says Emerson, but his chronicle was of the next year when the club was fully organized, and Stillman, Emerson, Lowell, Jeffries Wyman, E. R. Hoar, Dr. Howe, Binney, Woodman, Agassiz, and John Holmes, went into the wilderness. In 1857, the tentative exploring party; led by Stillman, consisted of John Holmes, Dr. Estes Howe, Lowell, and his two nephews, Charles and James Lowell, forever immortalized in the passionate verse of the second “Biglow Papers.” Lowell, who had known the near charms of nature in the Waverley Oaks and Beaver Brook, and had tasted the wild wood in his Maine excursion, entered with frolic delight into this forest picnic. The conditions were such as to bring out the best that was in him, for he had the freedom of the woods and the satisfaction of congenial society. “He was the soul,” says Stillman, “of the merriment of the company, fullest of witticisms, keenest in appreciation of the liberty of the occasion and the genius loci.... Not even Emerson, with all his indifference to the mere form of things, took to unimproved and uncivilized nature as Lowell did, and his free delight in the Wilderness was a thing to remember.” To these companions, quick to appreciate and respond, Lowell, light-hearted with the new promise of happiness and set free in his mind by the large privacy of the woods, brought the treasures of his fancy, his wit, his imagination. He revelled especially in recounting those visionary experiences which seemed all the more real under the starry skies and in the companionship of trees and silent forest creatures. Yet with it all, his inquisitive, searching mind, quickened too by the presence of scientific and philosophic comrades, was forever probing these phenomena to discover what was their ultimate rationale.

There can be little doubt that at this period of his life Lowell was poised for flight, as it were, having reached a stage when all the conditions were most favorable for the full expression of his powers. It is true that his academic work, as I have said, did in a measure supplant a freer poetic movement. But it may not unfairly be affirmed that Lowell’s attitude toward poetry was always that of expectation of some greater gift to come. His poems “Fancy’s Casuistry,” “In the Twilight,” “To the Muse,” all written about this time, record with iteration his restless pursuit of the elusive dream. His academic work afforded indeed a daily outlet, but it could not satisfy the demand for expression. Best of all, there was a pleasure-house in which he dwelt with his wife and daughter, perfectly fitted to the contentment of his spirit, and to furnishing that ease of mind which gives health of nature. Stillman has in another passage drawn a picture which may well be given here in evidence.

“Lowell was indeed very happy in his married life, and amongst the pictures Memory will keep on her tablet for me, till Death passes his sponge over it once for all, is one of his wife lying in a long chair under the trees at Dr. Howe’s, when the sun was getting cool, and laughing with her low, musical laugh at a contest in punning between Lowell and myself, haud passibus æquis, but in which he found enough to provoke his wit to activity; her almost Oriental eyes twinkling with fun, half-closed and flashing from one to the other of us; her low, sweet forehead, wide between the temples; mouth wreathing with humor; and the whole frame, lithe and fragile, laughing with her eyes at his extravagant and rollicking word-play. One would hardly have said that she was a beautiful woman, but fascinating she was in the happiest sense of the word, with all the fascination of pure and perfect womanhood and perfect happiness.”

CHAPTER IX

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

1857-1861

Lowell had not been a year in his professor’s chair when he was invited to take another position more closely identified with literature and having its own cares and drudgery. Under the present conditions of magazine editorship and of college professorship as well, the union of the two offices would be quite out of the question.[113] But the condition in 1857 was different, and to install a professor in Harvard College as editor of a new magazine was both natural and in a measure traditional. I have already called attention to the effort made in 1853 to establish a literary magazine, and to Lowell’s interest in the venture. The person most concerned in that effort did not lose sight of his project, and now pushed the matter through to a fortunate conclusion.

Mr. Francis Henry Underwood was in 1857 the literary adviser and reader for the firm of Phillips & Sampson in Boston, and he was an ardent admirer of Lowell. He was a strong advocate of anti-slavery doctrines, and in his first proposals for a magazine in 1853 was working in conjunction with the firm of John P. Jewett & Co., that had just sprung into notice as publishers of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The firm with which he was now connected was active chiefly in the publication of cheap editions of standard works in literature. It had a large Southern constituency, and when “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was offered to it in the form of a scrap-book of clippings from The National Era, commercial prudence dictated a polite refusal. When, however, Mrs. Stowe’s name had become one of great value, it was easy for Phillips, Sampson & Co. to publish, as they did, her “Sunny Memories” in 1854 and “Dred” in 1856.

