say anything so smart now) —
that I had been altered from percussion to flint — is per-
fectly true.

Something you say in your letter puts me in mind
of what I always thought one of the most truly pa-
thetic passages in all literature. I mean that in which
Froissart, after devoting a chapter to the praises of the
Queen (I forget her name) who had been his patroness,
seems to bethink himself, and rousing from his reverie
with a sigh, begins his next chapter by saying, " There
is no death which we must not get over," or something
to that effect. Whether he meant just that or not,
there is nothing sadder, nothing we resent so much, as
the necessity of being distracted and consoled. I fear I
have quoted this to you before, it comes up to my mind
so often. I wish I could recollect the Queen's name.

84 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1872

But I never can. And this the more persuades me of
my unfitness to be a professor, whose main business it
is to remember names and to be cocksure of dates. I
can't for my life tell you (without going to my books)
who it was that first alternated male and female rhymes
in French alexandrine verse, nor whether he hit upon
this clever scheme for setting the French Muse in the
stocks towards the close of the twelfth or beginning
of the thirteenth century. Isn't there a pretty pro-
fessor! Anyhow, the said Muse has sat there ever
since ! B£ranger cheered her up with a bottle of
claret, and de Musset gave her a kind of wicked in-
spiration with absinthe ; but there she sits, and all
owing to this wretch whose name I can't recall. Am
I the right sort of man to guide ingenuous youth?
Not a bit of it ! ...

Tell Charles the article on Dante was written in all
the distraction of getting away, with the thermometer
at 95°, and keeping abreast of the printers, so that I
could not arrange and revise properly. I am glad he
found anything in it. ...

Good-by, my dear woman, for a few days. By Jove,
isn't it pleasant to be able to say that ? For a few days,
mind you. It was years, a month ago. . . .

Yours most everything always,

J. R. L.

TO C. E. NORTON

H6tel de Lorraine, No. 7 Rue de Beaune,
Paris, Dec. 4, 1872.

. . . Oddly enough when I got your letter about

1372]

TO C. E. NORTON

Tennyson's poem I had just finished reading a real
Arthurian romance — "Fergus" — not one of the best,
certainly, but having that merit of being a genuine
blossom for which no triumph of artifice can compen-
sate ; having, in short, that woodsy hint and tantaliza-
tion of perfume which is so infinitely better than any-
thing more defined. Emerson had left me Tennyson's
book ; so last night I took it to bed with me and fin-
ished it at a gulp — reading like a naughty boy till half-
past one. The contrast between his pomp and my old
rhymer's simpleness was very curious and even instruc-
tive. One bit of the latter (which I cannot recollect
elsewhere) amused me a good deal as a Yankee. When
Fergus comes to Arthur's court and Sir Kay " sarses "
him (which, you know, is de rigeur in the old poems),
Sir Gawain saunters up whittling a stick as a medicine
against ennui. So afterwards, when Arthur is dread-
fully bored by hearing no news of Fergus, he reclines at
table without any taste for his dinner, and whittles to
purge his heart of melancholy. I suppose a modern poet
would not dare to come so near Nature as this lest she
should fling up her heels. But I am not yet " aff wi' the
auld love," nor quite " on with the new." There are very
fine childish things in Tennyson's poem and fine manly
things, too, as it seems to me, but I conceive the theory
to be wrong. I have the same feeling (I am not wholly
sure of its justice) that I have when I see these modern-
mediaeval pictures. I am defrauded ; I do not see reality,
but a masquerade. The costumes are all that is genu-
ine, ancl the people inside them are shams — which, I take
it, is just the reverse of what ought to be. One special

86 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1872

criticism I should make on Tennyson's new Idyls, and
that is that the similes are so often dragged in by the
hair. They seem to be taken (& la Tom Moore) from
note-books, and not suggested by the quickened sense of
association in the glow of composition. Sometimes it
almost seems as if the verses were made for the similes,
instead of being the cresting of a wave that heightens as
it rolls. This is analogous to the costume objection and
springs perhaps from the same cause — the making of
poetry with malice prepense. However, I am not going
to forget the lovely things that Tennyson has written,
and I think they give him rather hard measure now.
However, it is the natural recoil of a too rapid fame.
Wordsworth had the true kind — an unpopularity that
roused and stimulated while he was strong enough to de-
spise it, and honor, obedience, troops of friends, when the
grasshopper would have been a burthen to the drooping
shoulders. Tennyson, to be sure, has been childishly
petulant; but what have these whipper-snappers, who
cry " Go up, baldhead," done that can be named with
some things of his? He has been the greatest artist in
words we have had since Gray — and remember how
Gray holds his own with little fuel, but real fire. He
had the secret of the inconsumable oil, and so, I fancy,
has Tennyson.

I keep on picking up books here and there, but I
shall be forced to stop, for I find I have got beyond
my income. Still, I shall try gradually to make my
Old French and Provengal collection tolerably complete,
for the temptation is great where the field is definitely
bounded. .

1873] TO GEORGE PUTNAM AND C. E. NORTON 8/

TO GEORGE PUTNAM

H6tel de Lorraine, No. 7 Rue de Beaune,
Paris, Dec. 12, 1872.

My dear Putnam, — . . . We are still at the same little
hotel, and like it better and better. It is really being
in foreign parts, for everybody is French but ourselves,
and we are become a part of the household, so that
night before last in the gale it was our haut de cheminee
that came rattling down.

We like the people very much. They are kindly and
honest, and we think we shall stay a month or two
longer. It will be wise, for if I stay so long my in-
come will overtake me. It is a little out of breath just
now — but then I have got some books (all in Old French
and Provengal) which will be a revenue to me so long
as I live. We are too near the quais, where all the
bouquinistes spin their webs. We are threatened with
a kind of mild revolution (an inoculated one), but I
doubt. I think the Right must keep on with Thiers,
and that even had they the courage for a coup-d'ttat,
he would outgeneral them. But, after all, en France
tout arrive, and the French are the most wonderful
creatures for talking wisely and acting foolishly I ever
saw. However, I like Paris, and am beginning to be
glad I came abroad. . . .

TO C. E. NORTON

Paris, Jan. u, 1873.

My dear Charles, — ... I begin to foresee that I shall
not stay abroad so long as I expected. I thought I was

88 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1873

all right now, but as usual my income is never so large
as my auguries. Fortunately, I like Cambridge better
than any other spot of the earth's surface, and if I can
only manage to live there, shall be at ease yet. Invent
portum, spes et fortuna, valete ; sat me lusistis, ludite jam
altos ! That's what I shall say — at least I hope so. ...

Paris, old Mr. Sales said, was not exactly the place
for deacons. Nor is it for poets. However, no place
is where one only perches. I cannot contrive the right
kind of solitude, and if I compose as I walk about I
shall be run over. I made out a sonnet day before yes-
terday, which, as I composed it expressly for you, I
shall send to its address — though its merit lies mainly
in the sentiment and not (as it should be with a sonnet)
in the execution. But I am getting as bad with my
prelude as the band in a penny show, and you will
begin to expect something wonderful if I don't give
you the thing at once.

P. S. I conceived it in Cumberland.

As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills,
Whose heather-purpled slopes in glory rolled
Flush all my thought with momentary gold,
What pang of vague regret my fancy thrills ?
Here 'tis enchanted ground the peasant tills,
Where the shy ballad could its leaves unfold,
And Memory's glamour makes new sights seem old,
As when our life some vanished dream fulfils.
Yet not to you belong these painless tears,
Land loved ere seen ; before my darkened eyes,
From far beyond the waters and the years,
Horizons mute that wait their poet rise ;
The stream before me fades and disappears,
And in the Charles the western splendor dies.

1873] TO C. E. NORTON 89

I have hardly expressed the strange feeling of ideal
familiarity vexed with a longing for something visibly
intimate. But I miss my old Solitude, and if Memory
be the mother of the Muses, this lonely lady is their
maiden aunt who always has gifts for them in her cup-
board when they visit her. However, I have a poem or
two in my head which I hope will come to something
one of these days. The theme of one of them is pretty
enough. To the cradle of Garin come the three fairies.
One gives him beauty — one power — and the third mis-
fortune. Grown an old, old man, he sits in the court-
yard of the palace he has conquered from the Sara-
cens, and muses over his past life to the murmur of the
fountain, which sings to him as it did to its old lords,
and as it will to the new after he is gone. As he reck-
ons up what is left him as the result of the three gifts,
what is really a possession of the soul, what has turned
the soft fibre of gifts to the hard muscle of character,
he comes to the conclusion that the third fairy, whom
his parents would fain have kept away or propitiated,
was the beneficent one.

I have seen nothing new except the Due d'Aumale,
whom I met the other night at the Laugels'. I had, of
course, only a few moments' commonplace talk with
him. As a general thing, I like men vastly better than
dukes, though where the two qualities are united, as in
him, I am willing to encounter the product. He is a
distingue person in a high sense, with a real genius for
looking like a gentleman. I was pleased to see how
much might be done by breeding, and how effective the
result is — greater in some respects than that of great

90 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1873

natural parts. It was good to see so pure a face in the
grandson of Egalite" and great-grandson of the Regent.
There is hope, then, for the most degraded races, and
Whitefriars may contain the ancestors of saints and
heroes. One thing struck me particularly, and made
our Americanism (which weighs a man honestly, with-
out throwing in the bones of his ancestors) dearer to
me. Nobody, I could see, was quite at ease with the
duke, nor he with anybody. There was something
unnatural in the relation, a dimly defined sense of an-
achronism, something of what a dog might feel in the
company of a tame wolf. The more I see of the old
world, the better I like the new. I am disgusted to
see how the papers are willing to overlook the crimes
and the essential littleness of Napoleon III., simply be-
cause he has had the wit to die, a stroke of genius
within reach of us all. However, I was long ago con-
vinced that one of the rarest things in the world was
a real opinion based on judgment and unshakable by
events. The clamor civium prava laudantium is as bad
as that of the jubentium. . . .

Always most lovingly yours,

J. R. L.

TO MISS NORTON

H6tel de Lorraine, 7 Rue de Beaune,
Paris, March 4, 1873.

. . . We have enjoyed our winter here on the whole
very much, and have really learned something of the
French and their ways — more than ten years on the
other side of the river would have done for us. The

1873] TO C. E. NORTON 91

French are fearfully and wonderfully made in some re-
spects, but I like them and their pretty ways. It is a
positive pleasure (after home experiences, where one
has to pad himself all over against the rude elbowing
of life) to go and buy a cigar. It is an affair of the
highest and most gracious diplomacy, and we spend
more monsieurs and madames upon it than would sup-
ply all the traffic of Cambridge for a half-century. It
is a good drill, for I have always been of the mind that
in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons
against the bowie-knife, the only thing that will save us
from barbarism. Our little hotel is very pleasant in its
way, and its clientele is of the most respectable. . . .
I can't remember whether I told Charles that one of
our convives turned out to be a gentleman who had
lived many years in Finland, and had translated into
French my favorite " Kalewala." He tells me that
the Finns recite their poems six or seven hours on the
stretch, spelling one another, as we say in New Eng-
land. This would make easily possible the recitation
of a poem like the " Roland," for example, or of one
even much longer. . . .

TO C. E. NORTON

H6tel de Lorraine, 7 Rue de Beaune,
Paris, March 18, 1873.

. . . The Emersons are back with us, to our great
satisfaction, and yesterday I took him to the top of
the tower of Notre Dame, and played the part of Satan
very well, I hope, showing him all the kingdoms of this
world. A very pleasant walk we had of it. He grows

92 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1873

sweeter if possible as he grows older. He had a pros-
perous Egyptian journey. . . . He told us a droll story
of Alcott last night. He asked the Brahmin what he
had to show for himself, what he had done, in short, to
justify his having been on the earth. " If Pythagoras
came to Concord whom would he ask to see?" de-
manded the accused triumphantly. . . .

TO THOMAS HUGHES

H6tel de Lorraine, 7 Rue de Beaune,
Paris, March 19, 1873.

My dear Friend, — First, of what interests me most.
The day I got your book* the Emersons came back
from the crocodiles and pyramids and fleas. So I could
not get at it so soon as I would. But I began it in the
hour before dinner, and at last, when everybody had
gone to bed, I sat up (like a naughty boy) till half-
past one and read every word of it, even including my
own verses, which had a kind of sweetness for me be-
cause you liked them. It interested me very much, and
I quite fell in love with your father, who seems to me
to have been a model of good sense and that manliness
which it is perhaps our weakness to limit by calling it
gentle-manliness. I see where you got a great deal of
what I love in you. I wish your brother had done more,
and I confess (though it is awkward) that I would rather
have had your life (but for a single tragic contingency)
than his. I did, to be sure, get a part of it. But I was
touched especially and inspired with the glimpse I got

* The book was " Memoir of a Brother."

1873] TO THOMAS HUGHES 93

of the affection and unity of your household. Your
preface came to me just at the right moment, when I
was saddened by the news from home, above all, with
the fact that the average public opinion of the country
did not seem to be higher than the personal sense of
duty of its representatives. What you say of the quiet
lives that would come to the front in England in a time
of stress I believe to be true of us also. I cannot think
such a character as Emerson's — one of the simplest and
noblest I have ever known — a freak of chance, and I
hope that my feeling that the country is growing worse
is nothing more than men of my age have always felt
when they looked back to the tempus actum. I think
that this book of yours also, like all your others, will do
a great deal of good and add to the number of honest
men in the world. The longer I live (you will see or
divine the subtle thread of association) the less I wonder
that men make much of soldiers. The Romans were
right when they lumped together manhood, courage,
and virtue in the single word virtus. What profounder
moral than that their descendants should express by
the word virtu the contents of a shop where second-
hand shreds and fragments of old housekeeping fash-
ions are sold ?

As for the degree, read Charles Lamb's sonnet on vis-
iting Oxford and you will see how I feel. I would take
a much longer journey for the sake of feeling even a son-
in-law's right in that ancient household of scholarship
and pluck. I believe I care very little for decorations,
but I should prize this not only abstractedly, but because
it would give more "power to my elbow," as Paddy

94 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1873

says, at home. How it would have pleased my father !
But I shall not be a bit disappointed if I do not get it,
and shall always count myself a D.C.L. so far as you
are concerned.

We had a good laugh over the woodcut on the cover
of my book. The one inside is a very good copy of
the photograph, though it does not, I fancy, look much
like me. Madame pronounces it dreadful. Luckily, I
have the skin of a rhinoceros in this regard, and have
never sloughed off the wholesome effect of having been
brought up to consider myself visible to the naked eye,
in other words plain. What a frank creature the sun is,
to be sure, as an artist ! He would almost take the
nonsense out of a Frenchman.

If I had dreamed you would have run over to Paris,
wouldn't I have told you where I was ! But, in fact, I
have lingered on here from week to week aimlessly,
having come abroad to do nothing, and having thus far
succeeded admirably.

So far as I understood your "differ"* with your
electors I thought you were right. I doubt if it be time
yet to give up the Church of England or indeed to cut
rashly any cable that anchors you to your historical
past. If I am wanted in England I will be with you at

Easter.

Always affectionately yours,

J. R. L.

* My supporters at Frome, which borough I then represented,
had passed resolutions in favor of disestablishing the Church and
against co-operation, having been visited by the agents of the
Liberation Society and the Trades' Protection Society, and I had
refused to vote for disestablishment or for any measure limiting
the right to associate for any lawful purpose. — T. H.

1873] TO LESLIE STEPHEN 95

TO LESLIE STEPHEN

Paris, April 29, 1873.

My dear Stephen, — Behold me now these six months,
like Napoleon the First, buried here on the banks of
the Seine, in the midst of that French people whom I
love so well. I ought to have answered your kind let-
ter long ago, but I have delayed from day to day till I
could tell you something definite about my plans. But
somehow or other I find it harder and harder to have
any plans. Mine host has mixed nepenthe with his
wine, or mandragora, that takes the reason prisoner.
But I think I have made up my mind to run over to
London for a day or two to bid the Nortons good-by,
for I cannot bear to have the sea between us before I
see them again. If I do, I shall arrive about the 7th
of May, and I shall count on seeing you as much as
possible. It will depend very much on whether I can
find a good perch for Mrs. Lowell when I am gone, for
she is not in condition just now for so long a journey,
though not in any sense ill. As for me, I am grown
more fat than bard beseems, but have had a contin-
ual bother with my eyes — now better, now worse,
but on the whole staying worse. Three days ago I
thought I was all right, and this morning my left
eye is as bad as ever. A good reason this for going
over to England, for you will always be to me as good
a sight for sair een as anything I can think of. I have
an eyeglass swinging at my neck like the albatross (in-
deed I am getting to be a tolerably ancient mariner by
this time), but it is only a bother to me. So I have

96 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1873

to give up the old-age theory and drift in the ocean of
conjecture.

However, with all drawbacks I have had a pleasant
winter, and have at least pretty well shaken myself
clear of one of my pet antipathies. I have even learnt
to like the French after a fashion, but it is curious to
me that I like and dislike them with nothing of the
intensity which I feel towards Americans and English.
I feel, always unconsciously, that they are a different
breed, for whom I am in no way responsible. In the
other case, a sense of common blood and partner-
ship makes attraction easier and repulsion more in-
stinctive. I watch these people as Mr. Darwin might
his distant relations in a menagerie. Their tricks
amuse me, and I am not altogether surprised when
they remind me of " folks," as we say in New Eng-
land. I don't believe they will make their Rtpub-
lique (a very different thing from a republic, by the way)
march, for every one of them wants to squat on the
upper bar and to snatch the nuts from his fellows.
Esprit is their ruin, and an epigram has with them
twice the force of an argument. However, I have
learned to like them, which is a great comfort, and to
see that they have some qualities we might borrow to
advantage.

I have read your "Are We Christians?" and liked it,
of course, because I found you in it, and that is some-
thing that will be dear to me so long as I keep my wits.
I think I should say that you lump shams and conven-
tions too solidly together in a common condemnation.
All conventions are not shams by a good deal, and we

1873] TO C. E. NORTON 97

should soon be Papuans without them. But I dare say
I have misunderstood you. I am curious to see your
brother's book, which, from some extracts I have read,
I think will suit me very well. What I saw was good
old-fashioned sense, and would have tickled Dr. John-
son. I should find it hard to say why I dislike John
Stuart Mill, but I have an instinct that he has done lots
of harm.

I hope you have seen something of Emerson, who is
as sweet and wholesome as an Indian-summer after-
noon. We had nearly three weeks of him here, to
my great satisfaction. . . .

I remain as always

Most heartily and affectionately yours,

J. R. L.

TO C. E. NORTON

Paris, May i, 1873.

... I think I shall get some good out of it (my lazi-
ness) one of these days, for I am pleased to find that
my dreams have recovered their tone and are getting
as fanciful as they used to be before I was twenty-five.
So I don't mind the circumference of my waist. The
other night I heard a peasant girl in the ruins of a castle
sing an old French ballad that would have been worth
a thousand pound if I could have pieced it together
again when I awoke. What bit I could recall satisfied
me that it was not one of those tricks that sleep puts on
us sometimes. I have seen the Delectable Mountains,
too, several times to my great comfort, for I began to
believe myself fairly stalled in the slough of middle age.
II.— 7

98 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1873

Montaigne called himself an old man at forty-seven, and
I am fifty-four!

Our last expedition was down the Seine in the steam-
boat to Suresnes, which despite a leaden day was de-
lightful. Spring is a never-failing medicine with me.
Something or other within us pushes and revives with
the season, and the first song of a bird sums up all the
past happiness of life, all its past sorrow too, with a pas-
sion of regret that is sweeter than any happiness. The
spring here is very lovely. The tender and translucent
green of the leaves, their dream of summer, as it were,
lasts longer than with us, where they become mere
business arrangements for getting grub out of the blue
air before they are out of their teens.

I look forward to having two or three real days with
you. I haven't got the groove of the collar out of my
neck yet, but I am a little freer in mind than when you
were here. However, we shall see. I think I am not
so dull as then.

J. H. came back to us day before yesterday, after a
month in Italy, where he did not much enjoy himself.
He says that he has become a thorough misoscopist, or
hater of sights. He goes home in June, and I shall miss
him more than I like to think. . . .

TO T. B. ALDRICH

Paris, May 28, 1873.

My dear Aldrich, — I have been so busy lately with
doing nothing (which on the whole demands more time,
patience, and attention than any other business) that I

1873] TO T. B. ALDRICH 99

have failed to answer your very pleasant letter of I
don't know how long ago.

What you say about William amused me much.*
You know there is a proverb that " service is no inheri-
tance," but it was invented by the radical opposition —
by some servant, that is, who was asking for higher
wages. My relation with William realized the saying
in an inverse sense, for I received him from my father,
already partly formed by an easy master, and have, I
think, pretty well finished his education. I believe I
fled to Europe partly to escape his tyranny, and I am
sure he is awaiting the return of his vassal to re-enter
on all the feudal privileges which belong of right to his
class in a country so admirably free as ours. He had
all the more purchase upon me that his wife had been
in our service before he was, so that he knew all my
weak points beforehand. Nevertheless, he has been an
excellent servant, diligent, sober, and systematic, and I
have no doubt I shall end my days as his milch cow if
the udders of my purse continue to have a drop in
them. You would see his worst side. He has eyes
all round his head for the main chance ; but anybody
would take advantage of me, and I prefer the shearer to
whom I am wonted, who clips close, to be sure, but has
skill enough to spare the skin. He saves me trouble,
and that is a saving I would rather buy dear than any
other. Beyond meat and drink, it is the only use I
have ever discovered for money — unless you give it
away, which is apt to breed enemies. You will for-

* Mr. Aldrich was occupying Elmwood during Lowell's absence.
" William " was the old factotum of the place.

100 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1873

give my saying that I feel a certain grain of pleasure
(with the safe moat of ocean between) in thinking
of you in your unequal struggle with Wilhelmus Con-
questor.

It gives me a very odd feeling to receive a letter
dated at Elmwood from anybody whose name isn't
Lowell. I used to have a strange fancy when I came
home late at night that I might find my double seated
in my chair, and how should I prove my identity?
Your letter revived it. I can see my study so plainly
as I sit here — but I find it hard to fill my chair with
anybody but myself. By the way, the study table was
made of some old mahogany ones that came from
Portsmouth — only I gave it to be done by a man in
want of work, and of course the cheap-looking affair
which affronts your eyes. 'Twas too bad, for the wood
was priceless. You may have dined at it in some for-
mer generation. It is a pleasant old house, isn't it?
Doesn't elbow one, as it were. It will make a fright-
ful conservative of you before you know it. It was
born a Tory and will die so. Don't get too used to it.
I often wish I had not grown into it so. I am not
happy anywhere else.

I am glad to hear you are writing a novel. Get it
all done before you begin to print. Serials have been
the bane of literature. There is no more good ship-
building. But I draw a good augury from your letter.
You had the strength of mind to leave off at the end
of your third page — though I would readily have for-
given you the fourth. This is a rare virtue, and if you
will but write your book on the same principle of leav-

1873] TO T. B. ALDRICH IOI

ing off when you have done, I am sure I shall be glad
to read it.

