The Vision of Sir Launfal | Page 5

Ezekiel
Biglow of Jaalam to the editor, Hon. Joseph T. Buckingham, inclosing
a poem of his son, Mr. Hosea Biglow. It was no new thing to seek to
arrest the public attention with the vernacular applied to public affairs.
Major Jack Downing and Sam Slick had been notable examples, and

they had many imitators; but the reader who laughed over the racy
narrative of the unlettered Ezekiel, and then took up Hosea's poem and
caught the gust of Yankee wrath and humor blown fresh in his face,
knew that he was in at the appearance of something new in American
literature. The force which Lowell displayed in these satires made his
book at once a powerful ally of an anti-slavery sentiment, which
heretofore had been ridiculed.
IV.
VERSE AND PROSE.
A year in Europe, 1851-1852, with his wife, whose health was then
precarious, stimulated his scholarly interests, and gave substance to his
study of Dante and Italian literature. In October, 1853, his wife died;
she had borne him three children: the first-born, Blanche, died in
infancy; the second, Walter, also died young; the third, a daughter, Mrs.
Burnett, survived her parents. In 1855 he was chosen successor to
Longfellow as Smith Professor of the French and Spanish Languages
and Literature, and Professor of Belles Lettres in Harvard College. He
spent two years in Europe in further preparation for the duties of his
office, and in 1857 was again established in Cambridge, and installed
in his academic chair. He married, also, at this time Miss Frances
Dunlap, of Portland, Maine.
Lowell was now in his thirty-ninth year. As a scholar, in his
professional work, he had acquired a versatile knowledge of the
Romance languages, and was an adept in old French and Provençal
poetry; he had given a course of twelve lectures on English poetry
before the Lowell Institute in Boston, which had made a strong
impression on the community, and his work on the series of _British
Poets_ in connection with Professor Child, especially his biographical
sketch of Keats, had been recognized as of a high order. In poetry he
had published the volumes already mentioned. In general literature he
had printed in magazines the papers which he afterward collected into
his volume, Fireside Travels. Not long after he entered on his college
duties, The Atlantic Monthly was started, and the editorship given to
him. He held the office for a year or two only; but he continued to write

for the magazine, and in 1862 he was associated with Mr. Charles Eliot
Norton in the conduct of _The North American Review_, and
continued in this charge for ten years. Much of his prose was
contributed to this periodical. Any one reading the titles of the papers
which comprise the volumes of his prose writings will readily see how
much literature, and especially poetic literature, occupied his attention.
Shakespeare, Dryden, Lessing, Rousseau, Dante, Spenser, Wordsworth,
Milton, Keats, Carlyle, Percival, Thoreau, Swinburne, Chaucer,
Emerson, Pope, Gray,--these are the principal subjects of his prose, and
the range of topics indicates the catholicity of his taste.
In these papers, when studying poetry, he was very alive to the
personality of the poets, and it was the strong interest in humanity
which led Lowell, when he was most diligent in the pursuit of literature,
to apply himself also to history and politics. Several of his essays bear
witness to this, such as _Witchcraft, New England Two Centuries Ago,
A Great Public Character_ (Josiah Quincy), _Abraham Lincoln_, and
his great Political Essays. But the most remarkable of his writings of
this order was the second series of _The Biglow Papers_, published
during the war for the Union. In these, with the wit and fun of the
earlier series, there was mingled a deeper strain of feeling and a larger
tone of patriotism. The limitations of his style in these satires forbade
the fullest expression of his thought and emotion; but afterward in a
succession of poems, occasioned by the honors paid to student soldiers
in Cambridge, the death of Agassiz, and the celebration of national
anniversaries during the years 1875 and 1876, he sang in loftier, more
ardent strains. The most famous of these poems was his noble
Commemoration Ode.
V.
PUBLIC LIFE.
It was at the close of this period, when he had done incalculable service
to the Republic, that Lowell was called on to represent the country, first
in Madrid, where he was sent in 1877, and then in London, to which he
was transferred in 1880. Eight years were thus spent by him in the
foreign service of the country. He had a good knowledge of the Spanish

language and literature when he went to Spain; but he at once took
pains to make his knowledge fuller and his accent more perfect, so that
he