Mr. Moses Dresser Phillips had been brought up in the book trade and knew it first as a bookseller. He was a man who had large business energy and laid his plans for wide connections and not merely a local trade. Mr. Charles Sampson, with whom he had formed his partnership, had died about five years before, and his only partner at this time was Mr. William Lee, well known for many years as the senior partner in the publishing house of Lee & Shepard. He was nearer Mr. Underwood’s age and it was chiefly with him that Mr. Underwood talked over his cherished plan. It was through him, indeed, that Mr. Underwood expected to gain over Mr. Phillips, who had the practical man’s distrust of new enterprises suggested by authors, and a temperament which was calculated to chill enthusiasm. Mr. Underwood had already won consent to engage in the work from Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, and others, and he represented strongly to Mr. Lee the possibilities of a magazine which should have at once a staff of writers of a character so eminent. I suspect he kept in the background any purpose he might have of making the magazine play a part in politics. Mr. Lee in turn at his daily lunch with Mr. Phillips kept that gentleman in mind of the project, though he was himself neither an advocate nor an opponent. He simply used Mr. Underwood’s arguments, the most effective of which may have been the prospect held up before Mr. Phillips of the association he should thus form with a distinguished group.

Mr. Phillips having been won over, the plans for the new magazine were rapidly pushed forward. In all this Mr. Underwood was the active manager, but Mr. Phillips as the head of the business now took the leading place. At an early date, Tuesday, 5 May, 1857, he called together the men on whom he most relied to give the enterprise distinction, and gave them a dinner at the Parker House. Fortunately an account of this meeting is in his own words in a letter to a niece:—

“I must tell you about a little dinner party I gave about two weeks ago. It would be proper, perhaps, to state that the origin of it was a desire to confer with my literary friends on a somewhat extensive literary project, the particulars of which I shall reserve until you come. But to the party: my invitations included only R. W. Emerson,[114] H. W. Longfellow, J. R. Lowell, Mr. Motley (the ‘Dutch Republic’ man), O. W. Holmes, Mr. Cabot,[115] and Mr. Underwood, our literary man. Imagine your uncle as the head of such a table, with such guests. The above named were the only ones invited, and they were all present. We sat down at three P.M., and rose at eight. The time occupied was longer by about four hours and thirty minutes than I am in the habit of consuming in that kind of occupation, but it was the richest time intellectually by all odds that I have ever had. Leaving myself and ‘literary man’ out of the group, I think you will agree with me that it would be difficult to duplicate that number of such conceded scholarship in the whole country beside.

“Mr. Emerson took the first post of honor at my right, and Mr. Longfellow the second at my left. The exact arrangement of the table was as follows:—

“They seemed so well pleased that they adjourned, and invited me to meet them again to-morrow (the 20th), when I shall again meet the same persons, with one other (Whipple, the essayist) added to that brilliant constellation of philosophical, poetic, and historical talent. Each one is known alike on both sides of the Atlantic, and is read beyond the limits of the English language. Though all this is known to you, you will pardon me for intruding it upon you. But still I have the vanity to believe that you will think them the most natural thoughts in the world to me. Though I say it that should not, it was the proudest day of my life.”[116]

There was another writer not at the dinner whose coöperation it was important to secure. Mrs. Stowe returned in June to America from England, whither she had gone to secure copyright for “Dred,” and Mr. Phillips at once laid his plan before her. She approved it most heartily and promised to give it her cordial support. It is not impossible that she made a definite promise of a serial novel to begin with the first number, but the sudden death a month later of her son Henry brought such a mental strain upon her that it was nearly a year before she could undertake any continued writing. The first number of the Atlantic Monthly contained a brief allegory by her, “The Minister’s Mourning Veil,” and she contributed later an essay, but “The Minister’s Wooing” was not begun in the magazine till December, 1858.