I shall stay out my two years, though personally I
would rather be at home. In certain ways this side is
more agreeable to my tastes than the other — but even
the buttercups stare at me as a stranger and the birds
have a foreign accent. I'll be hanged but the very
clouds put on strange looks to thwart me, and turn
the cold shoulder on me. However, I have learned to
know and like the French during my nine months' stay
among them.

I am sorry to hear they stole your fruit. It gave me
a sensible pang, for the trees I have planted are part of
myself, and I feel the furtive evulsion of every pear even
at this distance. Get a dog. He will eat up all your
chickens, keep you awake all moonlight nights, and root
up all your flowers, but he will make you feel safe about
your pears till they have been made booty of. Study
the book of Job. It supplies one with admirable for-
mulas of impatience, and in that way serves to recon-
cile one to his lot. To learn patience read the works
of A. H. K. B.

Give my love to Howells when you see him, and tell
him that as he is pretty busy he will easily find time to
write to me. I suppose he is in his new house by this
time. And Bartlett's house ? I sha'n't know my Cam-
bridge when I come back to it. Are you annexed yet ?
Before this reaches you I shall have been over to Ox-
ford to get a D.C.L. So by the time you get it this
will be the letter of a Doctor and entitled to the more
respect. Perhaps, in order to get the full flavor, you

102 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1873

had better read this passage first if you happen to think
of it. Do you not detect a certain flavor of parchment
and Civil Law?

Mrs. Lowell joins me in kind regards to Mrs. Aldrich
and yourself — and I am always

Yours cordially,

J. R. L.

P. S. I have kept this back for the Brest steamer,
which saves me fourteen cents postage. We leave Paris
in a day or two. I have learned to like it and the
French, which is a great gain. We have had a very
pleasant winter here in the most French of hotels. But
Cambridge is better, as the rivers of Damascus were
better than Jordan. There is no place like it, no, not
even for taxes ! I am getting gray and fat — about £ as
large as Ho wells.

TO THOMAS HUGHES

Paris, June 2, 1873.

My dear Friend, — If I am not wise enough for a Doc-
torate, the fault will be yours. The cap is about to fall
on my head, and you are chiefly to be thanked for it. I
am as pleased as Punch at the thought of having a kind
of denizenship, if nothing more, at Oxford ; for though
the two countries insist on misunderstanding each other,
I can't conceive why the sensible men on both sides
shouldn't in time bring 'em to see the madness of their
ways. Born on the edge of a University town, I have
a proper respect for academical decorations, and I am
provoked that I must wait till 1875 before I see myself

HENRI D "OR LEANS, -

DUC DVAUMALE<

1873] TO THOMAS HUGHES 103

in our triennial catalogue with "D.C.L. Oxon." at my
tail. If I don't know much Roman law, I shall at least
endeavor to do credit to my new title by being as civil
as an orange to all mankind. Mr. Bernard has been
good enough to invite me to stay with him during my
visit to Oxford, so I am sure to be in good hands. I
do not know whether you old Oxonians attend the Uni-
versity festivals or not, but I shall not feel properly Doc-
tored unless you are to the fore. My visit will be a fly-
ing one at best, for I shall leave Mrs. Lowell at Bruges.

My last trip to England did me good. My eyes —
whether it was the friends I saw or no I can't say — have
been better ever since. England looked so lovely after
France, though I can't yet quite make out why. But
the land of the Gauls has the advantage that one can
live on his income there.

We have had a revolution since I saw you — not so
much of a one as your papers in England seem to think,
however. The conservatives never had any intention of
making a president of the Due d'Aumale, and though I
never make prophecies, yet I am sure their present inten-
tion (as it is their only good policy) is to keep things
steady as they are. But you remember how the great
Julius begins — " Omnis divisa est Gallia in partes tres."
That is, into three parties — monarchists, Bonapartists,
and republicans, who have to pull together for their
own ends,' and therefore, whether they will or no, must
help the conservative republic. Henri V. is out of the
question, and the radical republic equally so — I mean,
as a thing that could endure. Meanwhile the legiti-
mists are a drag on the Orleanists, and whatever Bo-

104 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1873

napartism there is among the masses means merely a
longing for order and peace. Whatever government
can secure these for a year or two will become the
residuary legatee of the Empire.

I think it was the egotism of Thiers that overset him
rather than any policy he was supposed to have, and I
look on the peacefulness of the late change as a most
hopeful augury for France. I believe in the bewilder-
ing force of names, but I believe also that things carry
it in the long run. The French are a frugal, sensible,
industrious, and conservative people, and if they can
only keep the beggar prince out of the saddle, they
won't be ridden to the devil so easily in future.

We shall leave Paris to-morrow or next day, stop-
ping in Rheims to see the churches, at Louvain for the
Town House, and so on to Antwerp, Ghent, and Bruges.
If you write, address me " poste restante " at the last
named.

I promised your little girl, when I was in London, to
send her an autograph from Paris, so I have scribbled
her a few nonsense-verses which I hope will serve her
turn. If I don't see you in Oxford, I shall stop long
enough in London to get a glimpse of you. Our plan
is to go to Switzerland and Germany, and so down to
Italy for the winter. Then back to Paris, and so over
to England on our way home next year. I hate trav-
elling with my whole soul, though I like well enough
to "be" in places.

With kindest regards to Mrs. Hughes, I remain always

Affectionately yours,

J. R. L.

1873] TO MRS. LEWIS A. STIMSON 105

TO MRS. LEWIS A. STIMSON

Bruges, June 25, 1873.

My dear Mrs. Stimson, — Here are the poor little
verses I wrote the night before we left Paris and prom-
ised to send you. They have been rattling about in
Mrs. Lowell's portfolio ever since, but I cannot see that
they are at all the wiser for their travels. This is the
first chance I have had to copy them out for you.

" You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
The scent of the roses will hang round it still."

Lucretius first, as I suppose,
Ventured to fasten on the nose
A simile both rich and rare,
As savages hang jewels there ;
Perhaps he stole it from some Greek
Whose poem lost 'twere vain to seek;
Perhaps he found it (if it we*e. was his)
By simply following his proboscis;
At any rate 'tis no wise dim
That Tom Moore borrowed it of him,
And thinned it to the filagree
Which at my verses' top you see.

Some other poet 'twas, no doubt,
Who found a further secret out —
I mean, those intimate relations
'Twixt perfumes and associations;
Nay, 'twixt a smell of any kind
And the recesses of the mind,
Since Memory is reached by no door
So quickly as by that of odor.

106 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1873

Now, what do all these steps lead up to?

Why not speak frankly ex abrupto ?

They lead to this — that when I'm gone,

And you sit trying fancies on,

Puzzling your brain with buts and maybes

About the future of your babies,

Planning some bow (Oh, sure, no harm)

To give your looks a heightened charm —

Sudden you'll give a little sniff

And say: "It surely seems as if

There was an odor in the room

Not just like mignonette in bloom,

Nor like the breeze that brings away

Sweet messages of new-mown hay : —

What? No! Why, yes, it is indeed

Stale traces of that hateful weed

The red man to his spoilers left,

Fatal as Nessus' burning weft."

And then with eyes still fixed in vision,

Unconscious of the least transition,

" I wonder what the T mvH]° Lowles are doing,

What bit of scenery pursuing.

Do they in Switzerland repent?

Or, o'er their guardian Murrays bent,

Do they endeavor to divine

Why they must needs enjoy the Rhine ?

Count they the shocks the German kitchen

Is so incomparably rich in ?

Do they across Lugano steer

In whose ethereal silence clear

It seems that one might hear a fin stir?

Or, in some grim and chilly minster,

Are they condemned to dog the Suisse

Through nasal rounds of that and this,

Till, to the very marrow chilled,

They wish men had not learned to build?

1873] TO MRS. LEWIS A. STIMSON 107

Or, bored with Tintorets and Titians

And saints in all the queer positions

They can be twisted to with paints,

Do they wish wicked things of saints?

Well, she was pleasant as could be,

So sweet and cheerful too — but he!

He left behind at every visit

Tobacco perfumes so explicit,

That in the night I often woke

Thinking myself about to choke.

I wish I had his pipe to throw it

Into the fire — a pretty poet!

Whene'er he's buried, those that love him,

Instead of violets sweet above him,

Should plant, to soothe his melancholy,

The poisonous herb brought home by Raleigh!"

Now, when such vixenish thoughts assail you,
And other lenitives all fail you,
Do like the children, who are wiser
And happier far than king or kaiser :
Play that a thing is thus or so,
And gradually you'll find it grow
The very truth (for bale or bliss)
Of what you fancy that it is;
Just call the weed, to try the spell,
Nepenthe, lotus, asphodel,
And say my pipe was such as those
The slim Arcadian shepherd blows
On old sarcophagi to lull
An ear these twenty centuries dull-
Pipe of such sweet and potent tone
It charmed to shapes of deathless stone
The piper and the dancers too
(As may mine never do for you,

I08 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL £1873

But keep you rather fresh and fair

To breathe the sweetest mortal air).

Then, when your thought has worked its will,

And turned to sweetness things of ill,

Muse o'er your girlish smile and say,

"Well, now he's fairly gone away,

If on his faults one does not dwell,

There are worse bores than J. R. L."

There's an autograph for you ! As long as one of
Bach's fugues. Remember us to M. Carrier and Ma-
dame and Clarisse. Tell Baptiste (if he has not already
boned it) that an old coat I left on a chair in my bed-
room was meant for him. I have been over to Oxford
to be doctored, and had a very pleasant time of it.
You would respect me if you could have seen me in
my scarlet gown. Kindest regards from both of us to
both of you. We go from here in a day or two to
Holland — then up the Rhine to Switzerland, where
we join the Stephens and Miss Thackeray.

You must pardon the verses — my hand is out. The
writing looks something like mine — not much.

Good-by ; give an orange to each of the children for
me, and believe me yours affectionately always,

J. R. L.

TO C. E. NORTON

Venice, Oct. 30, 1873.

. . . We made a pretty good giro in the Low Coun-
tries, going wherever there was a good Cathedral or
Town Hall. Ypres charmed us especially, even after
Bruges, which is always a Capua for me. The little
town is so quiet and sleepy — no, not sleepy, but drowsy

Jean Proifard Hiftorian

Tlondvn . Put. by J. Thane. Spur StreelsLdcefttr .v,

IS73] TO C. E. NORTON 169

and dreamy, and the walk round the ramparts looking
out over endless green and down upon the tranquil
moat, with its swans as still as the water-lilies whose
whiteness they tarnished, that I felt sure I was an
enchanted prince till I paid my bill at the inn. But
for that I should assuredly have stumbled upon the
Sleeping Beauty before long. But, alas and alas, the
only kiss that awakens towns that have dropt asleep
nowadays is that of Dame Trade, who makes bond-
slaves of all she brings back to life. We passed by
where Charlemagne (with Mr. Freeman's pardon) is said
to have been born, and by a little town that gave
me a pleasanter thrill — the birthplace of Dan Froissart.
It lay about half a mile away, cuddled among trees,
with its great hulk of a church looming up above the
houses like a hen among her brood. I did not choose
to see it nearer — it would have betrayed itself. As it
was, I must have seen it very much as it looked to the
dear old canon himself, when he used to play at all
those incomprehensible games of which he gives us an
inventory in his verses. . . .

I am more impressed by Tintoretto than ever before
— his force, his freedom, and his originality. I never
fairly saw the San Rocco pictures before — for one must
choose the brightest days for them. The "Annuncia-
tion " especially has taken me by assault. That flight
of baby angels caught up and whirled along in the wake
of Gabriel like a skurry of autumn birds is to me some-
thing incomparable. And then the Cimas and the Bel-
linis and the Carpaccios! I think I am really happy
here for the first time since I came abroad.

110 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1873

I am looking forward now with compressed eagerness
to our coming home. I shall not overstay my two years
by a single day if I can help it. ... For myself I see
no result as yet but rest — which, to be sure, is a good
thing — but I suppose when I get back I shall find I
have learned something. But habit is so strong in me
that I cannot work outside the reach of my wonted
surroundings. . . .

TO THOMAS HUGHES

Venice, Thanksgiving Day, 1873.

My dear Friend, — As you are one of the good things
I have to be thankful for in this life, I naturally think
of you to-day, when I am far from the roast turkeys
and plum-puddings of Elmwood. It makes me a lit-
tle sad to think that, if I were at home, this would have
been the first of these festivals that I should have cele-
brated in the true patriarchal way with a grandson at
my board. It is a queer sensation when one begins to
put out these feelers towards the future that are to keep
us alive in a certain sense (perhaps to repeat us) after
we are gone. It is a melancholy kind of meditation
this, but travelling is melancholy — a constant succes-
sion of partings like life. To-day some very agreeable
Portuguese leave us whose acquaintance we made here,
the Viscount de Several, his wife, and daughter. They
have lived much in England, and he, I suspect, must
have been either ambassador or attached to the Portu-
guese embassy there. To-morrow two English ladies,
whom I had just learned to like very much, go off to
Cairo. It is just like a constant succession of funerals

i»73]

TO THOMAS HUGHES

III

— only people are buried in distance instead of in earth.
Nay, since the earth is round, they will be covered
from us by that also as in the grave.

The truth is, my dear friend, I have just been trying
to make up my accounts, and as I don't very well know
how, I have got dumpy before them — for the mysteri-
ous is always rather a damper for the spirits. More-
over, I am bored. I can't " do " anything over here
except study a little now and then, and I long to get
back to my reeky old den at Elmwood. Then I hope
to find I have learned something in my two years
abroad. . . .

We have been through Switzerland, where I climbed
some of the highest peaks with a spy-glass — a method I
find very agreeable, and which spares honest sole-leath-
ers. I am thinking of getting up an achromatic-tele-
scope Alpine Club, to which none will be admitted till
they have had two fits of gout, authenticated by a doc-
tor's bill.

So far I wrote yesterday. To-day the weather is tri-
umphant, and my views of life consequently more cheer-
ful. It is so warm that we are going out presently in
the gondola, to take up a few dropped stitches. Ven-
ice, after all, is incomparable, and during this visit I
have penetrated its little slits of streets in every direc-
tion on foot. The canals only give one a visiting ac-
quaintance. The calli make you an intimate of the
household. I have found no books except two or three
in the Venetian dialect. I am looking forward to home
now, and shouldn't wonder if I took up my work at
Harvard again, as they wish me to do.

112 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1874

We leave Venice probably to-morrow for Verona.
Thence to Florence, Rome, and Naples. . . .

TO MISS NORTON

Florence, Jan. 7, 1874.

. . . You find our beloved country dull, it seems. With
a library like that at Shady Hill all lands are next door
and all nations within visiting distance — better still, all
ages are contemporary with us. But I understand your
feeling, I think. Women need social stimulus more than
we. They contribute to it more, and their magnetism,
unless drawn off by the natural conductors, turns inward
and irritates. Well, when I come back I shall be a good
knob on which to vent some of your superfluous electrici-
ty ; though on second thoughts I am not so sure of that,
for the Leyden jar after a while becomes clever enough
to give off sparks in return. But, dear Jane, the world in
general is loutish and dull. I am more and more struck
with it, and a certain sprightliness of brain, with which I
came into life, is driven in on myself by continual rebuffs
of misapprehension. I have grown wary and don't dare
to let myself go, and what are we good for if our natural
temperament doesn't now and then take the bit between
its teeth and scamper till our hair whistles in the wind ?
But indeed America is too busy, too troubled about
many things, and Martha is only good to make pud-
dings. There is no leisure, and that is the only climate
in which society is indigenous, the only one in which
good-humor and wit and all the growths of art are more
than half-hardy exotics. It is not that one needs to be

1 8 74] TO MISS GRACE NORTON 113

idle — but only to have this southern atmosphere about
him. Democracies lie, perhaps, too far north. You were
made — with your breadth of sympathy, the contagion of
your temperament, and the social go of your mind — to
drive the four-in-hand of a salon, and American life boxes
us all up in a one-horse sulky of absorbing occupation.
We are isolated in our own despite, the people who have
a common ground of sympathy in pursuits (or the want
of them) are rare, and without partnership the highest
forms of culture are impossible. . . .

TO MISS GRACE NORTON

Florence, Jan. 27, 1874.

. . . We have been living very quietly here in Flor-
ence, which I find very beautiful in spite of the threnody
Charles once wrote me about the loss of the walls. I
hate changes in my familiar earth — they give me a feel-
ing as if I myself had been transplanted and my roots
unpleasantly disturbed ; but I was not intimate enough
with Florence to be discomforted, and the older parts of
the town, which I chiefly haunt, have a noble mediaeval
distance and reserve for me — a frown I was going to call
it, not of hostility, but of haughty doubt. These grim
palace fronts meet you with an aristocratic stare that
puts you to the proof of your credentials. There is to
me something wholesome in it that makes you feel your
place. As for pictures, I am tired to death of 'em, and
never could enjoy them much when I had to run them
down. And then most of them are so bad. I like best
the earlier ones, that say so much in their half-uncon-
II.— 8

114 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1874

scious prattle, and talk nature to me instead of high art
— spell the last two words with capitals, if you please.
You see that they honestly mean to say something out-
side of themselves, and not to make you think about
themselves. Children talk so, whose want of language
often gives a pungency to their speech which the dic-
tionary cannot give, but, alas, can take away. There is
an instructive difference between the simple honesty of
the earlier painters* portraits of themselves and the con-
scious attitudinizing of the later ones, which expresses
what I mean. But the truth is, as Northcote says the
choristers used to sing at St. Paul's, " I'm tired and want
to go home " ! . . .

TO C. E. NORTON

Albergo del Norte, Firenze,
Feb. 2, 1874.

My dear Boy, — ... I don't feel like going on with a
poem I am writing about Agassiz, whom I understood
and liked better as I grew older (perhaps less provincial),
and whom I shall miss as if some familiar hill should be
gone out of my horizon when I come home and walk
down the river-side to the village, as we used to call it ; so
I am going to answer your letter, which came yesterday.
... I never was good for much as a professor — once a
week, perhaps, at the best, when I could manage to get
into some conceit of myself, and so could put a little of
my go into the boys. The rest of the time my desk was
as good as I. And then, on the other hand, my being a
professor wasn't good for me — it damped my gunpowder,
as it were, and my mind, when it took fire at all (which

1874] TO C. E. NORTON 115

wasn't often), drawled off in an unwilling fuse instead of
leaping to meet the first spark. Since I have discharged
my soul of it and see the callus on my ankle, where the
ball and chain used to be, subsiding gradually to smooth
and natural skin, I feel like dancing round the table as I
used when I was twenty, to let off the animal spirits. If
I were a profane man, I should say, " Darn the Col-
lege!" . . .

TO THE SAME

Palazzo Barberini, Rome\
Feb. 26, 1874.

... I sent you the other day from Florence a long
poem (too long, I fear), in the nature of an elegy on
Agassiz. His death came home to me in a singular
way, growing into my consciousness from day to day as
if it were a graft new-set, that by degrees became part of
my own wood and drew a greater share of my sap than
belonged to it, as grafts sometimes will. I suppose that,
unconsciously to myself, a great part of the ferment it
produced in me was owing to the deaths of my sister

Anna,* of Mrs. , whom I knew as a child in my

early manhood, and of my cousin Amory, who was in-
extricably bound up with the primal associations of my
life, associations which always have a singular sweet-
ness for me. A very deep chord had been touched also
at Florence by the sight of our old lodgings in the Casa
Guidi, of the balcony Mabel used to run on, and the
windows we used to look out at so long ago. I got
sometimes into the mood I used to be in when I was
always repeating to myself,

* Mrs. Charles R. Lowell.

Il6 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1874

" King Pandion he is dead ;
All thy friends are lapt in lead " —

verses which seem to me desolately pathetic. At last I
began to hum over bits of my poem in my head till it
took complete possession of me and worked me up to a
delicious state of excitement, all the more delicious as
my brain (or at any rate the musical part of it) had been
lying dormant so long. I couldn't sleep, and when I
walked out I saw nothing outward. My old trick of
seeing things with my eyes shut after I had gone to
bed (I mean whimsical things utterly alien to the train
of my thoughts — for example, a hospital ward with a
long row of white, untenanted beds, and on the farthest
a pile of those little wooden dolls with red-painted slip-
pers) revived in full force. Nervous, horribly nervous,
but happy for the first time (I mean consciously happy)
since I came over here. And so by degrees my poem
worked itself out. The parts came to me as I came
awake, and I wrote them down in the morning. I had
all my bricks — but the mortar wouldn't set, as the ma-
sons say. However, I got it into order at last. You
will see there is a logical sequence if you look sharp.
It was curious to me after it was done to see how flesh-
ly it was. This impression of Agassiz had wormed it-
self into my consciousness, and without my knowing it
had colored my whole poem. I could not help feeling
how, if I had been writing of Emerson, for example, I
should have been quite otherwise ideal. But there it is,
and you can judge for yourself. I think there is some
go in it somehow, but it is too near me yet to be
judged fairly by me. It is old-fashioned, you see, but
none the worse for that.

1 8 74] TO MISS NORTON Iiy

TO MISS NORTON

Albergo Crocolle, Napoli*
Marzo 12, 1874.

My dear Jane, — If I should offer to explain any ec-
centricities of chirography by telling you my fingers
were numb, you would think me joking, and be much
rather inclined to account for it by the intoxication of
this heavenliest of climates as you remember it. But I
speak forth the words of truth and soberness when I
assure you that Vesuvius is hoary with snow to his very
roots, that Sorrento has just been hidden by a cloud
which I doubt not is bursting in hail, for we were
greeted on our arrival last night by a hailstone chorus
of the most emphatic kind, so that the streets were
white with it as we drove shiveringly along, and the
top of the 'bus rattled to the old tune of " Pease on a
Trencher." All the way from Rome I saw Virgil's too-
fortunate husbandmen (he was right in his parenthetic
sna si bona norint) working with their great blue cloaks
on, or crouching under hedges from the wire -edged
wind. The very teeth in their harrows must have been
chattering for cold. And this is the climate you so
rapturously wish us joy of! Vedi Napoli, e poi morl of
a catarrh. I envy you with your foot of honest snow
on the ground where it ought to be, and not indigested
in the atmosphere, giving it a chill beyond that of con-
densed Unitarianism.

We left Rome after a fortnight's visit to the Storys,
which was very pleasant quoad the old friends, but rath-
er wild and whirling quoad the new. Two receptions
a week, one in the afternoon and one in the evening,

Il8 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1874

were rather confusing for wits so eremetical as mine.
I am not equal to the grande monde. Tis very well
of its kind, I dare say, but it is not my kind, and I still
think the company I kept at home better than any I
have seen — especially better in its simplicity. The Old
World carries too much top-hamper for an old salt like
me to be easy in his hammock. There are good things
west of the ocean in spite of 's pessimism, and bet-
ter things to come, let us hope. . . .

