The Vision of Sir Launfal | Page 4

amongst scenes dear to every lover of American letters.
III.
FIRST VENTURE.

After his graduation he set about the study of law, and for a short time
even was a clerk in a counting-room; but his bent was strongly toward
literature. There was at that time no magazine of commanding
importance in America, and young men were given to starting
magazines with enthusiasm and very little other capital. Such a one was
the Boston Miscellany, launched by Nathan Hale, Lowell's college
friend, and for this Lowell wrote gaily. It lived a year, and shortly after
Lowell himself, with Robert Carter, essayed The Pioneer in 1843. It
lived just three months; but in that time printed contributions by Lowell,
Hawthorne, Whittier, Story, Poe, and Dr. Parsons,--a group which it
would be hard to match in any of the little magazines that hop across
the world's path to-day. Lowell had already collected, in 1841, the
poems which he had written and sometimes contributed to periodicals
into a volume entitled A Year's Life; but he retained very little of the
contents in later editions of his poems. The book has a special interest,
however, from its dedication in veiled phrase to Maria White. He
became engaged to this lady in the fall of 1840, and the next twelve
years of his life were profoundly affected by her influence. Herself a
poet of delicate power, she brought into his life an intelligent sympathy
with his work; it was, however, her strong moral enthusiasm, her lofty
conception of purity and justice, which kindled his spirit and gave force
and direction to a character which was ready to respond, and yet might
otherwise have delayed active expression. They were not married until
1844; but they were not far apart in their homes, and during these years
Lowell was making those early ventures in literature, and first raids
upon political and moral evil, which foretold the direction of his later
work, and gave some hint of its abundance.
About the time of his marriage, he published two books which, by their
character, show pretty well the divided interest of his life. His bent
from the beginning was more decidedly literary than that of any
contemporary American poet. That is to say, the history and art of
literature divided his interest with the production of literature, and he
carried the unusual gift of a rare critical power, joined to hearty
spontaneous creation. It may indeed be guessed that the keenness of
judgment and incisiveness of wit which characterize his examination of
literature sometimes interfered with his poetic power, and made him

liable to question his art when he would rather have expressed it
unchecked. One of the two books was a volume of poems; the other
was a prose work, Conversations on Some of the Old Poets. He did not
keep this book alive; but it is interesting as marking the enthusiasm of a
young scholar treading a way then almost wholly neglected in America,
and intimating a line of thought and study in which he afterward made
most noteworthy venture. Another series of poems followed in 1848,
and in the same year The Vision of Sir Launfal. Perhaps it was in
reaction from the marked sentiment of his poetry that he issued now a
jeu d'esprit, A Fable for Critics, in which he hit off, with a rough and
ready wit, the characteristics of the writers of the day, not forgetting
himself in these lines:
There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb
With a whole bale
of isms tied together with rhyme;
He might get on alone, spite of
brambles and boulders,
But he can't with that bundle he has on his
shoulders;
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching
Till
he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching; His lyre has some
chords that would ring pretty well,
But he'd rather by half make a
drum of the shell,
And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem,
At
the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem.
This, of course, is but a half serious portrait of himself, and it touches
but a single feature; others can say better that Lowell's ardent nature
showed itself in the series of satirical poems which made him famous,
The Biglow Papers, written in a spirit of indignation and fine scorn,
when the Mexican War was causing many Americans to blush with
shame at the use of the country by a class for its own ignoble ends.
Lowell and his wife, who brought a fervid anti-slavery temper as part
of her marriage portion, were both contributors to the Liberty Bell; and
Lowell was a frequent contributor to the Anti-Slavery Standard, and
was, indeed, for a while a corresponding editor. In June, 1846, there
appeared one day in the Boston Courier a letter from Mr.