As a result of these preliminary plans, Mr. Underwood was dispatched in June to England to secure the aid of English authors, and Mr. Lowell was asked to take the position of editor. Lowell had already taken an active part in creating an interest in the venture among writers. Underwood had turned to him as his most important ally, and Longfellow records in his diary, 29 April, 1857: “Lowell was here last evening to interest me in a new Magazine to be started in Boston by Phillips and Sampson. I told him I would write for it if I wrote for any Magazine.” Dr. Holmes christened the magazine, and Lowell, from the first, reckoned upon him for contributions. In 1885, when Dr. Holmes was resuming his regular prose contributions after a long intermission, he wrote in the introductory paper:[117] “He (Mr. Lowell) thought there might be something in my old portfolio which would be not unacceptable in the new magazine. I ... wondered somewhat when Mr. Lowell urged me with such earnestness to become a contributor, and so, yielding to a pressure which I could not understand, and yet found myself unable to resist, I promised to take a part in the new venture, as an occasional writer in the columns of the magazine.” Lowell, reading this number of the Atlantic in London, wrote to Dr. Holmes: “The first number of your New Portfolio whets my appetite. Let me make one historical correction. When I accepted the editorship of the Atlantic, I made it a condition precedent that you were the first contributor to be engaged. Said I not well?”[118]

Emerson apparently had asked if the contributions were to be signed, for Lowell wrote him, 14 September, 1857: “All the articles will be anonymous, but you will be quite helpless, for your name is written in all kinds of self-betraying anagrams over yours. But as far as we are concerned there shall be as strict honor as the XIXth century allows of. Your wishes shall govern the position of the article [‘Illusions,’ in the first number], though I should have preferred to give it the precedence. I am afraid that where that is will be the head of the table, whether or no.”

In the same first number appeared four of Emerson’s poems, printed in a group: “The Romany Girl,” “The Chartist’s Complaint,” “Days,” and “Brahma.” Emerson seems to have raised some question about this, for in the same letter Lowell writes: “About the poems I ought to say that when I spoke of printing all four I was perhaps greedy, and Mr. Underwood says we can’t afford it, reckoning each as a separate poem—which means giving $50 apiece for them. Forgive me for coming down into the kitchen thus, but as I got the magazine into the scrape I must get it out. My notion was that all the poems would be published at once in a volume, and that therefore it would be alike to you. I ought to have thought that you sent them for selection,—and I will never be so rapacious again till I have another so good chance. If I am to have only one, give me ‘Days.’ That is as limpid and complete as a Greek epigram. I quarrel, though, with one word ‘hypocritic,’ which I doubt does not give the very shade of meaning you intended. I think you did wish to imply intentional taking-in? I will take the liberty to draw your notice to one or two things in the proofs (of the poems), leaving them to your own judgment entirely.... It is not often that a magazine carries such freight as your ‘Illusions.’... How about Mr. Thoreau?”

It was not “Days” so much as “Brahma” that seized upon the imagination. Mr. Trowbridge, in his article on “The Author of Quabbin,” says it was “more talked about and puzzled over and parodied than any other poem of sixteen lines published within my recollection. ‘What does it mean?’ was the question readers everywhere asked; and if one had the reputation of seeing a little way into the Concord philosophy, he was liable at any time to be stopped on the street by some perplexed inquirer, who would draw him into the nearest doorway, produce a crumpled newspaper clipping from the recesses of a waistcoat pocket, and, with knitted brows, exclaim, ‘Here! you think you understand Emerson; now tell me what all this is about,—If the red slayer think he slays,’ and so forth.”

The magazine appeared about the first of November, and on the 19th Lowell wrote to Emerson: “You have seen, no doubt, how the Philistines have been parodying your ‘Brahma,’ and showing how they still believe in their special god Baal, and are unable to arrive at a conception of an omnipresent Deity. I have not yet met with a single clever one or I would have sent it to you for your amusement. Meanwhile, they are advertising the Atlantic in the very best way, and Mr. Underwood tells me that the orders for the second number are doubling on those for the first. I think you will find the second an improvement.... Your poem [“Two Rivers”] is to go into No. 3, simply as a matter of housewifery, because we had already three articles at $50. I think I told you which I chose—‘Musketaquit.’ The ‘Solitude and Society’ [published in No. 2] has only one fault, that it is not longer, but had it been only a page, there would have been enough in it. Did you use the word daysman[119] deliberately? It has a technical meaning, and I suppose you used it in that sense. Mr. Nichols (the vermilion pencil) was outraged, and appealed to me. I answered that you had a right to use any word you liked till we found some one who wrote better English to correct you. Or did you mean the word to be merely the English of journeyman?