I had a great pleasure at Rome in seeing William's
new statue of Alcestis, which I think is di gran lungo
ahead of anything he has done. It is very simple and
noble. She is walking as if in a dream. The right
hand gathers the mantle about her head. The left
hangs loosely at her side. The face has a lovely ex-
pression of awakening and half-bewildered expectation.
The drapery is admirably graceful, and the gliding mo-
tion of the figure (seen from whichever point of view)
gives a unity of intention and feeling to the whole fig-
ure which I call masterly. I know no satisfaction more
profound than that we feel in the success of an old
friend, in the real success of anybody, for the matter of
that. It was so pleasant to be able to say frankly,
" You have done something really fine, and which every-
body will like." I wonder whether I shall ever give
that pleasure to anybody. Never mind, it is next best
to feel it about the work of another, and I never do
care very long for anything I have done myself. But,
as one gets older, one can't help feeling sad sometimes
to think how little one has achieved.

It is now (as regards my date) to-morrow the I3th.

1874] TO MISS NORTON 119

We have been twice to the incomparable Museum,
which to me is the most interesting in the world.
There is the keyhole through which we barbarians can
peep into a Greek interior — provincial Greek, Roman
Greek, if you will, but still Greek. Vesuvius should be
sainted for this miracle of his — hiding Pompeii and
Herculaneum under his gray mantle so long, and sav-
ing them from those dreadful melters and smashers, the
Dark Ages. Now we come in on them with the smell
of wine still in their cups — we catch them boiling their
eggs, selling their figs, and scribbling naughty things
on the walls. I do not find that they were much our
betters in parietal wit, but in sense of form how they
dwarf us ! They contrived to make commonplace
graceful — or rather they could not help it. Well, we
are alive (after a fashion) and they dead. That is one
advantage we have over 'em. And they could not look
forward to going home to Cambridge and to pleasant
visits at Shady Hill. On the whole, I pity 'em. They
are welcome to their poor little bronzes and things.
Haven't we our newspapers, marry come up ! What
did they know about the Duke of Edinburgh's wed-
ding and all the other edifying things that make us
wise and great, I should like to know? They were
poor devils, after all, and I trample on 'em and snub
'em to my heart's content. Where were their Common
Schools? They are dumb and cast down their eyes,
every mother's son of 'em. Not a school-desk among
all their relics ! No wonder they came to grief.

It is now after dinner. I write this by installments,
as the amiable bandits of this neighborhood send a man

120 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1874

they have caught home to his friends till they pay a
ransom — first one ear, then the other, and so on. I am
a little cross with the table-d'hote, because I always
know so well what is coming — it is like the signs of the
zodiac. I think we should be bored to death with the
regular courses of the seasons were it not for the whim-
sicality of the weather. That saves us from suicide.
On the other hand, though depressed by the inevitable
rosbif and polio arrostito, I am enlivened by a fiddle
and guitar, and a voice singing the Naples of twenty
years ago under my window. For Naples has changed
for the worse (shade of Stuart Mill ! I mean for the
better) more than any other Italian city. Fancy, there
are no more lazzaroni, there is no more corricolo. The
mountains are here, and Capri, but where is Naples?
Italia unita will be all very well one of these days, I
doubt not. At present it is paper money, and the prac-
tical instead of the picturesque. Is the day of railways
worse than that of Judgment? Why could not one
country be taken and the other left ? Let them try all
their new acids of universal suffrage and what not on
the tough body of the New World. The skin will heal
again. But this lovely, disburied figure of Ausonia —
they corrode her marble surface beyond all cure. Pa-
nem et circenses wasn't so bad after all. A bellyful and
amusement — isn't that more than the average mortal is
apt to get? more than perhaps he is capable of get-
ting? America gives the panem, but do you find it
particularly amusing just now? My dear Jane, you see
I have had a birthday since I wrote last, and these are
the sentiments of a gentleman of fifty-five — and after

1874] TO C. E. NORTON AND W. D. HOWELLS 121

dinner. Change in itself becomes hateful to us as we
grow older, and naturally enough, because every change
in ourselves is for the worse. I am writing to you, for
example, by lamp-light, and I feel what used to be a
pleasure almost a sin. To-morrow morning I shall see
that the crows have been drinking at my eyes. Fanny
is wiser (as women always are), and is sound asleep in
her arm-chair on the other side of the fire. The wood
here, by the way, is poplar — good for the inn-keeper,
but only cheering for the guest, as it reminds him of
the Horatian large super foco ligna reponcns, and the
old fellow in Smollett, whom you never read. . . .

TO C. E. NORTON

H6tel de Lorraine, 7 Rue de Beaune,
Paris, May n, 1874.

. . . Hearty thanks for all the trouble you have
taken about my poor old poem. I had quite got over
the first flush by the time I saw it in print, and now it
seems weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable enough, God
knows ! Well, I confess 1 thought it better till I saw
it. ...

TO W. D. HOWELLS

Paris, May 13, 1874.

My dear Howells, — I was very glad to get a line from
you. I should have sent my poem directly to you (for
it tickled me that our positions should be reversed, and
that you should be sitting in the seat of the scorner
where I used to sit) ; but I happened to see a number
of the Atlantic in Florence, and in the list of contribu-

122 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1874

tors my name was left out. As the magazine had just
changed hands I did not know but it had changed minds
as well, so I would not put you in a position where your
friendship might come in conflict with some whimsey of
your publishers. Thank you heartily for the pleasant
things you say about the poem. I thought it very well
just after parturition, and explained any motives of aver-
sion I might feel by that uncomfortable redness which is
common to newly born babes. But since I have it in
print I have not been able to read it through — but only
to dip in here and there on passages which C. E. N. had
doubts about. What a witch is this Imagination, who
sings as she weaves till we seem to see the music in the
growing web, and when all is done that magic has van-
ished and the poor thing looks cheap as printed muslin !
Well, I am pleased, all the same, with what you say,
because, after all, you needn't have said it unless you
liked.

Why, of course I went to see young Mead — am I not
very fond of his sister and her husband ? I should have
gone again, but that poem got hold of me and squeezed
all my life out for the time and a good bit after.

Now a word of business. I wrote C. E. N. day before
yesterday, and of course forgot what I wished to say —
or a part of it. If Osgood still wishes to reprint the
Agassiz, pray make these further corrections —

" And scanned the festering heap we all despise."

I left out the word in copying. Instead of the "paler
primrose of a second spring," read " Like those pale
blossoms," etc., as I wrote at first. Why I changed it I

1874] TO THOMAS HUGHES 123

can't guess, for it makes an absurdity. I suppose I was
misled by the alliteration. TJie verse is a better one as
printed, but I couldn't have looked at the context. I
mean those blossoms that come on fruit-trees sometimes
in September. I have seen them once or twice in my
own garden.

We have taken our passage for the 24th June, and
shall arrive, if all go well, in time for the "glorious
Fourth." I hope we shall find you in Cambridge. I
long to get back, and yet am just beginning to get
wonted (as they say of babies and new cows) over here.
The delightful little inn where I am lodged is almost
like home to me, and the people are as nice as can be.

Tell Mrs. Howells — with my kindest regards and Mrs.
Lowell's too — that we are just going out shopping. The
weather is infamous. Love to Winny and Boy, alias

Booah.

Always affectionately yours,

J. R. L.

TO THOMAS HUGHES

H6tel de Lorraine, 7 Rue de Beaune,
Paris, May 16, 1874.

My dear Friend, — Here we are back again in our old
quarters, though not so soon by several weeks as I ex-
pected. But how get away from Rome, even though it
be changed much for the worse so far as its outside is
concerned ? It is a providential arrangement that after
fifty one hates improvement ; it is the drag that hinders
things from going too fast. In this respect Paris is com-
forting, for I find the French exactly where I left 'em a
year ago, only more so.

124 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1874

In your revolution I took a personal interest, as I need
not tell you. I happened to be where I saw the English
papers at the time, and though I was disgusted that you
should not have been returned, I was entirely pleased
with the way in which you lost your election. It was
like you, for it was honorable and magnanimous, and
therefore a higher kind of success than winning the seat
would have been. But men like you are wanted in Par-
liament, and so I feel sure that I shall have to write M. P.
after your name again before long. Last year you said
something about running over to Paris for a week. It
would be very jolly if you would come, now that you
have no Parliamentary duties to detain you.

I can't tell you how glad I am to be on my way home.
I hope after I get there I shall find I have got some-
thing by my travels better than a grayer beard and the
torments of what the doctors call " suppressed gout." It
is suppressed after the fashion of the Commune, which
has jumped from the Parisian great toe into every nerve
and muscle of the body. . . .

TO LESLIE STEPHEN

Hotel de Lorraine, 7 Rue de Beaune,

Paris, May 16, 1874.

Dear Stephen, — We have got thus far on our way
home, and hope to arrive in England about the first of
next month. I was on the point of writing you again
from Florence when I was suddenly snatched up by a
poem which occupied me wholly for some time, and left
me, like a bit of rock-weed at low water, dangling help-
less and waiting for the next tide.

1874] TO LESLIE STEPHEN 12$

I read your book* with great interest and, in the
main, with great satisfaction, and gave it to Harry
James, who liked it altogether. My only objection to
any part of your book is, that I think our beliefs more
a matter of choice (natural selection, perhaps, but any-
how not logical) than you would admit, and that I find
no fault with a judicious shutting of the eyes. You
would have shut yours tight before you finally let go at
the end of your bad five minutes — and yet I fancy the
descent would have been both interesting scientifically
and morally picturesque. . . .

When I was with the Storys in Rome, I took down
one day while waiting for my breakfast a volume of the
Living Age, made up of articles from the English jour-
nals. I hit upon one entitled " In a Library," and liked
it so much that I carried it to my room and read all
the rest of the series I could find with equal interest.
There were some more than odd coincidences with my
own experience. You can fancy how tickled I was
when I found I had been reading you all the while.
I actually damaged my eyes over them — reading on
after candle-light and when I ought to have been abed.
There, you see, is perfectly disinterested testimony.
The pills had no label. I tried one and then swal-
lowed the box because they did me good.

I half feel at home now that I am back again in my
little inn, with its household as simple and honest as if
it were in Arcadia. It amuses me (I know it ought to
sadden me, but I can't help it) to find the French in

* This book was " Essays on Free Thinking and Plain Speak-
ing."

126 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1874

the same cul-de-sac where I left them a year ago, and
saying helplessly, Cest une crise trts strieuse, mais que
voulez-vous? Nous sommes Fran$ais — voild tout! And
yet the same Frenchmen have managed their finances
in a way that ought to make us blush to the roots of
our hair. . . .

TO GEORGE PUTNAM

Paris, May 19, 18744,

... I ought long ago to have answered your letter,
received just before we left Florence. But somehow I
could not. That long list of deaths, following so close-
ly upon each other's heels, saddened me profoundly. I
had a notion that as we grow older we get used to
death, and in some sense it is true, but no habitude can
make us less sensible to deaths which make us older
and lonelier by widening the gap between our past and
present selves. Our own lives seem to lose their con-
tinuity, and those who died long ago seem more wholly
dead when some one who was associated with them and
linked our memory more indissolubly with them goes
out into the endless silence and separation. I was very
much struck with this when I heard of the death of my
cousin Amory Lowell. I had hardly seen her for many
years, but she was closely intertwined with all the rec-
ollections of my early life. I can't tell how, but the
thought of her kept Broomly Vale unchanged, and she
brought my father and my uncle John before me as
they were in those old days. A great part of my fairy-
land went to dust with her. . . .

1874] TO LESLIE STEPHEN 127

For my own part, though I have had a great deal of
home-sickness, I come back to Cambridge rather sadly.
I have not been over-well of late. The doctor in Rome,
however, gave my troubles a name — and that by rob-
bing them of mystery has made them commonplace.
He said it was suppressed gout. It has a fancy of grip-
ping me in the stomach sometimes, holding on like a
slow fire for seven hours at a time. It is wonderful how
one gets used to things, however. But it seems to be
growing lighter, and I hope to come home robust and
red. . . .

TO LESLIE STEPHEN

Paris, May 27, 1874.

My dear Stephen, — I can't say that the sight of your
handwriting again was good for sair een, for the force
of mine is so far abated that I had to take your letter
to the window — but it was just as good as if it had
been.

I had thought about the white-choker business and
all that, and from your point of view I liked your book
altogether. My objection was a purely personal one.
I shut my eyes resolutely (I confess) when I turn them
in certain directions, and trust my instincts or my long-
ings or whatever you choose to call them. For myself
I hate to see religion compounded with police as much
as you do, but I confess that my intimacy with the
French makes me doubt, makes me ready to welcome
almost anything that will save them from their logic
and deliver them over, bound hand and foot, to any-
thing that will give them a continuity that looks before

128 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1874

and after with as great a respect for facts as for syllo-
gisms. . . .

I hope whoever stole the Atlantic from you did it be-
cause of my poem. You shall have another copy one
of these days, but so long as you like me, you are wel-
come to think what you must of what I write. Besides,
this is an old story with me now. It should have some
virtue in it, to judge by what it took out of me.

If we had only got here as soon as I expected I
should have met you in Paris. I never saw my habit
of taking root in so ill a light before. It would have
been so jolly — for I know all the old nooks and corners
so well now that I should have been an admirable
guide, and these levels suit my elderly feet. It is too
bad, but our weaknesses always come home to roost at

last. . . .

Always affectionately yours,

J. R. L.

TO THOMAS HUGHES

Elmwood, July ir, 1874.

Dear Friend, — . . . We had a foggy and rainy pas-
sage, but the north-westerly and south-easterly winds
that made it disagreeable made it also short. ... At
about 7 A. M. of the 4th we landed, and by half-past nine
I was at home again. . . .

This has been a rainy summer, so I found everything
as green as in the noble old island I had just left. The
birds have pretty much given over singing, but my im-
memorial cat-bird made music all dinner-time day be-
fore yesterday, and next morning in the early dawn

1874] TO MISS GRACE NORTON 1 29

the Phoebe was calling her own name sadly, like one of
Ovid's metamorphosed ladies. . . .

TO MISS GRACE NORTON

Elmwood, July 21, 1874,

... It is so long since I have been able to send news
from Cambridge that I find a certain relish in it, and
begin again to think that it is as important as most
other domains of history. Was I not told yesterday
by Mrs. Mary Mullins that "Cambridge had seemed
kind o' lonesome without me"? and shall I not strive
to atone to her (Cambridge to wit) for this two years'
widowhood? I do not think, however, that the dear
soul missed me very much, nor that "every jow" the
bell of the First Parish gave sounded in her ear " Come
back, Russell Lowell !" These returns from the under-
world would be good medicine for one inclined to value
himself over-duly. Things seem to have got on very
well during our absence, and it is odds if nine tenths
of our fellow-citizens missed us from the customed
hill any more than they would if we had authentically
suffered obituary. I have sometimes had traitorous
surmises about Alcestis, as if she might have surprised
Admetus seated before a smoking joint of one of those
sheep Apollo once tended for him, and inarticulate for
more material reasons than joy. Our returns, whether
quick or slow, prove to us that we are small prophets
in our own country. I except All-of-you, who wel-
comed me better than I deserved.

I do not find so many changes as I expected. . . .
II.-9

130 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1874

TO MISS NORTON

Elmwood, Sept. 19, 1874.

... I have been at work, and really hard at work,
in making books that I had read and marked really
useful by indexes of all peculiar words and locations.
I have finished in this way, since I came home, Gold-
ing's "Ovid," Warner's "Albion's England," Laing's
and the Thornton " Metrical Romances," the Chevalier
au lion; and yesterday, in eight unbroken hours, I did
Barbour's " Brus." Then I have been reading many
volumes of the Early English Text Society's series in
the same thorough way. A professor, you know, must
be learned, if he can't be anything else, and I have now
reached the point where I feel sure enough of myself
in Old French and Old English to make my correc-
tions with a pen instead of a pencil as I go along. Ten
hours a day, on an average, I have been at it for the
last two months, and get so absorbed that I turn grudg-
ingly to anything else. My only other reading has
been Mr. Sibley's book of " Harvard Graduates," which
is as unillummed, dry, and simple as the fourteenth-cen-
tury prose of the Early English Texts. But it inter-
ests me and makes me laugh. It is the prettiest rescue
of prey from Oblivion I ever saw. The gallant libra-
rian, like a knight-errant, slays this giant, who carries
us all captive sooner or later, and then delivers his
prisoners. There are ninety-seven of them by tale, and
as he fishes them out of those dismal oubliettes they
come up dripping with the ooze of Lethe, like Curll
from his dive in the Thames3 like him also gallant com-

1874]

TO C. E. NORTON

petitors for the crown of Dulness. It is the very balm
of authorship. No matter how far you may be gone
under, if you are a graduate of Harvard College you
are sure of being dredged up again and handsomely
buried, with a catalogue of your works to keep you
down. I do not know when the provincialism of New
England has been thrust upon me with so ineradicable
a barb. Not one of their works which stands in any
appreciable relation with the controlling currents of
human thought or history, not one of them that has
now the smallest interest for any living soul ! And yet
somehow I make myself a picture of the past out of
this arid waste, just as the mirage rises out of the dry
desert. Dear old Sibley ! I would read even a sermon
of his writing, so really noble and beautiful is the soul
under that commonplace hull !

Since I wrote you I have finished an autobiography.
Do not be frightened, dear Jane; it is only ten lines
long, and I plagiarized every word of it from Drake's
"American Biography," which was far better informed
than I found myself to be. Last night was our first
Whist Club since my return. I looked in the record,
found it was John's deal, and we began as if there had
been no gap. The club is now in its thirtieth year, and
I was saying last night that it was, I thought, both a
creditable and American fact that I had never heard a
dispute or even a difference at the table in all those
years. . . .

TO C. E. NORTON.

Elmwood, Oct. 7, 1874.

My dear Charles,— The nameless author of that de-

132 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1874

lightful poem, " The Squyr of Lowe Degree " (may God
him save and see!) gives a list of every bird he can
think of that sang to comfort his hero. Here they are :

1. Lavrock,

2. Nightingale,

3- Pie,

4. Popinjay,

5. Throstil,

6. Marly n,

7. Wren,

8. Jay,

9. Sparrow,

10. Nuthatch,

11. Starling,

12. Goldfinch,

13. Ousel.

On Monday the 5th I walked up to the Oaks with Still-
man, and in a quarter of an hour had noted on a paper
the following birds (most of which counted by dozens) :

1. Robin,

2. Wilson's thrush (singing),

3. Chewink,

4. Bluebird (warbling as in spring),

5. Phoebe (doing his best),

6. Ground sparrow (singing),

7. Tree " ( « ),

8. Nuthatch,

9. Flicker (laughing and crying like Andromache),

10. Chickadee (doing all he could),

11. Goldfinch,

1874] TO E. L. GODKIN 133

12. Linnet,

14. Crow (to balance his popinjay),

15. Catbird.

Thus I take down the gauntlet which you left hang-
ing for all comers in your English hedge. I don't be-
lieve that hedge birds are a whit more respectable than
hedge priests or hedge schoolmasters. All the while we
were there the air was tinkling with one or other of
them. Remember — this was in October. Three cheers
for the rivers of Damascus !

Affectionately always,

HOSEA BIGLOW.

Et ego in Arcadia, says Mr. Wilbur.

TO E. L. GODKIN

Elmwood, Oct. 10, 1874.

Dear Godkin, — ... I see they are driven at Wash-
ington to a reform of the office-holders at the South.
It has always been my belief that if tenure of office
had been permanent, secession would have been (if not
impossible) vastly more difficult, and reconstruction
more easy and simple. As it was, a large body of the
most influential men in the discontented States knew
that the election of Lincoln would be fatal to their
bread and butter — and, after all, it is to this that the
mass of men are loyal. It is well that they should be
so, for habitual comfort is the main fortress of conserv-
atism and respectability, two old-fashioned qualities for
which all the finest sentiments in the world are but a
windy substitute. . . .

134 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1875

By the way, I found a curious misprint in the new
edition of Chapman (vol. ii., p. 159), which I thought
might make a paragraph for the Nation.

" Caucusses

That cut their too large murtherous thieveries
To their den's length still."

He means Cacus, of course, though the editor didn't
see it, for the word doesn't occur in his index of proper
names. It is a curious sors castigatoris preli, at any
rate, and hits true, for the Caucus always cuts down its
candidates to the measure of its robber's cave. It
shows, too, that old Chapman pronounced a au.

And by this graceful transition I come to the reason
why I write you to-day instead of in some indefinite
future. In a sonnet printed in last week's Nation there
is a misprint which it were well to correct. For " Noth-
ing to court " lege " Nothing to count." I tried to think
it made some better meaning than mine, but couldn't
make it out. Thank the Power who presides over the
Nation (who, I am given to understand, is the D — 1)
that I am of calmer temper than those are whom a mis-
print drives clean daft — I mean one in their own con-
tribution to the general tedium vit<z. . . . Goodby, with
gratitude always for the admirable work you are doing.

Affectionately yours,

J. R. L.

TO THOMAS HUGHES

Elmwood, Feb. 16, 187^

My dear Friend, — ... I [have been reading] Grote s
" Greece," which I had never read before, and its prosy

1875] TO THOMAS HUGHES 13$

good sense was medicinal to me. His honest incapacity
of imagination is singularly soothing. The curious po-
litical (not aesthetic) analogies struck me more forcibly
than ever. I have long thought, and Grote's book
confirmed me in it, that this history will first be ade-
quately written by a Yankee. Grote's Dutch blood
helped him a little, but the moment that panhellenism
(the need of which he could see plainly enough two
thousand odd years ago) showed itself in a million
armed men over here under his very nose, he fancied
them sprung from unblessed dragon's teeth,

" And back recoiled, he knew not why,
E'en at the sound himself had made."

The sentimentalist stood revealed under the imposing
outside of the banker. It is humorously sad to me.

As with you in the early part of the winter, our talk
now is wholly of the weather. So long as it was cold
with you (a fact I have observed before) it was excep-
tionally mild here. We had a true Indian summer,
and I heard birds singing by Beaver Brook in Novem-
ber. Being much of an hypaethral, I augured ill from
it, and was sure that Winter was waiting only to get a
better purchase on us. About Christmas he had got
everything ready in his laboratory and shut upon us
with the snap of a steel trap. Since then our thermom-
eters have skulked in the neighborhood of zero (Fahr.).
So continuous a cold has brought down the oldest in-
habitant to the wretched level of us juniors. Out of
doors, however, it has been noble weather, the most pi-
quant sauce for my walks to and from College — where,

136 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1875

by the way, I am installed again with a class in Old
French and another in Dante. In my study sometimes
of an evening, when the north-west took a vigorous
turn at the bellows, and the thermometer in the back
parts could not be coaxed above 42°, it has been more
than invigorating. But I have not given in, nor once
admitted the furnace, unknown to my youth and my
progenitors. I always was a natural tory, and in Eng-
land (barring Dizzy) should be a staunch one. I would
not give up a thing that had roots to it, though it might
suck up its food from graveyards. Good-by. God bless
you! ....