“I hope you will be able to give us something more for No. 3 before you go off to lecture. The number promises well thus far, but I wish to make it a decided advance. You have no notion how hard bestead we are. Out of 297 manuscripts only at most six accepted. I begin to believe in the total depravity of contributions.

“Let me thank you in especial for one line in ‘Brahma,’ which abides with me as an intimate—

You have crammed meaning there with an hydraulic press. Will not Thoreau give us something from Moosehead?”

Fourteen years earlier Lowell had welcomed Whittier as a contributor to the Pioneer, and now he renewed the old relation. He printed “Tritemius” in the first number and “Skipper Ireson’s Ride” in the second. Indeed, the Atlantic came into existence most fortunately for Whittier, whose fortunes it helped distinctly, as it gave him a medium for the publication of his purely literary poems, and thus not only filled his pocket but helped materially to place him before the public in another guise than that of an ardent reformer. Lowell’s letter upon receipt of “Skipper Ireson’s Ride” is interesting both for its cordiality and for the contrast in tone to his manner of addressing Emerson. It may not unfairly be said that Emerson was the only one of his contemporaries whom Lowell addressed as if he were profoundly conscious of his relation to him as a pupil to his master. Lowell’s letter to Whittier is dated 4 November, 1857.[120]

“I thank you heartily for the ballad, which will go into the next number. I like it all the better for its provincialism,—in all fine pears, you know, we can taste the old puckers. I know the story well. I am familiar with Marblehead and its dialect, and as the burthen is intentionally provincial I have taken the liberty to print it in such a way as shall give the peculiar accent, thus:—

That’s the way I’ve always ‘horrd it,’—only it began ‘Old Flud Ireson.’ What a good name Ireson (son of wrath) is for the hero of such a history!

“You see that ‘Tritemius’ is going the rounds! I meant to have sent you the proofs, and to have asked you to make a change in it where these four rhymes come together (assonances I mean),—‘door,’ ‘poor,’ ‘store,’ ‘more.’ It annoyed me, but I do not find that any one else has been troubled by it, and everybody likes the poem. I am glad that the Philistines have chosen some verses of mine[121] for their target, not being able to comprehend the bearing of then. I mean I am glad that they did it rather than pick out those of any one else for their scapegoat. I shall not let you rest till I have got a New England pastoral out of you. This last is cater-cousin to it, at least, being a piscatorial.

“Will you be good enough to let me know how much Mr. Underwood shall send you? He will remit at once.

“The sale of Maga has been very good considering the times, and I think you will find the second number better than the first. If you do not wish the burthen so spelt, will you write me?”

The year 1857 was one of great financial distress, and the magazine felt something of this influence even before it was published, for it was intended to bring it out earlier than its first number actually appeared. It was in May that the preliminary arrangements were made and Lowell secured as editor. As late, however, as the end of that month, he was writing to a foreign correspondent that the editorship was a dead secret. But as we have seen he had interested himself in the venture from the outset. From time to time after his attempt with the Pioneer he had revolved in his mind plans for magazines. It is safe to say that few prominent writers in America, Longfellow and Cooper being the chief exceptions, failed to dream of launching some vessel of this sort that should be freighted with the best of literature, and the initiative in almost all the cases of important magazines has been taken by the author rather than by the publisher. We have perhaps come to the close of the period when a new monthly magazine seems essential for the carrying of American thought and letters, and enterprise of this sort is more likely to seek an outlet in weekly journalism; but the men of letters who were at the front in the middle of the century not only had strong intellectual sympathy with the brilliant Blackwood of that day,—Lowell in his correspondence repeatedly uses the familiar form Maga when referring to the Atlantic,—and had been brought up on Tait, The London Journal, Fraser, and other vehicles of contemporaneous English and Scottish letters, but they demanded some direct, open means of reaching readers, for they had a great deal to say, which was ill-adapted to daily journalism and for which they could not wait till it should cool for book publication.

The conditions were favorable also from the point of view of the publisher, and Phillips & Sampson were in a good position to know this. They were aware that the leading writers were in their neighborhood. Washington Irving was an old man, and Mr. Bryant by his associations was rather of New England than of New York. Excepting these two the men of national distinction, Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Prescott, Motley, Lowell, were New Englanders, and men known by these to have large gifts, Holmes, Higginson, Thoreau, Cabot, Norton, who were chiefly relied on to make the early numbers, were their neighbors and friends, while the commanding reputation of Mrs. Stowe could at once be counted on to give éclat to any magazine with which she was connected. Besides, the business of this house, which was largely that of a jobbing house, so called, that is, a house which sold miscellaneous books from whatever publishers all over the country, was of such a nature as to create a confidence in the existence of a widespread audience of intelligent readers.

Thus the publishers were prepared to undertake the venture upon a somewhat liberal scale for those days. They chose the best printer near by, Mr. Houghton, who had already given distinction to the name “Riverside,” and they proposed to make a handsome magazine, not wholly unlike in its appearance the Edinburgh Blackwood. They paid their editor a salary of $2500, and they expected to pay contributors on a scale not to be sure much in advance of what the best writers could secure in other periodicals in Philadelphia and New York, but more generous as regards the average contributor. I think the mean rate of prose was six dollars a page, though it may occasionally in the case of a tyro have dropped to five dollars, and for poems they paid usually fifty dollars apiece. In a letter to a contributor who took exception to the price paid him, Lowell wrote, when the magazine had been running three or four months, “You must be content. Six dollars a page is more than can be got elsewhere, and we only pay ten to folks whose names are worth the other four dollars. Capite? What we may be able to do hereafter, I know not. I shall always be for liberal pay.”

It might seem as though the distinction thus referred to would hardly exist when all the articles were unsigned, but the authorship for the most part was an open secret. In those days the North American Review, as well as other like periodicals, used to print a little slip with the authorship of the separate articles set against the successive numbers of the articles, and this slip, though not inserted in all the copies sold or sent to subscribers, was at the service of newspapers and the inner circle of contributors and near friends. In like manner the authorship of the principal articles and poems in the Atlantic leaked out, and for some, like Emerson’s poems and Holmes’s “Autocrat,” there could be no concealment.

The authors themselves sometimes were glad of the privacy, as they thought it secured them more independence and possibility of frankness. Lowell thus wrote in September, 1859, to one of his contributors, who complained of what he thought want of care: “I am very sorry indeed for the mischance, but am quite sure it was no fault of mine. Where the ‘copy’ passes through four or five hands, all of whose owners know the handwriting, the chances of leakage are great. I confess that in the worry of the last week or two, I did not remember to give any new caution just before the publication of the October number. I am the more sorry if it is to deprive us of your contributions. For myself, I have always been opposed to the publication of the authors’ names at all. I do as well as I can with so many things to think of at once.” The practice of withholding names publicly continued till 1862, when the index at the end of the volume disclosed the authorship of the articles in the body of the magazine, and in 1870, the practice was begun of signing contributions. The anonymous character of the early volumes served, however, to bury the authorship in some cases past resurrection, as I found when I undertook to prepare a General Index in 1877, and again in 1889.

The ideal which Lowell formed for the magazine may best be inferred from the character of the numbers issued under his control, but in a few passages in his letters to contributors and friends he gives some glimpses of what was going on in his mind as he faced the very practical questions which arose in the conduct of the magazine. When I became editor of the Atlantic, in the spring of 1890, he contrasted my position with his own, and remarked on the very much larger number of writers on whom I could call for contributions, and the higher average of training in literary work. “Your task,” he wrote me, “will be in one respect at least easier than mine was thirty odd years ago, for there are now twenty people who can write English where there was one then. Indeed, there are so many, and they do it so well, that it looks as if literature as a profession or guild were near its end, and as if every man (and woman) would do his or her own on the principle of Every man his own washerwoman.” I thought and said, however, that it was not general average but distinction which gave a stamp to the magazine, and that in that respect he certainly had the advantage. In one of his letters to Mr. Richard Grant White, who feared a Shakespeare article he had furnished might be the one paper too much, he wrote: “I don’t care whether the public are tired of the Divine Villiams or not—a part of the magazine, as long as I have anything to do with it, shall be expressly not for the Mob (of well-dressed gentlemen who read with ease).”