TO T. S. PERRY

Elmwood, March 2, 1875.

My dear Perry, — I don't believe I ever wrote a line
for the Harvardiana of 1836-37. I certainly did not
write the poem you mention, and doubt if I ever saw
it, for I was not a subscriber. For 1837-38 I was
one of the editors, and scribbled some wretched stuff,
which I hope you will be too charitable to exhume. I
was in my nineteenth year, but younger and greener
than most boys are at that age. In short, I was as
great an ass as ever brayed and thought it singing.

I believe our volume was the worst of the lot, for
nobody took much interest in it, and the editing was
from hand to mouth. N. Hale, Jr., did the cleverest
things in it, as indeed he was perhaps the cleverest
man in the class.

I hope to see you before long, but have promised
some copy for the North American Review for Wed-

1875] TO W. D. HOWELLS 137

nesday and shall have to keep abreast of the press.
Authorship is a wretched business, after all. . . .

TO W. D. HOWELLS

Elmwood, March 21, 1875.

Dear Howells, — There was one verse in the "Border"
sonnet which, when I came to copy it, worried me
with its lack of just what I wanted. Only one? you
will say. Yes, all ; but never mind — this one most. In-
stead of " Where the shy ballad could its leaves un-
fold," read "dared its blooms." I had liefer "cup"
— but cup is already metaphoric when applied to flow-
ers, and Bottom the Weaver would be sure to ask in
one of the many journals he edits — " How unfold a
cup ? Does he mean one of those pocket drinking-
cups — leathern inconveniencies that always stick when
you try to unfold 'em ?" Damn Bottom ! We ought
not to think of him, but then the Public is made up
of him, and I wish him to know that I was thinking
of a flower. Besides, the sonnet is, more than any
other kind of verse, a deliberate composition, and
" susceptible of a high polish," as the dendrologists say
of the woods of certain trees. Or shall we say " grew
in secret bold"? I write both on the opposite leaf,
that you may choose one to paste over and not get
the credit of tinkering my rhymes.

Yours always,

J. R. L.

dared its blooms
grew in secret bold.

Perhaps, after all, it is the buzzing of that b in blooms

138 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1875

and bold, answering his brother b in ballads, that
b-witched me, and merely changing " could " to " dared "
is all that is wanted.
The sentiment of this sonnet pleases me.

TO MRS.

Elm wood, June 3, 1875.

. . . An author who was not pleased with the friend-
ly warmth of a letter like yours must be more super-
human than I can pretend to be. I am pleased, and
I thank you very cordially for this proof that I have
been of some use in the world.

Your list is nearly complete, and I can make it so
as to the names, though I cannot furnish you with the
books. My first publication was a small volume of
poems (" A Year's Life "), printed in my twenty-first
year and long out of print. In 1844 I printed a prose
volume of " Conversations on Some of Our Old Poets."
They were mainly written three years before, and are
now also these many years out of print. I have lately
been urged to reprint them and possibly may, though
they are naturally somewhat immature. There is a
second series of " Biglow Papers" (and in my opinion
the best), prefaced by an essay which, I think, might
interest you. In the North American Revieiv (some
time in 1872, I believe) I printed an essay on Dante
which contained the results, at least, of assiduous study.
In the April number of this year is an article on Spen-
ser. These would be in the library of the Peabody
Institute probably. In the " Diamond " edition of my
poems there are a few verses added to the " Cathedral "

Public par Fume, Paris.

1875] TO MRS. 139

— perhaps some others, though I am not sure. I think
your list is otherwise complete. If not, I shall be
obliged to you if you will allow me to send you any
that may be lacking. In the Atlantic Monthly for
May, 1874, is an " Elegy on Agassiz " which, I suspect,
is among my best verse. In the Atlantic for August,
1870, is an introduction by me to some " Extracts from
the Journal of a Virginian travelling in New England."
Towards the end of it is a passage the sentiment of
which will perhaps please you. At any rate, it has
always been my own way of thinking on that point. I
was roundly abused in some of the newspapers at the
time, but I am happy in believing that the whole North
is now come round to where I then stood.

But pardon me, I am getting garrulous without the
excuse of senility. One is liable to these pitfalls when
rapt in the contemplation of that precious being, who,
in proportion as he interests us, is apt to be a bore to
the rest of mankind. Be so good as to let me know
what volumes you want, and they shall be sent to your
address. . . .

TO THE SAME

Elmwood, June 15, 1875.

.... I meant that so important a package as that
which you acknowledged in such friendly terms should
have been heralded by a letter in answer to yours. I
meant to have torn out all the prints in the book
(which are simply disgusting — especially that of Zekle
and Huldy), but I forgot it. I divine in your note of
this morning a certain sensitiveness about its unan-

140 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1875

swered forerunner (as if you had said too much) which
quite justifies me in the pleasure I had when I read it.
Mrs. Lowell liked it as much as I did. I am quite sure
there can be no sweeter and kindlier feeling than hav-
ing been something to somebody in this purely disem-
bodied way. Only the Somebody must be of the right
kind. You must pardon me the unseemly confidence,
but I receive a great many letters from women (I sup-
pose all poets do), and hardly ever one that I can an-
swer. They are commonly like those of Mrs. Tilton,
some of which I have seen in the newspapers, a kind
of stuff that makes sensible women doubt the capacity
of their sex for any political association with men. I
need not say that yours was of quite another com-
plexion, and such as an honest man could be heartily
pleased with. So far from tickling my vanity, it added
to my self-distrust, and made me wonder how I had de-
served so grateful a congratulation. It did me real good
in quickening my feeling of responsibility to myself,
while it encouraged me to think that I had sometimes
cast my bread upon waters which did not steadily ebb
towards oblivion.

I fear the volume I sent you will try your eyes sad-
ly, but it is the most complete edition of what I have
written in verse. I hope you will permit me to send
you also my two volumes of prose, to which a third
will be added next autumn. The article on Spenser
has been wholly rewritten since you heard it, and con-
tains only a passage or two here and there which were
in the lecture.

I should have answered your letter at once, but I am

1875] TO MRS. 141

really a very busy man, and (except in verse) a much
slower writer than when I was younger. It is harder
to weigh anchor than it used to be, and there is no
Lapland witch to sell a fair wind to an old fellow of
fifty-six. You shall let me count you for one, never-
theless, for I felt my sails strain at the yards in the
friendly breath of your sympathy.

Expect another package from me ere long, but do
not feel that I shall be forever bombarding you with
my books. I doubt if I shall ever lecture in Baltimore
(or anywhere else again) — for I like it not. I am sure
I should have done it with more spirit before, had I
known how sympathetic an auditor I had. . . .

TO THE SAME

Elmwood, July 6, 1875.

. . . My having been very busy must plead my par-
don (for I assume it in advance) for not answering your
last letter sooner. We, too, here in my birthplace,
having found out that something happened here a hun-
dred years ago, must have our centennial, and, since
my friend and townsman Dr. Holmes couldn't be had,
I felt bound to do the poetry for the day. We have
still standing the elm under which Washington took
command of the American (till then provincial} army,
and under which also Whitefield had preached some
thirty years before. I took advantage of the occasion
to hold out a hand of kindly reconciliation to Virginia.
I could do it with the profounder feeling, that no fam-
ily lost more than mine by the civil war. Three neph-

142 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1875

ews (the hope of our race) were killed in one or other
of the Virginia battles, and three cousins on other of
those bloody fields. The poem will be printed in the
Atlantic for August, and will, I hope and believe, do
good.

So you are in Alexandria, a town of which I have
very pleasant memories, now fifty years old. I spent
some days in the old Carroll house there with the Car-
rolls, who are connections of mine by marriage. They
are all gone, but I hope the dear old house is still
standing. Pray go and see it and tell me if the river
behind it be as pretty, and the English walnuts in front
as fine as I remember. The house, I think, must be
large, for (unless it loom through the haze of memory)
it was larger than that in which I was born and still
live, and that is not a small one.

I suppose it must have been the extreme solitude in
which I grew up, and my consequent unconsciousness
of any public, that made me so frankly communica-
tive. Poets get their sorrows and passions out of them-
selves by carving the lava (grown cold) into pretty
forms. I should not be so indiscreet now, I suppose,
and yet a living verse can only be made of a living
experience — and that our own. One of my most per-
sonal poems, " After the Burial," has roused strange
echoes in men who assured me they were generally in-
sensible to poetry. After all, the only stuff a solitary
man has to spin is himself.

I am sorry you should write in so desponding a tone
of yourself. Surely at your age life (imposture as it
often is) has many satisfactions left. Dame Life, to

1875] TO JOHN W. FIELD 143

be sure, keeps a gambling-table ; but even if we have
played for a great stake and lost, we must recollect
that she is always ready to lend us what we need for
another chance. Literature and work are the exhaust-
less solamina vitae, and if you find so much pleasure
in what I have done (who am but third-rate compared
with the masters) you have yet a great deal to enjoy.

Do not let your friendly enthusiasm (a very great
pleasure to me personally) lead you to exaggerate my
merits, or overlook my defects. I think more might
have been made of me if I could have given my whole
life to poetry, for it is an art as well as a gift, but you
must try to see me as I am.

I have ordered my two books to be sent to your
Alexandria address, and enclose two slips of paper
with my good wishes on them that you may paste
them into the volumes to remind you whence they
came. I should have sent them sooner, but besides
my Centennial task, I had to preside over our Com-
mencement dinner, a service that seems simple enough,
but which worries a shy man like myself to a degree
that would make you laugh. . . .

TO JOHN W. FIELD

Elmwood, July 14, 1875.

... I am sitting now (with Fanny sewing beside me)
on our new veranda, which we built last fall on the
north side of the house, and find inexpugnably delight-
ful. We are having a green summer this year, and to-
day is rather like June than July, with a sea-breeze (you

144 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1875

call it east wind, I believe, in Europe) winnowing the
heat away, and trees and clouds as they only are at
home where they are old friends. The catalpa is just
coming into blossom under my eyes, and the chestnut
hard by is hoary with blossoms, making it look all the
younger, like powder on the head of a girl of eighteen.
A quail is calling " Bob White " over in the field, but-
terflies are shimmering over Fanny's flowers, robins are
singing with all their might, and there will come a hum-
ming-bird before long. I see the masts in the river
and the spires in the town, and whatever noise of traffic
comes to me now and then from the road but empha-
sizes the feeling of seclusion. What is your lake of
Geneva to this ? . . .

TO C. E. NORTON

Elmwood, Aug. 3, 1875.

... It is now thirty-seven years since I first knew
him [Emerson], and he showed me some of his walks in
Concord, especially, I remember, " the Cliff." And Ed-
mund Quincy is sixty-eight ! How we move on, with-
out show of motion, like shadows of trees in the sun !
But one's horizon widens, thank God ! I often wonder
over this unconscious broadening of the mind. We ab-
sorb experience at all our pores till by and by our whole
substance is changed and renewed. But in order to be
wise we must be able to enter again into the conscious-
ness of these modes of being we have sloughed off.

All that I was I am, and all the more

For being other than I was before ;

And what I spent is still my best of store. . . .

1 875] TO MRS. 145

TO MRS.

Elmwood, Aug. 5, 1875.

. . . Your letter gave me a great deal of pleasure, for
surely there can be no purer satisfaction than that of
feeling that you are making another person happier;
and, though I may think that you exaggerate my abso-
lute merits, yet I can gratefully accept your statement
of them so far as regards yourself without abatement.
It is something to be that to somebody which in the
day of inexperience one dreamed of being to all. It is,
I assure you, a great encouragement to me, and of the
kind that suits my temper best, for it will be a spur in
the flank of my endeavor to deserve such gratitude. I
have always had a profound contempt for what is called
Public Opinion (that is, the judgment of the incapable
Many as compared with that of the discerning Few),
and a rooted dislike of notoriety, which, in this age of
newspapers, is our German - silver substitute for real
plate, and " in all respects as good as " the true thing —
except that it isn't the true thing. But I am not insen-
sible to such hearty sympathy as yours, and at fifty-six,
after a life honestly devoted to what I conceived the
true aims of literature, I may confess without vanity
that it is very sweet to encounter a reader like you.
None of my critics, I am sure, can be more keenly
aware than I of my manifold shortcomings, but I think
I have done some things well, and I was pleased to find
that you had read my essay on Dryden oftener than
any other, for I believe it to be my best. This en-
couragement of yours has been a real help to me, for
II.— 10

146 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1875

it has turned the scale of my decision not to be con-
tent with a critique of Wordsworth written twenty
years ago (and which the hot weather had almost per-
suaded me to print with a little cobbling), but to re-
write it. So, if I make anything of it, I shall owe it to
you in good measure, and shall feel so much the less in
your debt — that does not strike you as inscrutable par-
adox, does it ?

Let me counsel you to read a little German every
day, and you will be surprised to find how soon it grows
easy to you. Insist on knowing the exact meaning of
every sentence, and use your grammar for that only.
In this way you will insensibly grow familiar with the
grammatical construction. I think a great deal time is
wasted in preliminary studies of grammar. Tumble
into deep waters at once if you would learn to swim.
German is the open sesame to a large culture, for it is
the language of all others most pliable for the transla-
tion of other tongues, and everything has been rendered
into it.

I am glad you have mountains to look out upon.
My view is more limited, but is very dear to me, for it
is what my eyes first looked on, and I trust will look on
last. A group of tall pines planted by my father, and
my lifelong friends, murmurs to [me] as I write with
messages out of the past and mysterious premonitions
of the future. My wife's flowers recall her sweetly to
me in her absence from home, and the leaves of her
morning-glories that shelter the veranda where I sit
whisper of her. A horse-chestnut, of which I planted
the seed more than fifty years ago, lifts its huge stack

1875] TO MRS. 147

of shade before me and loves me with all its leaves. I
should be as happy as a humming-bird were I not
printing another volume of essays. Everything I do
seems so poor to me when I see it in print. But cour-
age ! there is a kindly reader in Baltimore who will find
out some good in the book and thank me for it more
than I deserve.

Not what we did, but what we meant to do,
Lay in your scales, just Fates, and so decide.

Alas, even then how much remains to rue !
How little for our solace or our pride !

They frown and answer : " Only what is done

We make account of ; dreams may not be weighed,

Nor with their down-shod feet the race is run,
And reached at last the laurel's sacred shade."

I read your essay on the weather with much interest.
Living in the country all my life, I am a good weather-
caster, and was pleased to find that I had discovered
by my own observation that upper current you speak
of. Thirty-four years ago, when you were a little girl, I
was writing,

" Who heeds not how the lower gusts are working,
Knowing that one sure wind blows on above " ;

and had observed that its current was from north-west
to south-east, though I did not know why till you told
me. . . .

P. S. I give you our latest weather-news. A fine
thunder-storm is limbering up its guns in the south-
west. ,

148 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1875

TO THE SAME

Elmwood, Sept. 21, 1875.

. . . That I did not sooner answer your letter, was
simply because for the last six weeks I have been rather
unwell. I am now better, and surely a man of fifty-six
who had never taken a pill till now has no great reason
to repine. . . .

You ask me if I am an Episcopalian. No, though I
prefer the service of the Church of England, and at-
tend it from time to time. But I am not much of a
church-goer, because I so seldom find any preaching
that does not make me impatient and do me more
harm than good. I confess to a strong lurch towards
Calvinism (in some of its doctrines) that strengthens
as I grow older. Perhaps it may be some consolation
to you that my mother was born and bred an Episco-
palian. . . .

My essay on Wordsworth has been interrupted by my
illness, which in some way confused my head so that I
could not get on with it. I fear the essay when finished
will show some marks of it. The mere physical exer-
tion of writing makes me impatient. But after all,
work of one kind or another is the only tonic for mind
or character; ... it makes me blush to think how de-
pendent I am upon moods for the power to write with
any hope of pleasing myself. I am just enough inde-
pendent of literature as a profession to encourage this
nicety (perhaps I should call it weakness) in me. Still
I have the satisfaction of thinking that I have often
worked hard when it was against the grain.

TO C. E. NORTON 149

While I was most unwell, I could not find any read-
ing that would seclude me from myself till one day I
bethought me of Calderon. I took down a volume of
his plays, and in half an hour was completely absorbed.
He is surely one of the most marvellous of poets. I
have recorded my debt to him in a poem, " The Night-
ingale in the Study." It is greater now, and I confess
that the power of his charm interested me enough to
make me think it might also interest you. . . .

TO C. E. NORTON

Elmwood, Sept. 23, 1875.

. . . For about a week I could read nothing but Cal-
deron— a continual delight, like walking in a wood
where there is a general sameness in the scenery and
yet a constant vicissitude of light and shade, an endless
variety of growth. He is certainly the most delightful
of poets. Such fertility, such a gilding of the surfaces
of things with fancy, or infusion of them with the more
potent fires of imagination, such lightsomeness of hu-
mor ! Even his tragedies somehow are not tragic to
me, though terrible enough sometimes, for everybody
has such a talent for being consoled, and that out of
hand. Life with him is too short and too uncertain for
sorrow to last longer than to the end of the scene, if
so long. As Ate makes her exit she hands her torch
to Hymen, who dances in brandishing it with an lo !
The passions (some of the most unchristian of 'em) are
made religious duties, which once fulfilled, you begin
life anew with a clear conscience. .

150 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1875

TO R. S. CHILTON

Elmwood, Oct. 16, 1875.

Dear Sir, — I thought I had answered your letter long
ago as I ought, for I was much obliged to you for your
kind remembrance of me and for the photograph. But
I was much worried during the spring and early summer
by Centennials and things, and a heap of letters gath-
ered ere I was aware under my bronze hen, till she looks
as if [she had] been laying them ever since, and were
now brooding on them with a fiendish hope of hatching
out a clutch that shall hereafter pair and multiply.

I am glad you like my " Great Elm " poem. Occa-
sional verses are always risky, and Centennials most
of all, as being expected to have in them the pith and
marrow of a hundred years. Then, too, in composing
one is confronted with his audience, which he cannot
help measuring by the dullest of his fellow-citizens, and
this is far from inspiring. However, I seem to have
escaped falling flat and shaming my worshippers —
which was more than I could hope. The Concord
poem was an improvisation written in the two days be-
fore the celebration, but the Cambridge one was com-
posed amid all kinds of alien distractions.

Do you remember showing me, in Page's studio,
more than thirty years ago, a pair of sleeve-buttons of
Burns's? I hope you have them still. I have had a
kind of poem about them buzzing in my head ever
since. It is better there than it would be if I could
open the window and chase it out of doors.*

* One of these sleeve-buttons was afterwards given to Lowell ;
it is now in the Cabinet of the Library of Harvard University.

1875] TO MRS. 151

I suppose you are a gray old boy by this time. I
am just beginning to grizzle with the first hoar-frost.
I have two grandsons, children of my only daughter
and surviving child, fine boys both of them. They
make me younger, I think.

I enclose a photograph taken two years ago in Rome
by an amateur. It is, I believe, a tolerable dead like-
ness, and may serve to recall me to your memory. I
am printing a new volume of essays, my work on which
was broken off by an illness, the first (except gout) I
ever had. But I am now for a few days mending rap-
idly. It was liver, and upset me utterly.
With all kindly remembrance,

Cordially yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO MRS.

Elm wood, Nov. 20, 1875.

The thought of your so long unanswered letter has
been giving my conscience an unpleasant twinge for
some time, but I anodyned it with the assurance that
you would be too kind to misinterpret my silence.
The truth is that I have been fussing over the volume
I am printing, and fussing, too, without much progress,
for my wits are clogged by not being yet quite recov-
ered from my late illness. But I hope to be rid of my
task (after a fashion) in a few days now. The book
will contain essays on Dante, Spenser, Wordsworth, and
shorter ones on Milton (criticism of an edition, rather
than of the poet) and Keats.

. I am often struck with the fact that people of a

152 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1875

sceptical turn, and who look upon all traditional faiths
as broken reeds, are sure to lay hold of some private
bulrush of credulity and fancy it an oak. For myself,
I look upon a belief as none the worse but rather the
better for being hereditary, prizing as I do whatever
helps to give continuity to the being and doing of man,
and an accumulated force to his character.

As for my coming to Baltimore, I fear it is out of the
question, at least for the present. I have classes at the
College three times a week and no long vacation till
summer. At Christmas I always like to be by my own
fireside, where a huge Yule-log always blazes. This
year I shall be quite patriarchal, for my daughter with
her husband and two boys will be with us. There is
something wonderful in being a grandfather. It gives
one a sense of almost tenderer paternity without the
responsibilities that commonly wait upon it. ...

TO R. W. GILDER

Elmwood, Dec. 15, 1875.

. . . As the sight of you four young lovers under my
friend Norton's familiar pines transported me for a mo-
ment to a more innocent garden of Boccaccio, and pret-
tily renewed for me my own youth and forward-looking
days, so your little book has given me a pleasure the
same in kind though more poignant in degree. I can-
not praise it better than in saying that as I read I kept
murmuring to myself, " It dallies with the innocence of
love like the old age." Here and there I might shake
my head (gray hairs, you know, have a trick of setting

1875] TO MRS. 153

our heads ashake), but nearly all I liked and liked thor-
oughly. Your book is too subtle for the many, but the
sense of lovers is finer and they will find it out. You
will be the harmless Galeotto between many a dumb
passion and itself.

But I know you are grumbling to yourself, " Why
does he praise my verses and say nothing of her illus-
trations?" I could not help liking their grace and
fancy. They seemed to me like flowers a lover had
given his mistress and begged again, after she had worn
them in her stomacher till they had caught some en-
chantment from their happy destiny. I thank you both
for a great deal of pure pleasure that will last — as only
pure pleasures do.

This is the first day I have had free of proof-sheets,
or I should have written sooner. Cabbage-leaves and
rose-leaves do not sort well together. Recall me, I
pray you, to Mrs. Gilder's memory, and believe me

Very thankfully yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO MRS.

Elmwood, Dec. 25, 1875.

... I am reading and commenting " Don Quixote "
to the students, and in order to do it intelligently have
been making a careful study of it over again. I am not
sorry, for it has been a long pleasure, and when one is
obliged to read with a microscope, one sees many things
that would otherwise escape him. It is, indeed, a won-
derful book, as full of good sense and good feeling as of
profound, and therefore imperishable, humor.

154 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

I had hoped before this to have sent you my new
book, but it hung long on my hands and is not yet out.
You are so partial (one of the many excellent qualities
in your sex) that I dare say you may not find it so
tedious as it has been to me. But if you should be
bored by it, I shall like you none the less.

Your industry amazes me, who am rather an unwill-
ing writer, though I am one of the last (I fear) of the
great readers. If I were to tell how many hours a day
I have studied, nobody would believe me except you.
And the pitiful part of it is, that just when we are
wise enough to profit by our accumulations our mem-
ory grows blurred, like the pencil entries in a note-book
carried long in the pocket.