At the outset, before any number had been published, he wrote to a friend from whom be solicited a contribution: “The magazine is going to be free without being fanatical, and we hope to unite in it all available talent of all shades of opinion. The magazine is to have opinions of its own, and not be afraid to speak them, but I think we shall be scholarly and gentlemanlike.” “This reading endless manuscripts,” he wrote to the same friend, when he was in full tide of preparation for the first number, “is hard work, and takes a great deal of time, but I am resolved that nothing shall go in which I have not first read. I wish to have nothing go in that will merely do,[122] but I fear I can’t keep so high a standard. It is astonishing how much there is that keeps just short of the line of good and drops into the limbo of indifferent.”

“There is a constant pressure on me,” he writes again, “to ‘popularize’ the magazine, which I resist without clamor.” It is easy to understand this attitude. Lowell cared greatly for the success of the Atlantic, and he was governed in his conduct of it by prudential considerations. In the letter just quoted he had occasion to refer to a controversy which was then hot. “I am urged,” he says, “to take ground in the Albany controversy, but do not feel that there is any ought in the matter, and am sure the Trustees will beat in the end. I think it would be unwise to let the magazine take a losing side unless clear justice required it. Am I not right?” But though he was not indifferent to the commercial prosperity of the Atlantic, and knew well that its opportunity for serving letters was largely conditioned on its subscription list, he did not make the fatal mistake of subordinating his own judgment to a supposititious judgment of the mysterious public which buys and reads magazines. It was his business to keep his own judgment free from the partisan bias of idiosyncrasy, but he perceived well the more subtle danger to which he was exposed of abdicating his authority while keeping his title in the supposed interest of the magazine. It was just because he was Lowell, a man whom the public was ready to follow in literary judgments, that he was in this place, and it was in the application of a well-seasoned taste that he demonstrated his fitness for the position. He cared greatly to be the instrument of organizing a body of first-rate literature, and the tone which he gave the Atlantic during the few months of his editorship became a tradition which powerfully affected its character after he retired from it. He put his own stamp on it emphatically.

The public, meanwhile, began at once to exercise that censorship which is a somewhat whimsical but very substantial witness to the value of an enterprise which is only technically private. The Lowell Institute, for example, is on a foundation so exclusively personal that there is not even a nominal board of trustees to be consulted in its management: the courses of lectures which it offers are absolutely free; yet ever since its establishment it has been subjected to criticism, good or ill natured, which would seem to imply some indefeasible right on the part of the public that criticises. Really, the criticism is simply an ingenuous expression of the profound interest which the public takes in a noble trust. Somewhat in the same way when the Atlantic was established, the public refused to regard it as offering wares which people might buy or not as they liked. It recognized it as a literary organon, as a power for good or ill; it was immensely interested in it, and showed its interest by attacking it severely on occasions.

Such an occasion, especially, was the appearance of Dr. Holmes’s “Professor at the Breakfast-Table,” in which this writer, who had leaped into popularity through the “Autocrat,” delivered himself of opinions and judgments which were regarded by a good many as dangerous and subversive, all the more dangerous by reason of their wit and entertaining qualities. If one could believe many of the newspapers, Dr. Holmes was a sort of reincarnation of Voltaire, who stood for the most audacious enemy of Christianity in modern times.

Some intimation of what Lowell was to encounter as editor may be gathered from a few words in a letter to T. W. Higginson, written at the end of his first year, when “The Autocrat” had already drawn the fire of one class of critic.

“I only look upon my duty,” he says, “as a vicarious one for Phillips and Sampson, that nothing may go in (before we are firm on our feet) that helps the ‘religious’ press in their warfare on us. Presently we shall be even with them, and have a free magazine in its true sense. I never allow any personal notion of mine to interfere, except in cases of obvious obscurity, bad taste, or bad grammar.” And Mr. Norton prints[123] a letter written shortly after to Dr. Holmes, which shows clearly the cordial support which the editor gave his contributor.

In one respect Lowell held a somewhat different position from that occupied by later editors. The Atlantic was so little troubled by competitors, and its company of contributors was so determined by a sort of natural selection, that Lowell’s editorial function was mainly discharged by the exercise of discrimination in the choice of articles, and the distribution of material through successive numbers; he had little to do in the way of foraging for matter. It must not be supposed, however, that there was anything perfunctory in his editorship. He was in love with literature, and his fine taste stood him in good stead, not only in the rejection of the commonplace, but in the perception of qualities which might redeem an otherwise undistinguished poem or paper. He had, too, that enthusiasm in the discovery of excellence which made him call his friends and neighbors together when he had found some pearl of great price; an enthusiasm which he was very sure to share with the author. He gave thus to the magazine that character of distinction which conscientiousness alone on the part of the editor, or even careful study of conditions, cannot give.

He was, to be sure, a trifle negligent of the business of writing to his contributors. He left as much of the correspondence as he could to Mr. Underwood, but in his somewhat capricious fashion he might make an article an excuse for a long and friendly letter. To one of his contributors who pursued him for his opinion upon some accepted manuscripts, he wrote a little testily: “You have a right to frankness and shall have it. I did like the article on —— better than the other, and I should like the —— one particularly. But what of that? other folks may have liked the other better, for aught I know. The fault of our tastes is in our stars, not in ourselves. My wife can’t endure ‘The Biglow Papers,’ and somehow or other her dislike of them is a great refreshment to me and makes me like her all the better. But I think it is rather hard on an editor to expect him to give his opinion about everything he prints—I mean as to whether it is specially to his taste or not. How long would my contributors put up with me if I made Archbishops of Granada of them all? I tell you again, as I have told you before, that I am always glad of an article from you, let it be what it will, but (don’t you see?) I am gladdest when it is such a one as only you can write. If I could only print one number made of altogether such, I could sing my nunc dimittis with a joyful heart.” A little of the fret of his life in this particular appears in a whimsical tirade which he sent to Mr. Norton on the eve of a flight to the Adirondacks in the summer of 1859:—

“To-day is Sunday; at least the bells have been shouting it, but ‘the Sabbath dawns no Sabbath-day for me.’ I have been reading proof and picking out manuscripts all the morning. Do you ever get desperate? I feel so now that I have got all my manuscript-household in order. They appal me by their mass. I look first at one box, and then at another, and—fill my pipe. ‘It is dreadful!’ as Clough’s heroine says in the Bothie. And 128 pages which it would take one so long to fill with his own stuff eats up that of other folks—no, I don’t mean that and would not allow such a metaphor to a contributor—is satiated so soon with that of other folks—that is, uses it up so slowly. Mille-dam! Have not two articles of —— been on hand now for a year? He seems to spin out his brains as tenuously and uselessly as those creatures that streak the air with gossamer—no chance of catching even a stray fly of thought. Nay, his object is, I fancy, precisely what that of the aforesaid creatures may be—merely to swing himself over a gap. He is my ink—my pen-and-ink-ubus. I could scalp him the rather as he wears a wig and is deaf, and so would not be likely to hear of it. Then there is —— who can’t express himself in less than sixteen pages on any imaginable topic. It is a terrible thing this writing for the press, by which a man’s pen learns gradually to go by itself as those Chinese servants are said to fan and sleep at the same time. ‘No, no, by heaven I am not ma-a-d!’ but I expect to be. I believe I have so far settled matters that everybody will think me a monster. But never mind, I get out of ear-shot to-morrow.”

How fully and carefully he could and would write under special urgency may be seen by the long letter which he addressed to Mrs. Stowe when “The Minister’s Wooing” had been running three or four months in the Atlantic. The letter was published in C. E. Stowe’s life of his mother, and is quoted also in Mrs. Fields’s “Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe.”