It is a gloomy Christmas day. Last night it snowed
nobly for an hour or two and then turned to rain, and
to-day is sullen with its disappointment. It is drizzling
and freezing as it falls, and though the trees will look
very pretty to-morrow if the sun shine, I never quite
like it, because the trees always suffer, and I feel for
them as my oldest friends.

I had expected my two grandsons to dinner, but the
weather will not let them run the risk, so I am to have
my old friend Mr. John Holmes (the best and most
delightful of men), and a student whom I found to
be without any chance at other than a dinner in Com-
mons. . . .

TO THE SAME

Elmwood, Jan. 17, 1876.
... I sent you day before yesterday my new book,

1876] TO JOEL BENTON 155

and that copy was the first I sent to any one, for I
thought your partiality would perhaps find more pleas-
ure in it than the rest of the world. I took such a dis-
gust at it while it was passing through the press that
I have not ventured to look into it since it was pub-
lished. Yet, though I could not (muddle-headed as I
was all summer with illness) give it the order and pro-
portion that I would, I think you will find something
in it to like.

I go on in my usual routine, only varied by reading
and commenting "Don Quixote" on Thursday even-
ings. An audience is apt to set me at cross-purposes
with myself, but I am told that I give pleasure. . . .

TO JOEL BENTON

Elmwood, Jan. 19, 1876.*

Dear Sir, — I thank you for the manly way in which
you put yourself at my side when I had fallen among

* This letter was printed, with a Note by Mr. Benton, in the
Century magazine for November, 1891. The following is a por-
tion of Mr. Benton's Note :

"On Mr. Lowell's return from Europe in 1875 he wrote two
brief poems for the Nation, which were entitled respectively
1 The World's Fair, 1876,' and ' Tempora Mutantur.' In these he
described certain dangerous symptoms of the body politic. . . .
The following lines are a fair sample of the tone and direction of
the poems. Mr. Lowell, speaking for Brother Jonathan, recom-
mends the exhibition of some of our political inventions of that
day.

" ' Show 'em your Civil Service, and explain
How all men's loss is everybody's gain;
Show your new patent to increase your rents
By paying quarters for collecting cents ;
Show your short cut to cure financial ills
By making paper-collars current bills;
Show your new bleaching-process, cheap and brief,
To wit : a jury chosen by the thief ;

156 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

thieves, still more for the pithy and well-considered
words with which you confirm and maintain my side of
the quarrel. At my time of life one is not apt to vex

Show your State legislatures ; show your Rings ;
And challenge Europe to produce such things
As high officials sitting half in sight
To share the plunder and to fix things right ;
If that don't fetch her, why, you only need
To show your latest style in martyrs — Tweed :
She'll find it hard to hide her spiteful tears
At such advance in one poor hundred years.'

0 In ' Tempora Mutantur ' occur these lines :

"'A hundred years ago,

If men were knaves, why, people called them so,
And crime could see the prison-portal bend
Its brow severe at no long vista's end ;
In those days for plain things plain words would serve ;
Men had not learned to admire the graceful swerve
Wherewith the ^Esthetic Nature's genial mood
Makes public duty slope to private good.

But now that " Statesmanship " is just a way
To dodge the primal curse and make it pay,
Since Office means a kind of patent drill
To force an entrance to the Nation's till,
And peculation something rather less
Risky than if you spelt it with an s;

With generous curve we draw the moral line :
Our swindlers are permitted to resign;
Their guilt is wrapped in deferential names,
And twenty sympathize for one that blames.

The public servant who has stolen or lied,
If called on, may resign with honest pride:
As unjust favor put him in, why doubt
Disfavor as unjust has turned him out?
Even if indicted, what is that but fudge
To him who counted-in the elective judge?
Whitewashed, he quits the politician's strife,
At ease in mind, with pockets filled for life.'

"These caustic lines awakened resentment. A large propor-
tion of the press (and particularly that part of it which was of his

1 8 76] TO JOEL BENTON 157

his soul at any criticism, but I confess that in this case
I was more than annoyed, I was even saddened. For
what was said was so childish and showed such shal-
lowness, such levity, and such dulness of apprehension
both in politics and morals on the part of those who
claim to direct public opinion (as, alas ! they too often
do) as to confirm me in my gravest apprehensions. I
believe "The World's Fair" gave the greatest offence.
They had not even the wit to see that I put my sar-
casm into the mouth of Brother Jonathan, thereby im-
plying and meaning to imply that the common-sense of
my countrymen was awakening to the facts, and that
therefore things were perhaps not so desperate as they
seemed.

I had just come home from a two years' stay in
Europe, so it was discovered that I had been corrupted
by association with foreign aristocracies! I need not
say to you that the society I frequented in Europe was
what it is at home — that of my wife, my studies, and
the best nature and art within my reach. But I confess
that I was embittered by my experience. Wherever I

own political faith) pursued him with no polite epithets, and with
not a little persistence. It was charged that he was no true
American ; that he was, in fact, a snob ; that he had elbowed
against dukes and lords so much and so long that he could not
any longer tolerate Democracy. And for many weeks this and
other equally puerile nonsense went on unrebuked.

" It occurred to me at last to say what was obvious, and record
my sympathy with Mr. Lowell's position. That his character and
motives were above all need of defence I knew, but such a shock-
ing perversion of his ideas and intentions was altogether too fla-
grant to pass unnoticed. I therefore took up the cudgels for what
seemed to me to be true ; and, under the title of ' Mr. Lowell's
Recent Political Verse,' volunteered, in the Christian Union of
December 15, 1875, a defence of his friendly chidings."

158 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

went I was put on the defensive. Whatever extracts
I saw from American papers told of some new fraud
or defalcation, public or private. It was sixteen years
since my last visit abroad, and I found a very striking
change in the feeling towards America and Americans.
An Englishman was everywhere treated with a certain
deference: Americans were at best tolerated. The ex-
ample of America was everywhere urged in France as an
argument against republican forms of government. It
was fruitless to say that the people were still sound when
the Body Politic which draws its life from them showed
such blotches and sores. I came home, and instead of
wrath at such abominations, I found banter. I was pro-
foundly shocked, for I had received my earliest impres-
sions in a community the most virtuous, I believe, that
ever existed. . . . On my return I found that commu-
nity struggling half hopelessly to prevent General Butler
from being put in its highest office against the will of all
its best citizens. I found Boutwell, one of its sena-
tors, a chief obstacle to Civil-Service reform (our main
hope). ... I saw Banks returned by a larger majority
than any other member of the lower house. ... In the
Commonwealth that built the first free school and the
first college, I heard culture openly derided. I suppose
I like to be liked as well as other men. Certainly I
would rather be left to my studies than meddle with
politics. But I had attained to some consideration, and
my duty was plain. I wrote what I did in the plainest
way, that he who ran might read, and that I hit the
mark I aimed at is proved by the attacks against which
you so generously defend me. These fellows have no

~»

1876] TO JOEL BENTON 159

notion what love of country means. It is in my very
blood and bones. If I am not an American, who ever
was?

I am no pessimist, nor ever was, . . . but is not the
Beecher horror disheartening? Is not Delano discour
aging? and Babcock atop of him? . . . What fills me
with doubt and dismay is the degradation of the moral
tone. Is it or is it not a result of Democracy? Is ours
a "government of the people by the people for the
people," or a Kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of
knaves at the cost of fools? Democracy is, after all,
nothing more than an experiment like another, and I
know only one way of judging it — by its results. De-
mocracy in itself is no more sacred than monarchy. It
is Man who is sacred ; it is his duties and opportunities,
not his rights, that nowadays need reinforcement. It
is honor, justice, culture, that make liberty invaluable,
else worse than worthless if it mean only freedom to be
base and brutal. As things have been going lately, it
would surprise no one if the officers who had Tweed in
charge should demand a reward for their connivance in
the evasion of that popular hero. I am old enough to
remember many things, and what I remember I medi-
tate upon. My opinions do not live from hand to
mouth. And so long as I live I will be no writer of
birthday odes to King Demos any more than I would
be to King Log, nor shall I think our cant any more
sacred than any other. Let us all work together (and
the task will need us all) to make Democracy possible.
It certainly is no invention to go of itself any more than
the perpetual motion.

l6o LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

Forgive me for this long letter of justification, which
I am willing to write for your friendly eye, though I
should scorn to make any public defence. Let the tenor
of my life and writings defend me.

Cordially yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO EDWARD P. BLISS

Elmwood, April 4, 1876.

Dear Sir, — Though I don't think the function you
wish me to perform quite in my line, I am willing to
do anything which may be thought helpful in a move-
ment of which I heartily approve. I am not so hope-
ful, I confess, as I was thirty years ago ; yet, if there
be any hope, it is in getting independent thinkers to
be independent voters.

Very truly yours,

J. R. LOWELL.*

* Mr. Bliss has favored me with the following statement, ex-
planatory of the preceding letter: "In the spring of 1876 some
young men in Cambridge were not contented with the tenden-
cies in the Republican party. We had a meeting in one of the
rooms in Stoughton Hall, and planned to call a larger meeting,
inviting about sixty citizens, at which we could better determine
how to help right our politics. I was directed to invite Professor
Lowell to preside at the proposed meeting. I received from him
the foregoing letter.

"At this meeting Mr. Lowell advised with us very seriously,
and the result was that we organized a committee of forty, eight
from each ward, to see that we had fair caucuses. At that time
the Boston Custom-House officials were used to managing all
our caucuses, and just then they wanted to secure delegates
favorable to Mr. Elaine's nomination. Mr. Lowell was elected
president of the whole committee. The caucuses in all wards
were so well looked after by these amateurs in politics that anti-
Blaine delegates were chosen, to the surprise of the Custom-
House men. At Jamaica Plains there was a similar committee.
We were in the same district then. Members of their commit-
tee arranged with some of us that at the district convention we

l876J TO LESLIE STEPHEN l6l

TO LESLIE STEPHEN

Elm wood, April 10, 1876.

. . . Last night I appeared in a new capacity as
chairman of a political meeting, where I fear I made
an ass of myself. It was got up by young men who
wish to rouse people to their duty in attending cau-
cuses and getting them out of the hands of profes-
sionals. I haven't much hope (one has rounded that
cape by the time he is fifty), but am willing to try
anything. We have got to work back from a democ-
racy to our original institution as a republic again.
Our present system has resulted in our being governed
by a secret and irresponsible club called the United
States Senate for their own private benefit. Our Re-
publican newspapers seem to find a strange consolation
in the vile character of the witnesses against our more
illustrious swindlers ; but how are we to get over the
fact that, however rotten and perjured these rascals
may be, they were all in the confidential employment of
the very men who try to discredit them ? I think the
row is likely to do good, however, in getting us better
candidates in the next presidential election, and wak-
ing everybody up to the screaming necessity of reform
in our Civil Service. It doesn't cheer me much to be
told that it was just as bad in England under Sir Rob-
ert Walpole. In the first place, it wasn't, and, in the
second, suppose it was ? . . .

would try to send as delegates to Cincinnati the presidents of the
two committees, who were the Rev. Dr. James F. Clarke and Pro-
fessor J. R. Lowell. We were successful. Mr. Lowell was a new
personage in active politics, and as delegate and afterwards pres-
idential elector drew special attention."

II.— n

l62 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

TO MRS.

Elm wood, April 19, 1876.

. . . But I did not tell you the worst. Horace
confesses that he was stout, or at any rate implies it.
Thomson says plumply that he was fat — an odious
word. I suppose Coleridge would have admitted a cer-
tain amiable rotundity of presence. Byron wrestled
with increasing flesh, as it had been well for him to do
against growing fleshliness. But such is the weakness
of our poor human nature that never one of them could
bring himself to the shameful confession that he had
lost his waist. There is the tender spot, and I claim
a certain amount of admiration when I admit that mine
has been growing more and more obscure (like many
a passage in Browning) for several years. Now, a waist
is as important in a poet's economy as in a woman's.
But this is too sad a topic. You see I disenchant you
by installments — and, how shall I say it ? I am writing
at this moment with spectacles (not nippers, mind you,
but the steel-bowed deformity which pale young par-
sons love) across my prosaic nose. It is horrible, but
it is true. I have, to be sure, the saving grace of being
still a little touchy about them, and have never yet al-
lowed any of the servants to see me in my debasement.
Nippers have still a pretension of foppishness about
them, and he who is foppish has not yet abandoned
the last stronghold of youth, or, if he has, he at least
marches out with the honors of war. I have laid down
my arms. That steel bow is Romance's Caudine Forks.
I used to have the eye of a hawk, and a few days ago

1876] TO MRS. !63

I mistook a flight of snow-birds for English sparrows !
Have you still the courage to come ? If you have, we
shall be all the gladder to see you, and I will make
you welcome to whatever I have contrived to save
from the wreck of myself. Age makes Robinson Cru-
soes of the best of us, and makes us ingenious in con-
trivances and substitutes, but what cunning expedient
will ever replace youth ? In one respect only I have
lost nothing. I think I am as great a fool as ever, and
that is no small comfort. I believe, too, that I still feel
the blind motions of spring in my veins with the same
sense of prickle as trees do, for I suppose their sense of
April must be very much like ours when a limb that
has been asleep, as we call it, is fumbling after its sus-
pended sensation again.

Are you a stout walker? If you are, I will show you
my oaks while you are here. If you are not, I will still
contrive to make you acquainted with them in some
more ignominious way. They will forgive you, I dare
say, for the sake of so old a friend as I. Besides, they
are no great pedestrians themselves unless, like Shel-
ley's Appenine, they walk abroad in the storm. We
haven't much to show here. We are a flat country,
you know, but not without our charm, and I love
Nature, I confess, not to be always on her high horse
and with her tragic mask on. Bostonians generally (I
am not a Bostonian) seem to have two notions of hos-
pitality— a dinner with people you never saw before
nor ever wish to see again, and a drive in Mount Au-
burn cemetery, where you will see the worst man can
do in the way of disfiguring nature. Your memory of

164 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

the dinner is expected to reconcile you to the prospect
of the graveyard. But I am getting treasonable.

Now to business. You must let me know in good
season when you are coming, because I wish to make
sure of some pleasant people for you to meet. Don't
come till May, if you can help it, for our spring is
backward and we don't do ourselves justice yet. But
come at any rate. . . .

TO H. W. LONGFELLOW

Elmwood, May 3, 1876.

Dear Longfellow, — Will you dine with me on Sat-
urday at six ? I have a Baltimore friend coming, and
depend on you.

I had such a pleasure yesterday that I should like
to share it with you to whom I owed it. J. R. Osgood &
Co. sent me a copy of your Household Edition to show
me what it was, as they propose one of me. I had
been reading over with dismay my own poems to weed
out the misprints, and was awfully disheartened to find
how bad they (the poems) were. Then I took up your
book to see what the type was, and before I knew it I
had been reading two hours and more. I never won-
dered at your popularity, nor thought it wicked in you ;
but if I had wondered, I should no longer, for you sang
me out of all my worries. To be sure they came back
when I opened my own book again — but that was no
fault of yours.

If not Saturday, will you say Sunday? My friend

is a Mrs. , and a very nice person indeed.

Yours always,

J. R. L.

1876] TO LESLIE STEPHEN 165

TO LESLIE STEPHEN

Elmwood, May 15, 1876.

. . . Have I read your book ? * I wish you had read
it so carefully, for then I should not have a string of
errata to send you for your next edition, the first of
them peculiarly exasperating, because it spoils one of
Browne's most imaginative passages, a passage I never
think of without a thrill. It is on page 40, where
"dreams" has usurped the place of "drums." ... I
may be partial, though I don't think I am, and even
were I, towards whom have I a better privilege of par-
tiality than towards you ? To be sure, I could not help
being constantly reminded of you as I read ; but that
surely is a chief merit of the book, proving it to be dis-
tinctively yours and nobody's else. I was especially
interested in Jonathan Edwards, with whom (except in
his physical notions of hell) I have a great sympathy
— a case of reversion, I suppose, to some Puritan an-
cestor. If he had only conceived of damnation as a
spiritual state, the very horror of which consists (to our
deeper apprehension) in its being delightful to who is
in it, I could go along with him altogether. What you
say of his isolation is particularly good, and applies to
American literature more or less even yet. We lack
the stimulus whether of rivalry or sympathy. I liked
your estimate of Browne very much. It is very subtle
and appreciative, though I think you misapprehend the
scope of the " Pseudodoxia " a little. Browne was Mon-
taigne's truest disciple, and his deference to certain

* " Hours in a Library."

l66 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

superstitions is greatly analogous to old Michel's pil-
grimage to Loreto. He always assumes the air of a
believer the more devoutly when he is about to hint
something especially unorthodox. Always sceptical, he
makes us feel the absurdities of the vulgar faith by set-
ting forth some monstrous deduction that may be drawn
from them. Take the passage you quote from the " Re-
ligio," on pages 23-24, for example. In the " Pseudo-
doxia " Browne is always scattering (as it seems to me)
the seeds of scepticism, though the bags that contain
them are all carefully labelled " Herb of Grace." But
I may be wrong, for I speak from a long-agone general
impression, not having studied Browne much for a good
many years. I was glad of your kind word for good
old Cfabbe, which was very just and discriminating. I
thank you also for your Rettung (as Lessing would
have called it) of Horace Walpole. The " Hazlitt," too,
though you rate him higher than I should, strikes me
as very good. In the whole book there is a union of
impartial good sense and sensibility of appreciation
that is very rare in criticism. And then there are
charity and modesty. I read it straight through at a
sitting and wished there had been more, and not be-
cause it was yours, but because I was interested. But
because it was yours, I am heartily glad it is so good.
I am impatient for your other book.* It is on a
capital subject and I am sure it will be ably han-
dled.

I have published another Volume, and I ought long

* " English Thought in the Eighteenth Century."

1876] TO LESLIE STEPHEN 167

ago to have sent you a copy, but I took a disgust at
it so soon as I saw it in print. I was really ill all the
time it was going through the press, so that I some-
times could not even read a proof for weeks, and had
to put in at random some things I would rather have
left for a posthumous edition of my works (if I ever
have one), when people read with kindlier eyes. But I
will post you a copy soon.

Thank you for the plan.* I shall be able to fancy
you now very well in your new house, for I remember
all that neighborhood well, and it is already associated
with you, since I used to pass it in my way to South-
well Gardens. I am glad to think that little Laura will
be so near a good playground and something like the
country. I fear you will not have a study I shall like
so well as that Stylites one on the top of your other
house, which I know so thoroughly. It was the one
place in the wilderness of London where I felt thor-
oughly at home. I was somehow an American every-
where else, but there I was a friend, and so far, you
know, it was a foretaste of heaven.

I didn't mean any reproach (but then you wouldn't
have thought I did) in what I said about Providence,
whatever it was. I don't meddle with what my friends
believe or reject, any more than I ask whether they
are rich or poor. I love them. I sometimes think
they will smile (as Dante makes St. Gregory) when
they open their eyes in the other world. And so
doubtless shall I, for I have no Murray or Baedeker

* Of Mr. Stephen's new house, for which Lowell had asked.

1 68 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

for those parts. I don't think a view of the universe
from the stocks of any creed a very satisfactory one.
But I continue to shut my eyes resolutely in certain
speculative directions, and am willing to find solace in
certain intimations that seem to me from a region
higher than my reason. When they tell me that I
can't know certain things, I am apt to wonder how they*
can be sure of that, and whether there may not be
things which they cant know. I went through my re-
action so early and so violently that I have been set-
tling backward towards equilibrium ever since. As I
can't be certain, I won't be positive, and wouldn't drop
some chapters of the Old Testament, even, for all the
science that ever undertook to tell me what it doesn't
know. They go about to prove to me from a lot of
nasty savages that conscience is a purely artificial prod-
uct, as if that wasn't the very wonder of it. What
odds whether it is the thing or the aptitude that is
innate? What race of beasts ever got one up in all
their leisurely aeons?

Our spring is very cold and backward, though
peaches, pears, and cherries are grudgingly blooming.
I hope yours is more generous, for I think May sov-
ereign for an inward wound. I can't recollect whether
you know the Gurneys, who are now in London. If
not, I must have given them a letter. You will like
them in every way. They are delighted with dear Old
England.

Always affectionately yours,

J. R. LOWELL,

1876] TO MISS NORTON 169

TO MISS NORTON

Elmwood, July 3, 1876.

. . . What can I tell you about Cincinnati? The
journey impressed me, as a journey in America always
does, with the wonderful richness and comfort of the
country, and with the distinctive Americanism that
is moulding into one type of feature and habits so
many races that had widely diverged from the same
original stock. Is the West to reproduce the primitive
Aryan who wandered out of the East so long ago?
One gets also an impression of size which enables one
to sympathize with his countrymen (as I love to do)
in the mere bigness of the country. These immense
spaces, tremulous with the young grain, trophies of
individual, or at any rate of unorganized courage and
energy, of the people and not of dynasties, were to
me inexpressibly impressive and even touching. The
whole landscape had a neighborly air, such as I feel
in no other country. The men who have done and are
doing these things know how things should be done, and
will find some way, I am sure, of bringing the country
back to business principles. It was very interesting,
also, to meet men from Kansas and Nevada and Cali-
fornia, to see how manly and intelligent they were, and
especially what large heads they had. They had not
the manners of Vere de Vere, perhaps, but they had an
independence and self-respect which are the prime ele-
ment of fine bearing. I think I never (not even in Ger-
many) sat at meat with so many men who used their
knives as shovels, nor with so many who were so quiet
and self-restrained in their demeanor. The Western-

1 70 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

ers, especially, may be Grangers, or what you will (it
won't be the first case in history where self-interest has
blinded men to the rights of others — nor the last), but
you feel that they have the unmistakable makings of
men in them. They were less sensitive to the offences
of Blaine than I could have wished, but I suspect that
few of our Boston men who have had to do with West-
ern railways have been more scrupulous. I rather think
they set the example of tempting legislators with the
hope of questionable gains.

I am glad you liked Stephen's article as well as I
did. It seems to me, on the whole, the best thing I
have read about Macaulay, doing more justice than the
rest to the essential manliness and Britishism of his
character. Morley's paper seemed to me altogether
too a priori and Teutonically abstruse. He was so
profound that he dug under his subject rather than
into it, and I confess the universe is so brutally indif-
ferent to us, that I am not greatly interested in the dis-
cussion of any particular man's relation to it. That
very small arc of which the eye of man (however tall)
can grasp is enough for me. . . .

TO MRS.

Elmwood, July 4, 1876.

. . . You must be beginning to think me the most
inconstant of men to have left your last letter so long
without an answer. But the explanation of it is simple
enough, though women, I believe, are so wise as never
to be satisfied with an explanation, because the need of

n.£. tiail.Jr.

1876] TO MRS. jj!

one can never be explained. I meant to have written
to you from Cincinnati, whither I went in the hope of
helping to get Mr. Bristow nominated as the Republi-
can candidate. There, I thought, I should have plenty
of spare time, and plenty of new and amusing things to
tell you about. But I had no leisure, the weather was
stewing hot, and I spent all the intervals of business in
trying to make myself clean with a very stingy supply
of water, for the blacks of their coal-smoke stick faster
than the most scriptural brother. I was wholly de-
moralized by the unwonted color of my finger-nails, and
kept my fists carefully doubled to hide them lest I

should be mistaken for a partisan of , the dirtiness

of whose hands seemed rather an argument in his favor
with many. I had little hope before I went of Mr.
Bristow's nomination, but desired it greatly because he
had shown himself a practical reformer, and because I
believed that a Kentucky candidate might at least give
the starting-point for a party at the South whose line
of division should be other than sectional, and by which
the natural sympathy between reasonable and honest
men at the North and the South should have a fair
chance to reassert itself. We failed, but at least suc-
ceeded in preventing the nomination of a man whose
success in the Convention (he would have been beaten
disastrously at the polls) would have been a lesson to
American youth that selfish partisanship is a set-off for
vulgarity of character and obtuseness of moral sense.
I am proud to say that it was New England that de-
feated the New England candidate.

I hope you are as far away from the noises of this

172 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

boisterous anniversary as I. I was asked to write an
ode for the celebration at Taunton, where Mr. C. F.
Adams is to deliver the oration. But the Muse was
unwilling, and I would not condescend to the mechan-
ical compromise of a hymn with verses set stiffly as
pins in a paper, but, unlike them, of a non-conduct-
ing material. It is no use setting traps for inspiration
till the right bait shall have been discovered. With the
thermometer at 90° in the shade, I am, on the whole,
glad I wasn't inspired.

Since you were here I have changed my quarters,
and moved out of the library into the room in front
of it, where a long window gives me more breeze, and
where I shall have the morning sun in winter, which I
crave more as I grow older. When you come again,
I hope you will like me as well in my new refuge as
in the old. But perhaps by this time my silence has
vexed you enough to make you reconsider your good
opinion of me altogether?

I am writing to cannon music, for the noon salutes
are just booming in every direction, and with some-
thing of the effect of a general engagement. Wom-
en, I think, are quiet when they are happiest, and
can stitch their superfluous exhilaration into a seam,
but the coarser fibre of men demands an immense
amount of noise to make it vibrate and convince them
they are happy. Or is it that uproar deadens reflec-
tion, and that in the confusion they escape arrest by
that consciousness of the futility of things in general
which is so saddening? However it be, I am glad the
nearest guns are a mile away from me. I remember

1876] TO THOMAS HUGHES 173

how, fifty years ago to-day, I, perched in a great ox-
heart cherry-tree, long ago turned to mould, saw my
father come home with the news of John Adams's
death. I wish I could feel, as I did then, that we were
a chosen people, with a still valid claim to divine in-
terpositions. It is from an opposite quarter that most
of our providences seem to come now. But those
peaceful fields that rimmed the railway all the way
to Cincinnati, trophies of honest toil, and somehow
looking more neighborly than in other lands, were a
great consolation and encouragement to me. Here was
a great gain to the sum of human happiness, at least,
however it be with the higher and nobler things that
make a country truly inhabitable. Will they come in
time, or is Democracy doomed by its very nature to a
dead level of commonplace? At any rate, our experi-
ment of inoculation with freedom is to run its course
through all Christendom, with what result the wisest
cannot predict. Will it only insure safety from the
more dangerous disease of originality? . . .

TO THOMAS HUGHES

Elmwood, July 12, 1876.

Dear old Friend, — ... I have taken my first practi-
cal dip into politics this summer, having been sent by
my neighbors first to the State Convention and then to
the National at Cincinnati. I am glad I went, for I
learned a great deal that may be of service to me here-
after. You are wrong about Hayes; he was neither
unknown nor even unexpected as a probable nominee.

174 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

He was not adopted as a compromise in any true sense
of the word, but as an unimpeachably honest man, and
the only one on whom we could unite to defeat Elaine,
who had all the party machinery at his disposal. The
nomination of the latter would have been a national ca-
lamity— the most costly tub of whitewash yet heard of.
For, really, a large part of the feeling in his favor was
an honest (though mistaken) feeling of indignation at
a partisan persecution, for such he had cunningly con-
trived to make the inquiry into his stock-jobbing pro-
ceedings appear. His nomination might have done
good in one way — by leading to the formation of a new
party based simply on reform. Such a party would
have been certainly formed, and I should not have re-
gretted it, for I very much doubt the possibility of pu-
rifying either of the old ones from within. There is
very little to choose between them ; though, so far
as the South is concerned, I rather sympathize with
the Democrats. The whole condition of things at the
South is shameful, and I am ready for a movement
now to emancipate the whites. No doubt the gov-
ernment is bound to protect the misintelligence of the
blacks, but surely not at the expense of the intelli-
gence of the men of our own blood. The South, on
the whole, has behaved better than I expected, but
our extremists expect them to like being told once a
week that they have been licked. The war was fought
through for nationality; for that and nothing more.
That was both the ostensible and the real motive.
Emancipation was a very welcome incident of the
war, and nothing more.

1876] TO THOMAS HUGHES 175

Ever since '65 the Republican party has done its
best (I mean its leaders, for selfish ends) to make our
victory nugatory, so far as Reunion was concerned.
The people I believe to be perfectly sound, and as hon-
est (if not more so) as any other on the earth. But it
takes a great while for the people to have its way.
There is a good deal of blundering at first, a good deal
of righteous wrath that misses its mark, but in the long
run we shall win.

I think the intelligence of the country is decidedly on
the Republican side, and cannot quite get over my dis-
trust of the Democracy, which is mainly to blame for
our political corruption.

In England you are misled by your free-trade no-
tions in your judgment of the two parties here. (I don't
mean you personally.) Free trade has nothing to hope
from either of them, and perhaps the most ardent free-
traders are Republicans, but we shall have no free trade
till our debt is cancelled.

Our real weak point is in Congress, and your zeal-
ous enlargers of the suffrage had better think twice. I
think we shall gradually get better men, but it will be
a slow business. I myself have been asked to stand
in my district, but do not see my way clear to so very
great a sacrifice. I am hopeful of purification, but not
sanguine.

Emerson is well, but visibly aging. He was not at
our Commencement this year, the first time I have ever
missed him there. He is as sweetly high-minded as
ever, and when one meets him the Fall of Adam
seems a false report. Afterwards we feel of our throats,

176 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

and are startled by the tell-tale lump there. John
Holmes is well, and delightful as usual. He is lame
again just now, but it does n^f make him blue as
formerly. I wish we could have you here again. We
have a new veranda on the north side, which is a great
success. (I enclose a print.) I had hoped for you dur-
ing the Centennial year. We are taking it gravely, I
am glad to see, and rather incline to be thoughtful than
bumptious. I wish your queen (or empress) would have
had the grace to write a letter. It would have done
good, and we would rather have had one from her than
from all your Wilhelms and Vittorio Emanueles to-
gether. . . .

Sept. 24, 1876.

P. S. You will see by the date of my other sheet
that it was written more than two months ago. I
wrote that I should enclose a print, and found that the
magazine containing it had been given away. So that
very day I ordered another of our periodical-dealer (as
we call a newsman here) and he promised to get one
at once, adding that he wished for a copy himself also,
as it contained an article on Cambridge. At intervals
ever since I have asked for it and never got it, but am
always told by the merchant of news that he wants one
himself. It tickles me as one of the last samples to
be found of a certain Constantinopolitan way of doing
business which used to be characteristic of the Cam-
bridge of my boyhood.

Politics have not changed much since I wrote — only
the worst element of the Republican party has got hold
of the canvass, and everything possible is done to stir

1876] TO THOMAS HUGHES 177

up the old passions of the war. Of course I with all
sensible men hate this, but our protest is drowned in
the drums and trumpets of a presidential election. On
the whole, I shall vote for Hayes, and the best judges
think his election the likelier of the two. But there
will be a strong reaction from the violences of the con-
test now going on, and Congress will be more in oppo-
sition with the executive than ever. The same thing
will happen if Tilden comes in, for the Democratic party
is very hungry for place, and their professions of reform
will be severely tested. Now, as the good men of both
parties are honest reformers, I think we shall gradually
get an independent party, and then the country will
divide on rational issues, such as currency and tariff.
Faith in democratical forms of government will be
painfully strained in many minds if Butler should carry
eastern Massachusetts, as he probably will. I shall still
think them, however, as nearly ideal as some other ways
of doing clumsily what might be done well. It will go
hard with me to vote against Mr. Adams here at home,*
and perhaps, if things go on from bad to worse, I sha'n't.
But I cannot easily bring myself to trust the Democrats.
His nomination has had one odd (and good) effect here
in dividing the Irish vote. The Fenians regard him as
an enemy of Ireland, because he did his duty as am-
bassador, so the Irish Democratic orators are laboring
to convince their countrymen that a man can't have
two countries at once, though most of 'em see nothing

* Mr. Charles F. Adams, late U. S. Minister at the Court of
St. James, was the candidate of the Democratic party for gov-
ernor.

II.— 12

178 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

wonderful in Sir Boyle Roche's bird. If I ever get the
print I will send it, for we are rather proud of our new
veranda, which longingly awaits you. . . .

TO MISS NORTON

Elm wood, Aug. 6, 1876.

. . . You should see me in my new study, with the
arches wide open into the library, as we shall call it. ...

Now can I taste the pleasures of retreat ;
Days loitering idly with snow-silent feet,
Truants of Time, to-morrow like to-day,
That come unbought, and claimless glide away
By shelves that sun them in the indulgent Past,
Where 111 hath ceased or turned to song at last.

Tell Charles that these verses are adapted from a poem
I told him I was writing. And, lest I never finish them,
I will copy a bit or two more :

Oh, as this pensive moonlight blurs my pines
(Here as I sit and meditate these lines)
To gray-green dreams of what they are by day,
So would some light, not reason's clear-edged ray,
Trance me in moonshine, as before the blight
Of years had brought the fatal gift of sight
That sees things as they are, or will be soon,
In the frank prose of undissembling noon !

###*#=*
Are we not changed ? Is this the Senate now
Where Clay once flashed, and Webster's cloudy brow
Brooded those bolts of thought that blazing flew,
And whose long echoes all the horizon knew?

I think that will do for once. Tell Charles, also, that

TO W. D. HO WELLS 179

copying the first passage brought back to my mem-
ory the inscription on a dial which I fished for vainly
the other night. It is Pereunt et imputantur. The
Horas non numero nisi serenas is epicurean, but this
other is gnomic, and therefore more suitable to a sun-
dial

By the way, don't translate pereunt (in the dial epi-
gram) by perish. Any fool might do that. It has the
literal meaning which we have lost. " They go by and
are charged to our account," as I ought to know if any-
body, for I have thrown away hours enough to have
made a handsome reputation out of. I am an ass, but
then I know it, and that kind (a rare species), though
pastured on east wind and thistles like the rest, do yet
wear their ears with a difference. . . .

TO W. D. HOWELLS

Elmwood, Aug. 9, 1876.

Dear Howells, — You are very kind to my verses, but
I can stand it, especially as what you say applies to a
much younger fellow than I, twenty years younger, in
fact, and who had not yet been tripped up by a pro-
fessor's gown. . . .

I have been trifling with foolish epigrams lately.
Here is one I made last night as I lay awake :

A DIALOGUE.

" Jones owns a silver mine." " Pray, who is Jones ?
Don't vex my ears with horrors like Jones owns!"
"Why, Jones is Senator, and so he strives
To make us buy his ingots all our lives

l8o LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

At a stiff premium on the market price :

A silver currency would be so nice I"

" What' s Jones's plan ?" " A coinage, to be sure,

To rise and fall with Wall Street's temperature.

You wish to treat the crowd : Your dollar shrinks

Undreamed percentums while they mix the drinks."

Jones' mine's quicksilver, then ?" " Your wit won't pass ;

" His coin's mercurial, but his mine is brass.

Jones owns " — " Again ! Your iteration's worse

Than the slow torture of an echo-verse.

I'll tell you one thing Jones won't own : that is,

That the cat hid beneath the meal is his."

You see I am getting old. The compliment I paid
you to-day is no sign of it, however. I had all your
books catalogued with my library to-day. " Howells,"
said I to the young man who is doing the work for me,
"is going to last. He knows how to write." If you
notice the poetry from the Harvard Advocate, pat him
on the back. His name is Woodberry, and his " Violet
Crown" is a far cry beyond anything else in the vol-
ume. I hope the country air is doing lots of good to
Mrs. Howells and the weans. As for you, you are al-
ready, like dear old Jemmy Thomson, more fat than
bard beseems, though God knows you don't dwell in
the Castle of Indolence. .

TO C. E. NORTON

Elmwood, Monday Night, Aug. 21, 1876.
... I received a deputation this evening to persuade
me to reconsider my refusal to stand for Congress. They
tell me I am the only candidate with whom the Repub-
licans can carry the district, that they have thoroughly

CHARLES SUMNER
I) o not let the Civil EigMs Inll fail ','

1876] TO MISS NORTON l8l

canvassed it and are sure that I should be elected with-
out the need of any effort, that no one else could get the
nomination against Claflin, but that I should have it by
acclamation. I confess that I was profoundly touched
by this testimony of my neighbors, but did not yield.
They strove to make me see it as my duty, but I can-
not. I will confess to you that I was never so surprised
in my life, for I had not looked on my candidacy as se-
rious. The members of this delegation were not even
known to me by sight — except one, whom I remem-
bered at our ward caucus. As Sumner said at our club,
"This is history, and you had better listen to it!" (He
was talking of himself.) I compare myself (facendo
questo gran rifiuto) to Caesar and Cromwell on a like
occasion. . . .

TO MISS NORTON

Elmwood, Oct. 2, 1876.

... I have been again urged to stand for Congress
(only yesterday), and again wisely declined. I beat Cae-
sar and Cromwell and the other historical examples, who
only put aside the offered crown thrice, and this is my
half-dozenth self-denial. The truth is, and I have frank-
ly told 'em so, that I should not make half so good a
member as they think. They think not, but I know it.

Term has begun, and I think I shall enjoy my classes.
I begin in a more cheerful mood than usual, though
rather in the dumps about politics, which have taken a
turn all through the canvass much to my distaste, and
now all this end of the State seems likely to be given
over, by bargain and sale, into the hands of the regular

l82 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

old set of corruptionists. Even in this district they
mean to force on us as candidate for Congress the man
who presided at a reception of Elaine the other night.

I preserve my equanimity, but am losing my temper

... I trust your native air will set you on your feet
again. There is nothing like it, I think, in spite of the
strong taint of Butlerism just now. But think how
many times the world has been ruined and got over it
so bravely. I am more alarmed at what they say of the
sun's cooling. It takes the very rowels from the spur of
noble minds. For what is a beggarly twenty million of
years ? I lose all interest in literature. Let us write for
immediate applause — and done with it. ...

TO MRS.

Elmwood, Oct. 9, 1876.

Dear Mrs. , — I haven't been forgetting you all

this while, but all kinds of preoccupations of one kind
and another (including politics) have not conduced to
the untrammelled mood of mind which is the main con-
dition of agreeable letter -writing. I am worried about
the turn the canvass has been taking, and while too full
of traditional and well-founded doubts of the Demo-
cratic party to be a willing helper in the success of its
candidates, an equal distrust of the present managers of
the Republican party hinders me from giving any cordial
support to that. Whichever way I look I see cause of
reasonable anxiety, and since, as you know, I do not
value even my own opinions till they are rooted in ex-
perience and have weathered the blasts of argument, I

I8?6J TO R. W. GILDER 183

am slow in making up my mind. About one thing I am
settled, and that is that the reviving of old animosities
for a temporary purpose (and that, too, a selfish one), the
doing evil that a problematical good may come of it, is
nothing short of wicked. The good hoped for is ques-
tionable and at best temporary, while the harm is of the
most far-reaching consequence. We are deliberately try-
ing to make an Ireland of the South, by perpetuating
misgovernment there. Scotland, instead of being as now
quite as loyal as any part of Britain, might easily have
been made what Ireland is by the same treatment. I
don't know whether the Mr. Lamar whose speech I have
read be the friend of whom I have heard you speak, but
if so, I congratulate you in having at least one friend
who is both an able man and a wise one, if indeed the
one quality do not necessarily imply the other.

I think I wrote to you about my change of quarters.
I am in the front room now, with a bright October sun
shining in on me as I write, and I dare say it was the
sense of cheerfulness that reminded me of you, for we
found you all sunshine while you were with us. When
the sun gives out (as you awful scientific people tell us
it will one of these days) I shall turn to you for a spare
pinch of warmth now and then — if the catastrophe take
place in my time. . . .

TO R. W. GILDER

Elmwood, Nov. 29, 1876.
... I have read the review of " Deirdre " * you were

* " Deirdre," a poem by the late Dr. R. D. Joyce.

184 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1876

good enough to send me, and think it kindly and dis-
criminating. I read the poem in manuscript, and recom-
mended it for publication on the ground of the freshness
and force which gave it a sincere originality, in spite of an
obvious external likeness to Morris. Of course I never
spoke of it as I hear I have been represented as speak-
ing. At my age one has no more extravagant opinions
— or keeps them for his own amusement.

Thank you for the kind things you say of my ode. I
value highly the sympathy of one who is qualified to
judge and who works in the same spirit in which I try
to work, though in a different line. . . .

TO LESLIE STEPHEN

Elmwood, Dec. 4, 1876.

... I have received your book* and hasten to thank
you for it — not, however, before reading it with the at-
tention it deserves. I thank you also for the Crabbe, for
which I must be indebted to somebody in good shillings
and pence, but no bill came with it. Will you kindly
find out for me what I owe and to whom ? Your book
interested me profoundly and instructed me as much as
it interested. . . . Yet I was conscious of you (and this
was very pleasant) all the while I read. Some of your
obiter dicta tickled me immensely by their wit and
keenness. How the deuce you read all those books
and escaped to tell us of 'em is a conundrum I shall
carry unsolved to my grave. I am very much in the
state of mind of the Bretons who revolted against the

* " English Thought in the Eighteenth Century."

1876] TO LESLIE STEPHEN 185

Revolutionary Government and wrote upon their ban-
ners, " Give us back our God !" I suppose I am an
intuitionalist, and there I mean to stick. I accept the
challenge of common-sense and claim to have another
faculty, as I should insist that a peony was red, though
twenty color-blind men denied it. Your book has for-
tified me, and one thing in it constantly touched me,
namely, that, whatever your belief, and whatever proof
you ask before believing, you show much tenderness
for whatever is high-minded and sincere, even where
you think it mistaken. About most things, I am happy
to think, we are agreed. . . .

I sat down to write this letter in entire peace of
mind, but had hardly begun it when in came a reporter
to " interview " me as one of the presidential electors
of Massachusetts, and at intervals since three others
have presented themselves. There was a rumor, it
seems, that I was going to vote for Tilden. But, in
my own judgment, I have no choice, and am bound in
honor to vote for Hayes, as the people who chose me
expected me to do. They did not choose me because
they had confidence in my judgment, but because they
thought they knew what that judgment would be. If
I had told them that I should vote for Tilden, they
would never have nominated me. It is a plain ques-
tion of trust. The provoking part of it is that I tried
to escape nomination all I could, and only did not de-
cline because I thought it would be making too much
fuss over a trifle. ,

VIII
1877-1880

VISIT TO BALTIMORE. — APPOINTED MINISTER TO SPAIN. — LIFE
IN MADRID. — JOURNEY IN SOUTHERN FRANCE. — VISIT TO
ATHENS AND CONSTANTINOPLE. — ILLNESS OF MRS. LOWELL.
TRANSFERRED TO LONDON.

LETTERS TO MRS. , J. B. THAYER, C. E. NORTON, F. J. CHILD,

MISS NORTON, MRS. E. BURNETT, MISS GRACE NORTON, THOMAS
HUGHES, H. W. LONGFELLOW, GEORGE PUTNAM, J. W. FIELD,
MRS. W. E. DARWIN, LESLIE STEPHEN, R. W. GILDER.

TO MRS.

Elmwood, Jan. 14, 1877.

Dear Mrs. , — This morning I poured some ink

for the first time into your pretty inkstand, and, as in
duty bound, hansel it by writing to you. It has been
standing on the shelf of my secretary, its mouth wide
open with astonishment at my ingratitude in not writ-
ing to thank you, ever since it came. It needn't have
been so jealous though, for I have written to nobody
else meanwhile, and it should remember that I can at
any moment shut it up tight, deny it ink, pen, and
paper, and thus cut it off from all its friends. " Mon-
ster!" I seem to hear it say, "you would not surely
deny me the sad consolation of sending my love to Mrs.
and telling her how homesick I am ? There are

*877] TO MRS. jg;

all kinds of fine things in me, as good as were ever in
any inkstand that ever lived, if you had but the wit to
fish them out. If I had stayed with my dear mistress
I should ere this have found a vent for my genius in a
score of pleasant ways, but with you I fear lest I go to
my grave an encrier incompris / " " Well, well, so long
as you don't make me uneasy with your reproaches, I
shall be sure to treat you kindly for the sake of your
old mistress, . . . who is always contriving pleasant ways
of making her friends grateful." . . .

I hope you maintain your tranquillity in this fer-
ment of politics. I do, for, as I made up my mind delib-
erately, so I do not change it to please the first man I
meet. As I consider the question of good government
and prosperity in the Southern States the most pressing
one, I voted for Mr. Hayes on the strength of his let-
ter. I think it would be better for North and South if
he were President. He would carry with him the bet-
ter elements of the Republican party, and whatever its
shortcomings (of which none is more bitterly conscious
than I), the moral force of the North and West is with
them and not with the Democrats. Above all, if Mr.
Hayes should show a wise sympathy with the real
wants and rights of the Southern whites (as I believe
he would), it would be felt at the South to be a proof
that the whole country was inclined to do them jus-
tice. From Mr. Tilden and the Democrats it would be
received as a matter of course. You see what I mean ?
Of course I am not one of those who would have Mr.
Hayes " counted in."

I shall have the pleasure of seeing you now in a few

l88 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1877

weeks. We have decided that, on the whole, it is best
that Mrs. Lowell should not come with me. We both
regret it, but it is wise. Wisdom always has a savor
of regret in it ever since Eve's time. We have been
having a noble winter. The old fellow has been show-
ing a little feebleness for a year or two, and we
thought he had abdicated. But now he has grasped
his icicle again and governs as well as reigns. The
world looks like a lamb in its white fleece, but some of
us know better.

Mrs. Lowell sends her love, and I wish you and yours
many happy returns of the New Year. Unhappily it is
generally the Old Year that comes back again. How-
ever, we all play it is the New, and that is something.

Good-by.

Affectionately yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO JAMES B. THAYER

Elmwood, Jan. 14, 1877.

Dear Sir, — I am heartily thankful to you for your
very encouraging note. I write verses now with as
much inward delight as ever, but print them with less
confidence. For poetry should be a continuous and
controlling mood, the mind should be steeped in poeti-
cal associations, and the diction nourished on the purest
store of the Attic bee, and from all these my necessary
professional studies are alien. I think the " Old Elm "
the best of the three,* mainly because it was composed

* Three Memorial Poems : " Ode read at the One Hundredth

1877] TO JAMES B. THAYER 189

after my college duties were over, though even in that
I was distracted by the intervention of the Commence-
ment dinner.

But what I wished to say a word to you about (since
you are so generous in your judgment) is the measures
I have chosen in these as well as the " Commemoration
Ode." I am induced to this by reading in an article on
Cowley copied into the Living Age from the Cornhill
(and a very good article too, in the main) the following
passage, "As lately as our own day" (my ear would
require " So lately as," by the way) " Mr. Lowell's ' Com-
memoration Ode' is a specimen of the formless poem
of unequal lines and broken stanzas supposed to be in
the manner of Pindar, but truly the descendant of our
royalist poet's ' majestick numbers.' " Now, whatever
my other shortcomings (and they are plenty, as none
knows better than I), want of reflection is not one of
them. The poems were all intended for public recita-
tion. That was the first thing to be considered. I sup-
pose my ear (from long and painful practice on <l>. B. K.
poems) has more technical experience in this than al-
most any. The least tedious measure is the rhymed
heroic, but this, too, palls unless relieved by passages of
wit or even mere fun. A long series of uniform stanzas
(I am always speaking of public recitation) with regu-
larly recurring rhymes produces somnolence among the
men and a desperate resort to their fans on the part

Anniversary of the Fight at Concord Bridge, April 19, 1775";
"Under the Old Elm," poem read at Cambridge on the hun-
dredth anniversary of Washington's taking command of the
American army, July 3, i?75 ; an "Ode for the Fourth of July,
1876."

190 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1877

of the women. No method has yet been invented by
which the train of thought or feeling can be shunted
off from the epical to the lyrical track. My ears have
been jolted often enough over the sleepers on such oc-
casions to know that. I know something (of course an
American can't know much) about Pindar. But his
odes had the advantage of being chanted. Now, my
problem was to contrive a measure which should not
be tedious by uniformity, which should vary with vary-
ing moods, in which the transitions (including those of
the voice) should be managed without jar. I at first
thought of mixed rhymed and blank verses of unequal
measures, like those in the choruses of " Samson Ago-
nistes," which are in the main masterly. Of course,
Milton deliberately departed from that stricter form of
the Greek Chorus to which it was bound quite as much
(I suspect) by the law of its musical accompaniment as
by any sense of symmetry. I wrote some stanzas of
the " Commemoration Ode" on this theory at first, leav-
ing some verses without a rhyme to match. But my
ear was better pleased when the rhyme, coming at a
longer interval, as a far-off echo rather than instant re-
verberation, produced the same effect almost, and yet
was grateful by unexpectedly recalling an association
and faint reminiscence of consonance. I think I have
succeeded pretty well, and if you try reading aloud I
believe you would agree with me. The sentiment of
the " Concord Ode " demanded a larger proportion of
lyrical movements, of course, than the others. Harmo-
ny, without sacrifice of melody, was what I had mainly
in view.

GRAY.

/> s/. (rebr. Schumann.

I8?7] TO JAMES B. THAYER 191

The Cornhill writer adds that " Keats, Shelley, and
Swinburne, on the other hand, have restored to the
ode its harmony and shapeliness." He and I have
different notions of harmony. He evidently means
uniformity of recurrence. It isn't true of Shelley, some
of whose odes certainly were written on the Cowley
model. All of Wordsworth's are, except the " Power
of Sound " and the " Immortality," which is irregular,
but whose cadences were learned of Gray. (Our critic,
by the way, calls the latter, whose name he spells with
an e, a " follower of Cowley." Gray's odes are regu-
lar.) Coleridge's are also Cowleian in form, I am pretty
sure. But all these were written for the closet — and
mine for recitation. I chose my measures with my
ears open. So I did in writing the poem on Rob
Shaw. That is regular because meant only to be
read, and because also I thought it should have in the
form of its stanza something of the formality of an
epitaph.

Pardon me all this. But I could not help wishing to
leave in friendly hands a protest against being thought
a lazy rhymer who wrote in numeris that seem, but are
not, lege solutis, because it was easier. It isn't easier, if
it be done well, that is, if it attain to a real and not a
merely visual harmony of verse. The mind should be -
rhymed to, as well as the ear and eye. Mere uniform-
ity gives the columns and wings and things of Her-
bert and Quarles. If I had had more time to mull over
my staves they would have been better.

Gratefully yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

192 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1877

TO C. E. NORTON

Baltimore,* Feb. 18, 1877.

... It happened that Judge Brown spoke of a letter
he had received recommending somebody for the Pro-
fessorship of Philosophy here. This gave Child a

chance to speak of (Judge Brown is one of the

trustees of the Johns Hopkins), which he did as excel-
lently well as he lectures on Chaucer and reads him,
and that is saying a great deal. You lost, by the way,
a very great pleasure in not hearing him read the Nonnes
Prestes tale. I certainly never heard anything better.
He wound into the meaning of it (as Dr. Johnson says
of Burke) like a serpent, or perhaps I should come
nearer to it if I said that he injected the veins of the
poem with his own sympathetic humor till it seemed
to live again. I could see his hearers take the fun be-
fore it came, their faces lighting with the reflection of
his. I never saw anything better done. I wish I could
inspire myself with his example, but I continue de-
jected and lumpish. . . .

Child goes on winning all ears and hearts. I am re-
joiced to have this chance of seeing so much of him,
for though I loved him before, I did not know how
lovable he was till this intimacy. . . .

TO MISS NORTON

" Bahltimer," Feb. 22, 1877.
. . . We have just come back from celebrating our

* This visit to Baltimore was for the purpose of giving a course
of lectures on Poetry at Johns Hopkins University.

I8?7] TO MISS NORTON 193

Johns Hopkins Commemoration, and I came home
bringing my sheaf with me in the shape of a lovely
bouquet (I mean nosegay) sent me by a dear old Quaker
lady who remembered that it was my birthday. We
had first a very excellent address by our President Gil-
man, then one by Professor Gildersleeve on Classical
Studies, and by Professor Silvester on the Study of
Mathematics, both of them very good and just enough
spiced with the personality of the speaker to be tak-
ing. Then I, by special request, read a part of my
Cambridge Elm poem, and actually drew tears from
the eyes of bitter secessionists — comparable with those
iron ones that rattled down Pluto's cheek. I didn't
quite like to read the invocation to Virginia here — I
was willing enough three or four hundred miles north
—but I think it did good. Teakle Wallace (Charles
will tell you who he is), a prisoner of Fort Warren, came
up to thank me with dry eyes (which he and others
assured me had been flooded), and Judge Brown with
the testifying drops still on his lids.

Silvester paid a charming compliment to Child, and
so did Gildersleeve. The former said that he (C.) had
invented a new pleasure for them in his reading of
Chaucer, and G., that you almost saw the dimple of
Chaucer's own smile as his reading felt out the humor
of the verse. The house responded cordially. If I
had much vanity I should be awfully cross, but I am
happy to say that I have enjoyed dear Child's four
weeks' triumph (of which he alone is unconscious) to
the last laurel-leaf. He is such a delightful creature.
I never saw so much of him before, and should be
II.— 13

194 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1877

glad I came here if it were for [nothing but] my nearer
knowledge and enjoyment of him.

We are overwhelmed with kindness here. I feel very
much as an elderly oyster might who was suddenly
whisked away into a polka by an electric eel. How
I shall ever do for a consistent hermit again Heaven
only knows. I eat five meals a day, as on board a
Cunarder on the mid-ocean, and on the whole bear it
pretty well, especially now that there are only four
lectures left. I shall see you I hope in a week from
to-morrow. Going away from home, I find, does not
tend to make us undervalue those we left behind. . . .
Your affectionate old friend,

J. R. L.

TO MRS. E. BURNETT

Elmwood, June 5, 1877.

... It must be kept close, but I have refused to go
either to Vienna or Berlin. Indeed I have no desire
to go abroad at all. But I had said that " I would have
gone to Spain," supposing that place to have been al-
ready filled. But on Saturday I saw Mr. Evarts (by
his request) at the Revere House, who told me that
the President was much disappointed by my refusal.
He (Mr. Evarts) thought it possible that an exchange
might be made, in which case I shall have to go. It
will be of some use to me in my studies, and I shall
not stay very long at any rate. But it is hard to leave
Elmwood while it is looking so lovely. The canker-
worms have burned up all my elms and apple-trees, to
be sure, but everything else is as fresh as Eden. I tried

18 77] TO MISS GRACE NORTON i g$

troughs and kerosene round the two elms near the
house and they are not wholly consumed, but are bad
enough. The crow blackbirds, after prospecting two
years, have settled in the pines and make the view
from the veranda all the livelier. It is a very birdy
year for some reason or other. I can't explain it, but
there is a great difference in the volatility (as Dr. Hos-
mer would have said) of the seasons. . . .

TO MISS GRACE NORTON

Elmwood, July i, 1877.

. . . We have been having a very busy week as you
know. The President's visit was really most success-
ful, so far as the impression made by him went. He
seemed to me simple and earnest, and I can't think
that a man who has had five horses killed under him
will be turned back by a little political discomfort. He
has a better head than the photographs give him, and
the expression of the eyes is more tender. I was on
my guard against the influence which great opportu-
nities almost always bring to bear on us in making us
insensibly transfer to the man a part of the greatness
that belongs to the place. . . . Mrs. Hayes also pleased
me very much. She has really beautiful eyes, full of
feeling and intelligence, and bore herself with a sim-
ple good-humor that was perfectly well-bred. A very
good American kind of princess, I thought. Don't
fancy I am taken off my feet by the enthusiasm of
contagion. You know I am only too fastidious, and
am too apt to be put at a disadvantage by the impar-

196 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1877

tiality of my eyes. No, I am sure that both the Presi-
dent and his wife have in them that excellent new
thing we call Americanism, which I suppose is that
" dignity of human nature " which the philosophers of
the last century were always seeking and never find-
ing, and which, after all, consists, perhaps, in not think-
ing yourself either better or worse than your neighbors
by reason of any artificial distinction. As I sat behind
them at the concert the other night, I was profoundly
touched by the feeling of this kingship without man-
tle and crown from the property-room of the old world.
Their dignity was in their very neighborliness, instead
of in their distance, as in Europe. . . .

You must remember that I am " H. E." now my-
self, and can show a letter with that superscription. I
haven't yet discovered in what my particular kind of
excellency consists, but when I do I will let you know.
It is rather amusing, by the way, to see a certain added
respect in the demeanor of my fellow-townsmen towards
me, as if I had drawn a prize in the lottery and was
somebody at last. Indeed, I don't believe I could per-
suade any except my old friends of the reluctance with
which I go. I dare say I shall enjoy it after I get there,
but at present it is altogether a bore to be honorabled
at every turn. The world is a droll affair. And yet,
between ourselves, dear Grace, I should be pleased if
my father could see me in capitals on the Triennial
Catalogue.* You remember Johnson's pathetic letter

* The triennial (now quinquennial) catalogue of the graduates
of Harvard College; now, since Harvard has grown to a Univer-
sity, deprived alike of the dignity of its traditional Latin and

l877] TO THOMAS HUGHES 197

to Chesterfield. How often I think of it as I grow
older! . . .

TO THOMAS HUGHES

Elmwood, July 2, 1877.

... I should have written to you at once, when I
finally made up my mind to go to Madrid, but that I
heard of the death of Mrs. Senior. Just after this I lost
one of my oldest and dearest friends in Jane Norton,
and then went Edmund Quincy, an intimate of more
than thirty years, at a moment's warning. I had always
reckoned on their both surviving me (though Quincy was
eleven years my elder), for they both came of long-lived
races. Of Mrs. Senior I have a most delightful remem-
brance when we rowed together on the Thames, and she
sang " Sally in our Alley " and " Wapping Old Stairs " in
a voice that gave more than Italian sweetness to English
words. I thought that her sympathy with the poor, and
her habit of speaking with them, had helped to give this
sweetness to her voice. If heaven were a place where it
was all singing, as our Puritan forebears seem to have
thought, the desire to hear that voice again would make
one more eager to get there. I was in a very gloomy
mood for a week or two, and didn't like to write. There
is no consolation in such cases, for not only the heart re-
fuses to be comforted, but the eyes also have a hunger
which can never be stilled in this world. . . .

of those capitals in which the sons of hers who had attained to
public official distinction such as that of Member of Congress,
or Governor of a State, or Judge of a U. S. Court, were elevated
above their fellow-students. To have one's name in capitals in
the catalogue was a reward worth achieving.

198 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1877

TO MISS GRACE NORTON

Grosvenor Hotel, Park Street,
London, July 29, 1877.

... I have just come in from Hyde Park, whither I
go to smoke my cigar after breakfast. The day is as
fine as they can make 'em in London: the sun shines
and the air is meadowy. I sat and watched the sheep
crawl through the filmy distance, unreal as in a pastoral
of the last century, as if they might have walked out of
a London eclogue of Gay. Fancy saw them watched by
beribboned shepherdesses and swains. Now and then a
scarlet coat would cross my eye like a stain of blood on
the innocent green. The trees lifted their cumulous out-
lines like clouds, and all around was the ceaseless hum
of wheels that never sleep. . . . This scene in the Park
is one of which I never tire. I like it better than any-
thing in London. If I look westward I am in the coun-
try. If I turn about, there is the never-ebbing stream
of coaches and walkers, the latter with more violent con-
trasts of costume and condition than are to be seen any-
where else, and with oddities of face and figure that
make Dickens seem no caricaturist. The landscape has
the quiet far-offness of Chaucer. The town is still the
town of Johnson's London. . . .

TO THE SAME

H6tel de Lorraine, 7 Rue de Beaune,
Paris, Aug. 8, 1877.

. . . Here we are in the same little hotel in which
you left us five years ago, and I never walk out but I

I877] TO MISS GRACE NORTON 199

meet with scenes and objects associated with you. It is
the same Paris, and more than ever strikes me as the
handsomest city in the world. I find nothing compara-
ble to the view up and down the river, or to the liveli-
ness of its streets. At night the river with its reflected
lights, its tiny bateaux mouches with their ferret eyes,
creeping stealthily along as if in search of prey, and the
dimly outlined masses of building that wall it in, gives
me endless pleasure. I am as fond as ever of the per-
petual torchlight procession of the avenue of the Champs
Elys/es in the evening, and the cafts chantants are more
like the Arabian Nights than ever. I am pleased, too,
as before with the amiable ways and caressing tones of
the French women — the little girl who waits on us at
breakfast treats us exactly as if we were two babies
of whom she had the charge — and with the universal
courtesy of the men. I am struck with the fondness of
the French for pets, and their kindness to them. Some
Frenchman (I forget who) has remarked this, and con-
trasted it with their savage cruelty towards their own
race. I think, nevertheless, that it indicates a real gen-
tleness of disposition. The little woman at the kiosque
where I buy my newspapers asked me at once (as does
everybody else) after John Holmes. (She had a tame
sparrow he used to bring cake to.) "Ah!" exclaimed
she, " qu'il ttait bon / Tout bon ! Ce riest que les bans
qui aiment les animaux ! Et ce monsieur, comment il
les aimait !" .

200 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1877

TO GEORGE PUTNAM

H6tel de Paris, Madrid,
Thursday, Aug. 16, 1877.

. . . We are obliged to go about somewhat in the heat
of the day house-hunting. We can't go in a cab like
ordinary mortals, but must have coachman and footman
in livery, with their coats folded over the coach-box in
a cascade of brass buttons. The first day it rather
amused me, but yesterday the whole thing revealed it-
self to me as a tremendous bore — but essential to the
situation. Tu Vas voulu, Georges Dandin! There are
moments when I feel that I have sold my soul to the
D — L I am writing post-haste now because this leath-
ern inconveniency will be at the door in half an hour,
and I must find work for it or — . . .

TO MRS. EDWARD BURNETT

Legacion de los Estados Unidos

de America en Espana. Aug. 24, 1877.

. . . We arrived here on Tuesday, the I4th, and on
Friday, the 1 7th, I started with Mr. Adee (the late
charge"-d'affaires here) for La Granja. This is a sum-
mer palace of the king, about fifty miles from Madrid,
among the mountains. You go about half the distance
(to Villalba) by rail, and there we found awaiting us the
private travelling-carriage of the prime minister, which
had been very courteously put at our disposal. Our
journey was by night and over the mountains, the great-
est height reached by the road being about that of Mt.
Washington. Eight mules with red plumes and other

1877] TO MRS. EDWARD BURNETT 2OI

gorgeous trappings formed our team. A guardia civil,
with three-cornered hat, white cross -belts, and rifle,
mounted the rumble, and with a cracking of whips
quite as noisy as a skirmish of revolvers in Virginia
City, and much shouting, away we pelted. After cross-
ing the pass and beginning to go down-hill the road was
very picturesque, through a great forest of heavy-nee-
dled pines whose boughs, lighted up by our lamps, were
like heavy heaps of smoke in a still air. We reached
La Granja at midnight, beating the diligence by more
than an hour. Our rooms at the only inn had been
engaged by telegraph, so we supped and to bed. The
next morning the second Introducer of Ambassadors
(the first was at the sea-shore) came to make arrange-
ments for my official reception and Mr. Adee's (late
Charge) audience of leave. The introducer was in a
great stew (for he had never tried his hand before), and
made us at least six visits, to repeat the same thing in
the course of the forenoon. At ten minutes before two
a couple of royal coaches arrived, the first for Mr. Adee
and the second (more gorgeous) for me. Mounted
guards, with three-cornered hats and jack-boots, looking
like the pictures of Dumas pore's mousquetaires, rode on
each side in files. The introducer, blazing with gold
and orders, sat on my right, and we started at a foot-
pace for the palace, about a hundred yards away. The
troops and band saluted as we passed, and alighting, we
were escorted through long suites of rooms to the royal
presence. There I found the king, with as many of the
court dignitaries as were at La Granja, in a long semi-
circle, his majesty in the middle. I made one bow at

202 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1877

the door, a second midway, and a third on facing the
king. I made my speech in English, he answered me in
Spanish, then came forward and exchanged a few com-
pliments with me in French, and all was over. Then
I was taken to another wing of the palace to pay my
respects to the Princess of the Asturias, the king's sis-
ter. Next morning (Sunday, igth) we breakfasted en
famille with Seftor Silvela, Minister of State. At two
the Duke of Montpensier (just arrived) held a reception
in my honor. All the diplomats at La Granja sat in a
circle. At the end of the room farthest from the door
sat the duke and duchess, with an empty chair between
them to which I was conducted. After five minutes of
infantile conversation the duke rose and the thing was
over. At five some of the grandes eaux in the garden
were played for Uncle Sam. It was a pretty and pict-
uresque sight. The princesses and their ladies walked in
front abreast, followed by the king, his household, and
foreign ministers. I was beckoned to the king's side, and
he talked with me all the way — even quoting one of my
own verses. He had been crammed, of course, before-
hand. The waters were very pretty, and the garden, set
as it is in a ring of mountains, far finer than Versailles.
At eight o'clock dinner at the palace, where I sat on
the left of the Princess of Asturias, the Duke of Mont-
pensier being on her right, and the king opposite. The
king, by the way, is smallish (he is not nineteen), but
has a great deal of presence, is very intelligent and good-
looking. So young a monarch in so difficult a position
interests me. The same night, at two o'clock, we started
for Madrid. ,

1877] TO H. W. LONGFELLOW

203

TO H. W. LONGFELLOW

Madrid, Nov. 17, 1877.

Dear Longfellow,— I have just had a visit from Sfir.
D. Manuel Tamayo y Baus, secretario perpetuo de la Real
Academia Espanola, who came to tell me that they had
just elected you a foreign member of their venerable
body. When your name was proposed, he says, there
was a contest as to who should second the nomination,
" porque tiene muchos apasionados aqui el Senor Long-
fellow" and at last the privilege was conceded to the
Excmo. Sfir. D. Juan Valera, whose literary eminence is
no doubt known to you. You may conceive how pleas-
ant it was to hear all this, and likewise your name pro-
nounced perfectly well by a Spaniard. Among all your
laurels this leaf will not make much of a show, but I am
sure you will value it for early association's sake, if for
nothing more. I told the Sfir. Secretary that one of your
latest poems had recorded your delightful memories of
Spain.

It made me feel nearer home to talk about you, and
I add that to the many debts of friendship I owe you.
I wish I could walk along your front walk and drop into
your study for a minute. However, I shall find you
there when I come back, for you looked younger than
ever when I bade you good-by. (I forgot to say that
your diploma will be sent to me in a few days, and that
I shall take care that you receive it in good time.)

I have had a good deal of Heimweh since I got here,
and a fierce attack of gout, first in one foot and then in
the other. I am all right again now, and the November

204 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1877

weather here (out of doors) is beyond any I ever saw.
It beats Italy. And such limpidity of sky! Within
doors it is chilly enough, and one needs a fire on the
shady side of the house.

I have made few save diplomatic and official acquaint-
ances thus far — very pleasant — but I miss my old friend-
ships. But I don't know how many times I have said to
myself, " Tu Fas voulu, Georges Dandin, tu Vas voulu /"

Keep me freshly remembered in your household, to
the whole of which I send my love. Eheu !

Good-by. God bless and keep you !

Your affectionate friend,

J. R. LOWELL.

TO GEORGE PUTNAM

Madrid, Dec. 23, 1877.

Dear Putnam, — . . . You talk jauntily of journeys to
Granada and the like ! You've no notion how much there
is to do here. My secretary, who was eight years in the
State Department, says it is the hardest-worked legation
of all. I am getting used to it, though I shall never like
it, I think, for I am too old to find the ceremonial parts
even amusing. They bore me. Then I had seven weeks
of gout before I had learned to take my work easily, and
I worried myself abominably over it. 'Tis a vile thing
to have a conscience ! But fancy a shy man, without
experience, suddenly plumped down among a lot of
utter strangers, unable to speak their language (though
knowing more of it than almost any of them), and with
a secretary wholly ignorant both of Spanish and French.
(An excellent fellow, by the way, whom I like very

1877] TO GEORGE PUTNAM 205

much, and whose knowledge of official routine has been
a great help.) And I was to get an indemnity out of
them! It was rather trying, and I feared seriously at
one time while I was shut up would affect my brain —
for what with gout and anxiety I sometimes got no
sleep for three days together. However, the gout let go
its hold of my right foot just long enough for me to
hobble with a cane and finish my indemnity job, and
then went over into my left and pulled me down again.

From the first, however, I insisted on transacting all
my business with the Secretary of State in Spanish, and
now I get along very well, going to an interview with
him quite at my ease. The offices of the legation are a
mile from my house, and I have been there every day
during office hours except when I was jugged with the
gout. I hope to see Granada in the spring.

Next month we shall have prodigious doings with the
king's wedding — such as could not be seen anywhere
else, I fancy, in these days — for they purposely keep up
or restore old fashions here, and have still a touch of the
East in them so far as a liking for pomp goes. I like
the Spaniards very well so far as I know them, and have
an instinctive sympathy with their want of aptitude for
business. My duties bring me into not the most agree-
able relation with them, for I am generally obliged to
play the dun, and sometimes for claims in whose justice
I have not the most entire confidence. Even with the
best will in the world, Spain finds it very hard to raise
money. Fancy how we should have felt if a lot of
South Carolinians during our Civil War could have got
themselves naturalized in Spain, and then (not without

206 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1878

suspicion of having given aid and comfort to the enemy)
should have brought in claims for damage to their es-
tates by the Union Army! I think they would have
had to wait awhile ! .

TO THE SAME

Madrid, Jan. 28, 1878.

. . . We are just getting done with the festivals in-
cident to the king's marriage, to the great relief of every-
body concerned. The display, in certain respects, has
been such as could be seen nowhere out of Spain, but
the fatigue and row have been almost unendurable. I
had just had two more of those dreadful attacks in the
stomach to which I have been liable for the last few
years, one on Tuesday, and a second still worse on Sat-
urday— so bad, indeed, that I really thought something
was going to happen that would drive the legation to
black wax. Ether was of no avail, but on Sunday my
feet began to swell and the stomach was relieved. I
was forced to keep my bed for ten days. I am now
all right again, except that I have to wear cloth shoes
and cannot do any walking. But I took such care that
I was able to show myself at the more important cere-
monies. I never saw a crowd before, and one night, on
my way to a reception at the prime minister's, I was
nearly mobbed (that is, my carriage was), and so were
several other foreign ministers. We were obliged to go
round by a back street — the mob being furious, and I
don't blame them.

The most interesting part of the ceremonies, on the

l8?8J TO MISS GRACE NORTON 2O;

whole, was the dances of peasants from the different
provinces of Spain before the king yesterday morning.
It took place in the plaza de armas before the palace,
and afterwards they were all brought up and ranged in
a row for our inspection. The costumes were marvel-
lous, and we could never have otherwise had such a
chance to see so many and so good. In the evening
the king dined the diplomatic body, and afterwards
held a grand reception. The uniforms (there are six
special embassies here with very long tails) and dia-
monds were very brilliant. But to me, I confess, it is
all vanity and vexation of spirit. I like America better
every day. . . .

TO MISS GRACE NORTON

Madrid, March 7, 1878.

... I don't care where the notion of immortality
came from. If it sprang out of a controlling necessity
of our nature, some instinct of self-protection and pres-
ervation, like the color of some of Darwin's butterflies,
at any rate it is there and as real as that, and I mean
to hold it fast. Suppose we don't know, how much do
we know after all? There are times when one doubts
his own identity, even his own material entity, even
the solidity of the very earth on which he walks. One
night, the last time I was ill, I lost all consciousness of
my flesh. I was dispersed through space in some in-
conceivable fashion, and mixed with the Milky Way.
It was with great labor that I gathered myself again
and brought myself within compatible limits, or so it

208 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1878

seemed; and yet the very fact that I had a confused
consciousness all the while of the Milky Way as some-
thing to be mingled with proved that I was there as
much an individual as ever. . . .

TO JOHN W. FIELD

7 Cuesta de Sto. Domingo,
March 14, 1878.

. . . Thanks, too, for the Republique Frangaise. The
article amused me. Devotion to money quotha ! The
next minute these Johnny Crapauds will turn round
and say, " Was there ever anything like us? See how
we paid the German indemnity, and all out of our old
stockings — the savings of years." The donkeys ! You
can raise more money for public purposes by subscrip-
tion in a Boston week than in a French twelvemonth.
That's not the weak point of democracy, whatever else
may be. And in Gambetta's paper, too ! What has been
the strength of his Jewish ancestors and what is the
strength of his Jewish cousins, I should like to know!
That they could always supply you or me with an ac-
commodation at heavy interest. Where would a Jew
be among a society of primitive men without pockets,
and therefore a fortiori without a hole in them ? . . .

TO GEORGE PUTNAM

Madrid, March 16, 1878.

. . . What I meant by my not blaming the crowd
that night was that the whole street from one end to
t'other was so crammed with people that a carriage
passing through really endangered life or limb. I in-

1878] TO H. W. LONGFELLOW 209

tended no communistic sentiment, but, though I am
one of those who go in chariots for the nonce, I con-
fess that my sympathies are very much with those who
don't. Communism seems to have migrated to your
side of the water just now. But I confess I feel no
great alarm ; for if history has taught us any other les-
son than that nobody ever profits by its teachings, it
is that property is always too much for communism in
the long run. Even despite the Silver Bill, I continue
to think pretty well of my country, God be praised ! . . .

TO H. W. LONGFELLOW

Madrid, March 16, 1878.

Dear Longfellow, — I meant to have sent the diploma
by Field, but as it was locked up in our safe at the Le-
gation (I don't live there), I forgot it. I sent it yester-
day to Paris by Mr. Dabney, our consul at the Canaries,
who will deliver it to Ernest, and he will soon find a
safe hand by whom to send it home. I am charmed
with your simple Old Cambridge notion of our despatch-
bags. God knows we have despatches enough to write,
but we have only one bag, which we use only when we
have reason to send a special courier to London, and
the last one we sent left it behind him, so that we are
bagless as Judas when he hanged himself (Old Play). I
couldn't send the diploma, accordingly, with our regular
despatches without folding it, which would have disfig-
ured it abominably ; and meanwhile you are as much an
academician as if you had it, though I hope still young
enough to wish to hold it in your own hand. By the
II.— 14

210 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1878

way, the Academicos de Ntimero are entitled to wear a
gorgeous decoration round the neck. If it had been
that I shouldn't wonder at your feeling a little anxious,
for if I hadn't stolen it I should have wondered, like
Clive, at my own moderation.

Thank you for the poem, which Mrs. Lowell and I en-
joyed together, and is so characteristic " that every line
doth almost read your name." I should have known it
everywhere, and liked it very much — all the more that it
convinced me you were as young as ever and with no
abatement of natural force.

The forsythia is already in bloom here, and the almond-
trees were three weeks ago. The leaves are peeping.
And yet to-day it is really cold again, and I suppose
there was a fall of snow on the Guadarramas last night,
for it was tumultuous with wind. It is a queer climate
— the loveliest I ever saw — and yet it sticks you from
behind corners, as we used to think Spaniards employed
all their time in doing. After all, Cambridge is best.

My love and best wishes on your latest birthday (I
was going to write " last," and superstitiously refrained
my pen). I won't read the milestone, but I am sure it
is on a road that leads to something better. Two coun-
trymen interrupt me, and I end with love from your

Affectionate

J. R. LOWELL.
TO F. J. CHILD

Madrid, Palm Sunday, April 14, 1878.
Dear Ciarli,*— -I have noticed that Class and Phi Beta

* " Ciarli " was the attempt of an old Italian beggar at Pro-
fessor Child's name.

I8?8J TO F. J. CHILD 211

poems almost always begin with an " as "—at any rate,
they used to in my time, before a certain Boylston pro-
fessor took 'em in hand. E. g.,

As the last splendors of expiring day

Round Stoughton's chimneys cast a lingering ray,

And sometimes there was a whole flight of as-es lead-
ing up to the landing of a final so, where one could take
breath and reflect on what he had gone through. Now
you will be sure that I didn't mean to begin my letter
thus, but it was put into my head by the earthquake
you have been making in Baltimore, the wave from
which rolled all the way across the ocean and splashed
audibly on these distant shores, and as all my associa-
tions are with dear Old Cambridge, why naturally I found
myself murmuring,

As, when the Earthquake stomps his angry foot,
A thousand leagues the frightened billows scoot,
So when my Ciarli, etc.

I was delighted to hear of it, though it was just what I
expected, for didn't my little bark attendant sail more
than a year ago ? It gave me a touch of homesickness
too, for I look back on that month as one of the pleas-
antest of my life, and here I am not as who should say
altogether and precisely happy. Yet I hope to get
something out of it that will tell by and by. The cere-
monial, of which there is plenty, of course is naught,
and I make acquaintance so slowly that I hardly know
anybody (except officially) even yet, but I have at last
got hold of an intelligent bookseller, and am beginning

212 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1878

to get a few books about me. . . . Gayangos has some
exquisite old books, by the way — a G6ngora, among
others, that would have tempted me to ruin had it been
for sale. It is a manuscript on vellum, made as a pres-
ent to the Conde-duque de Olivares when he was in the
flush of his privanza. Each poem is dated on the mar-
gin, and in the index the copyist marks certain ones as
falsely attributed to Gdngora, and says the poet told
him so himself. It is exquisitely done, like that little
Greek book in Mr. Sibley's show-case — Anacreon, isn't
it?

I have just succeeded in getting a copy of the series
printed for the Bibliofilms Espanolesy which is very hard
to come at, and cost me $105 in paper. It contains one
or two things worth having — but I bought mainly with
a view to the College Library one of these days. I
have also bought the photolithographie of Cuesta's edi-
tio princeps of "Don Quixote" for the sake of Hartzen-
busch's notes, which, by the way, show a singular dul-
ness of perception, and correct Cervantes in a way that
makes me swear. But they are worth having, as show-
ing the emendations that have been made or proposed,
the when and by whom. I have, too, the Burgos 1 593 Crd-
nica of the Cid, a very fair copy, and Damas-Hinard's
edition of the Poem. . . .

I fear what you say of my being thrown away here
may turn out true. There is a great deal to do, and of
a kind for which I cannot get up a very sincere interest
< — claims and customs duties, and even, God save the
mark ! Brandreth's pills. I try to do my duty, but feel
sorely the responsibility to people three thousand miles

1878] TO C. E. NORTON 213

away, who know not Joseph and probably think him un-
practical. . . .

. . . We have seen Seville, Cordova, Granada, and
Toledo, each excellent in itself and Toledo queer, even
after Italy and Sicily. But the shrinkage is frightful.
Toledo especially is full of ruin, and, what is worse, of
indifference to ruin. Yet there is something oriental
in my own nature which sympathizes with this " let her
slide " temper of the hidalgos. They go through all the
forms of business as they do of religion, without any
reference to the thing itself, just as they offer you their
house (dating their notes to you de SU casd) and every-
thing in it. But they are very friendly, and willing to
be helpful where they can. I love the jauds for a* that.
They are unenterprising and unchangeable. The latest
accounts of them are just like the earliest, and they have
a firm faith in Dr. Maftana — he will cure everything, or,
if he can't, it doesn't signify. In short, there is a flavor
of Old Cambridge about 'em, as O. C. used to be when
I was young and the world worth having. . . .

Good-by, dear old fellow.

Your affectionate

J. R. L.

TO C. E. NORTON

7 Cuesta de Sto. Domingo, 2°, izq*.

(second floor, left-hand door),

April 15, 1878.

... I write now because I am going away for two
months and haven't time to write at all. Whither we
shall go I hardly can tell. I have a furlough of sixty

214 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1878

days, and am going first into southern France to see
Toulouse and Carcassonne, which I never saw. Then I
think we shall go to Genoa and Pisa, staying some lit-
tle time, perhaps, in the vituperio delle genti. Then we
may go on to Naples, take the steamer there, and be
carried round to Athens. I am obliged to take my va-
cation now, to bring it within the year. My heart is as
heavy as dough, so does the thought of travel always
depress me. I don't know how I can come to grief —
but am sure I shall always.

I believe I have performed my functions here tolera-
bly well, except those of society, and even those I have
not wholly neglected. I have been out a great deal —
for me. The hours here are frightfully late. They go
to a reception after the opera, so that half-past n is
early. At a dance they are more punctual, and I have
even known them to begin at 10 — but they keep it up
till 2 or 3. They seem childishly fond of dancing. But
there is no such thing as conversation, nor any chance
for it. As for scholarship, there is, I should say, very
little of it, in the accurate German sense. I don't think
they value it any more than they do time, of which
they always have more on their hands than they know
what to do with, and therefore vastly less than they
want.

My own time has been very much broken up by my
not being well. I think I told you that I have had
three fits of gout since I came, and I worry over my
duties. . . .

But I am learning something, I hope. I get along
very well in Spanish now, and when I come back am

1878] TO C. E. NORTON 21$

going to fasten an abbt to my skirts, so as to be forced
into talking. I have tried in vain to find out for you
whether there are any letters of Velasquez or not.
What they call their archives have never been sorted.
They don't know what they have. And then Siman-
cas is ever so far away, and Government won't consent
to have their documents brought to Madrid— nor even
to Valladolid. There are local jealousies in the way —
stronger even than ours. But next winter, when I am
more familiar with things and men, I hope to do some-
thing. There are no scientific booksellers— not one—
and I can't even procure what has been actually print-
ed about Cervantes. I bought the other day the photo-
lithographic copy of the first edition of " Don Quixote,'*
for the sake, mainly, of Hartzenbusch's notes. But they
are mostly worthless — of value mainly as collation. He
doesn't understand his author in the least, whose de-
lightfully haphazard style is too much for him. I shall,
however, bring home some books you will like to see. I
buy mainly with a view to the College Library, whither
they will go when I am in Mount Auburn, with so much
undone that I might have done. I hope my grandsons
will have some of the method I have always lacked.

. . . My little world is getting smaller and smaller,
and I am not reconciled. Still, I long for the Charles
and the meadows, and walk between Elmwood and
Shady Hill constantly. I feel much older in body and
mind— I can't quite say why or how, but I feel it. I

cling to what is left all the more closely

Always your loving

J. R. L.

2l6 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1878

TO MRS. E. BURNETT

Aries, April 27, 1878.

. . . Mamma has told you that we were to go off on a
leave of absence, and we have now been on our travels
eleven days. Thus far we have enjoyed it very much.
Our itinerary has been : from Madrid to Tarbes, then
Toulouse, then Carcassonne, then Nismes, then Avi-
gnon, and then hither. We have thus had a pretty
good glimpse of the south of France, and very lovely
it is. At Toulouse and Carcassonne I had never been
before, and Toulouse, I confess, disappointed me,
though there was an interesting old church (St. Ser-
nin) and an old house worth seeing. But Carcassonne
is wonderful, a fortified place of the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries, as perfect as if it had been kept in a
museum. As you look across the river at it from the
new town (six hundred years old) it seems like an illu-
mination out of some old copy of Froissart. I posi-
tively thought I was dreaming after looking at it for
long enough to forget the modernness about me. Its
general aspect is of the dates I have given, but parts
are Roman, parts Visigothic, and parts Saracenic. The
past is ensconced there as in a virgin fortress, and will
hold out forever.

From Nismes we drove out about twelve miles to
the Pont du Gard. It rained all the way out ; but just
as we got there it cleared, and all the thickets (in every
one a nightingale) were rainbowed and diamonded by
the sun. The Pont is a Roman aqueduct, which crosses
the deep valley of a pretty river on three rows of arches,

1878] TO MRS. E. BURNETT 2 17

one above another. It is really noble, and these gigan-
tic bones of Rome always touch and impress me more
the farther away they are from the mother city. Then
we had some bread and sausages and wine in a little ar-
bor, served by a merry old man, who, when I told him
I had been there twenty-six years before, challenged me
to come back as many hence; "but," said he, touching
his white whiskers, and with a sly glance at mine, " les
blancs ne se refont jamais bruns" Jacques (our ser-
vant) resented this, as in duty bound, and insisted that
monsieur wasn't in the least white yet, at which the
heartless old boy only laughed, and I joined him in
order to put a good face on the matter. I compli-
mented him on his daughter, who was making a pretty
nosegay for mamma. "Ah" said he, "jelui legue les
bouteilles vides et les bouchons, mats avec de la sante et la
bonne volonte on arrive" So we parted, agreeing to
meet in 1904! Before we were half way home (if I
may call a hotel so) it began to rain again. So you see
what luck we had.

From Avignon we drove twenty miles to Vaucluse
(which I had not visited before), and found it worthy
of all Petrarca had said of it. The onde are as chiare
and fresche as ever, and the fountain one of the most
marvellous I ever saw. You follow a ravine deeply hol-
lowed in the soft rock for about half a mile, and there,
at the foot of a huge precipice, is the basin, which feeds
a considerable stream. A clear, calm pool. You see no
bubbling of springs from below, no fissure in the rock,
and perceive no motion in the water except where it es-
capes towards the valley. It is lined with factories now,

2l8 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1878

and French visitors have daubed the rocks with their
vulgar names in black paint in every direction. You
can't find a fragment to sit on without feeling discom-
forted by a guilty sense of complicity in hiding half a
dozen of these profanations from the angry glare of the
sun. We might have lunched at any one of three cafe's
— one of which invites you with the advertisement
painted on its front that here Petrarch wrote his I29th
sonnet ! It is the Cafe" de Petrarque et Laure. " Great
Caesar dead and turned to clay," etc. . . .

I don't care to say how soft my heart gets when I
think of you all at home. I fancy I am growing old. , . .

TO THE SAME

Athens, May 17, 1878.

. . . Here we are in Athens, and just come in from
a visit to the Acropolis, which has served to balance our
first impressions, which were rather depressing. For to
drive from the Piraeus through a dreary country, in a
cloud of dust, drawn by two wretched beasts that ought
to have been in their graves long ago, and unable to
stop the driver from lashing because we could speak no
tongue he could understand, and then to enter a shabby
little modern town, was by no means inspiriting. I was
for turning about and going straight back again, but am
getting wonted by degrees, and I dare say shall come
to like it after a while. I was stupid enough to be
amused last night at hearing the boys crying the news-
papers in Greek — as if they could do it in anything else
— and fancied I caught some cadences of the tragic cho-

l8?8] TO C. E. NORTON 219

rus in the bray of a donkey, the only " Attic warbler "
that I have heard " pour his throat."

. . . Our first sight of Greece was the shores of the
Morea, and anything more sterile and dreary I never
saw. I thought some parts of our New England coast
dreary enough, but this is even grimmer. We had for
fellow-passenger a pretty little land-bird, which found
the land inviting in spite of all, and flew away when he
thought we were near enough. I couldn't help thinking
how much better off he would be than we, having a com-
mand of the language wherever he lighted. The first
natives we saw were two gulls (an imperishable race),
probably much less degenerate from their ancestors than
the men who now inhabit the country.

The position of the Parthenon, by the way, is incom-
parable, and, as mamma said, the general sadness of the
landscape was in harmony with its ruin. It is the very
abomination of desolation, and yet there is nothing that
is not noble in its decay. The view seaward is magnifi-
cent. I suppose the bird of Pallas haunts the temple still
by nights, and hoots sadly for her lost mistress. There
was a strange sensation in looking at the blocks which
Pericles had probably watched as they were swung into
their places, and in walking over the marble floor his
sandals had touched. . . .

TO C. E. NORTON

Athens, May 21, 1878.

... On the day of my arrival I was profoundly de-
pressed, everything looked so mean — the unpaved and

220 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1878

unsidewalked streets, the Western coat and trousers,
and what costumes there were so filthy. And yet I was
in luck, for the town is full of Thessalian insurgents, so
that I see more that is characteristic than I had a right
to expect. They are dreadful ruffians to all appear-
ance, and reminded me of Macaulay's Highlanders. In
consequence of them I refused to go out to Marathon
with Jebb, who is here, and who, after all, went and
came safely. But for my official character I should
have gone. I could not afford the time to be seques-
tered (as we call it in Spain), and the Minister of State
thought it risky. The returning patriots are of a class
who are quite indifferent whether they learn the time
of day from a Moslem or Christian time-piece, and to
whom money from whatever pocket is orthodox.

In the afternoon of the day of my arrival I walked
up to the Acropolis, and tuned my nerves and mind to
a manlier key. It is noble in position and sublime even
in ruin. The impression was all I could wish — pro-
found beyond expectation and without artificial stimu-
lus. You know I prefer Gothic to Grecian architecture,
and yet (I cannot explain it) the Parthenon was more
effective in its place than a shattered cathedral would
have been. But imagination plays such tricks with us —

Madrid, Aug. 2, 1878.

I was in the middle of a reflection, my dear Charles,
when in came Santiago to tell me that the steamer for
Constantinople would leave the Piraeus in three hours.
It was my only chance, and I decided for going — Athens
only half seen. But then, you know, I have a theory

1878] TO C. E. NORTON

221

that peaches have only one good bite in 'em, and that a
second spoils that. I am glad we went. The view of
Constantinople as you draw nigh is incomparable, and
one sees at once what an imperial eye Constantine had.
Planted firmly in Europe, it holds Asia subject with its
eye. The climate is admirable — Eastern sun and West-
ern rains. The harbor ample for all the navies of the
world — the Bear, if he planted himself here, would get
wings and turn aquiline. We went as far as the Black
Sea in the track of the Argo and saw the Symplegades,
very harmless - looking rocks, like certain women when
their claws are sheathed. The captain of the French
steamer we came back to Marseilles in, who had been
in all seas, told me that in winter the Black Sea was
the worst of all. Our four days at Constantinople were
nothing more nor less than so many Arabian Nights. I
couldn't have believed that so much was left. Santa
Sofia is very noble, really noble, and one sees in it the
germ, if not the pattern, of all Oriental architecture —
Cordova, Granada, Seville, nay, Venice and St. Mark's.
This struck me very much.

The Turks are the most dignified-looking race I have
ever seen — a noble bearing even in defeat and even in
rags. Their exceeding sobriety of life no doubt helps
this — for all their faces look pure — and perhaps their
fatalism. Do you remember I prophesied (against God-
kin) that they would make a better fight than was ex-
pected? I think they did, and that with competent
leaders they would have beaten the Muscovite, who,
after all, to my thinking, is a giant very weak in the
knees.

222 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [1878

I saw Layard, by the way, just as he was concluding
the Cyprus business, as I found out afterwards. I
thought he seemed in tempestuous spirits, and no won-
der ! I am inclined to like the Asia Minor arrange-
ment (because I wish digging to be done there !), and
I think England strong enough for the job. I think
if Beaconsfield weren't a Jew, people would think him
rather fine. But they can't get over an hereditary itch
to pull some of his grinders.

My Eastern peep has been of service in enabling me
to see how oriental Spain still is in many ways. With-
out the comparison, I couldn't be sure of it. ... I am
beginning to feel competent to make some observations
on the Spaniards, but shall keep them till they are
riper. These things have to stand in solution a long
while till the introduction of some new element, we
scarce know when or how, precipitates out of mere
vagueness into distinct and hard crystals which can be
scientifically studied and assigned. I fancy it is other-
wise with history, which is not so much " philosophy
teaching by example" as clarified experience. It only
has to stand on the lees long enough. One apothegm
I have already engraved in brass : " The Spaniard offers
you his house, but never a meal in it." I like them and
find much that is only too congenial in their genius for
to-morrow. I am working now at Spanish as I used to
work at Old French — that is, all the time and with all
my might. I mean to know it better than they do
themselves — which isn't saying much. . . .

•

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