The criticism for which this letter was an excuse illustrates one very important element in Lowell’s editorial mind. However little he might exert himself to go afield for articles in the body of the magazine, he did not trust to luck for the critical notices. In that department he took great pains to secure competent workmen. To Lowell and his contemporaries this matter of book reviews was one of great consequence. In the evolution of literary periodical literature the article of the old Quarterly type, which was part a summary of a book, part a further contribution to the subject, and part a judgment on the author, had shed the first constituent, had lost much of the second, but preserved the third in a more condensed and, to a certain degree, in a more impersonal spirit. But criticism in its finest form was highly valued, and the form of the book review was accepted as recognized and permanent. When the Atlantic, therefore, was set up emphasis was laid on this serious side of literary study, and the causerie, the light persiflage which serves as a relief in most magazines of a literary type—the Atlantic itself has now its Contributors’ Club—was disregarded. To be sure, in the first number, Lowell printed what seemed to promise a gay side to the magazine, a leaf entitled “The Round Table,” the purpose of which, in this instance, was to introduce an occasional poem by Dr. Holmes, but I suspect he was either a little alarmed at the prospect of setting his table monthly with a dessert, or was satisfied that the “Autocrat” would serve the same end. At any rate, no second number of “The Round Table” appeared. But each month the last few pages of each number were given up, after the well-accepted tradition, to notices of new books with occasional surveys of current music and pictures.

Lowell’s estimate of the value of literary criticism is expressed in a letter to Mr. Richard Grant White, 10 June, 1858, apropos of a purpose Mr. White then had of starting a weekly literary journal in New York. “There is no one opprobrium of American scholarship and letters so great,” he says, “as the general laxity and debasement of criticism. With few exceptions our criticisms are venial (whether the pay be money or friendship) or partisan. An invitation to dinner may make a Milton out of the sorriest Flecknoe, and a difference in politics turn a creditable poet into a dunce.” Lowell relied on White for a certain amount of criticism and wrote him, 8 March, 1859, “There is nothing I so especially desire as to have ‘experts’ make the Atlantic their pulpit. As long as I continue editor, I wish you to understand that your contributions will always be welcome, on no ground of personal friendship, but because I know they will be of value. I particularly wish to have the department of ‘Lit. Notices’ made more full. I find so few people whom I can trust to write a review! Personal motives of one kind or other are always sure to peep out. I think I have gained one good from the fearful bore of reading manuscripts; it is gradually making me as impartial as a chemical test—as insensible, too, perhaps? That is the only fear.”

As a result partly of his difficulty in securing satisfactory criticism and partly of his own aptitude for work of this kind, Lowell wrote more than forty reviews in the department during his editorship, besides several articles in the body of the magazine which were really reviews, like his careful study in two numbers of White’s Shakespeare. He was in such friendly communication with Mr. White regarding his work that it would have been idle to wear any mask in his presence, and Mr. White wrote him in great excitement over the first of the two articles. “I am very much obliged to you for your kind letter,” Lowell replied; “I never saw a man who did not think himself indifferent to praise, nor one who did not like it. In this country, where praise (or blame) is so cheap, one can’t think much of the old laudari ab laudato, for the laudatus himself may be the celebrated Snooks, but I think I know how to value it from a man of discernment. I hope you will like the last half of my article as well as the first. It is honest, anyhow, and kindly meant, and I endeavored to avoid all picking of flaws. Years ago I laid to heart the saying of an old lady—‘that the eleventh commandment was—Don’t twit.’ ...

“I don’t like reviewing, especially where the author is an acquaintance. I find it so hard to be impartial, but in your case I think my commendation would lose half its force were it not qualified with some adverse criticism. Please believe that I wrote all with the kindest feelings.”

Lowell certainly had nothing of that superficial habit of reviewing which is at the bottom of most of the unsatisfactory work of this kind. In reviewing White’s Shakespeare, for example, he read over twice every word of the commentary and notes and then laid the book aside that his impression might settle and clarify before he wrote his criticism. Swift as he was in writing, there was, for the most part, a long period of brooding over his creative work and in study over his criticism. He wrote an article, for instance, on “Wedgwood’s Dictionary,” and complained regarding it to Mr. Norton: “You know my unfortunate weakness for doing things not quite superficially. So I have been a week about it—press waiting—devil at my elbow (I mean the printer’s)—every dictionary and vocabulary I own gradually gathering in a semicircle round my chair,—and three of the days of twelve solid hours each. And with what result? at most six pages, which not six men will care anything about. And now it is done I feel as if I had taken hold of the book the wrong way, and that I should have devoted myself to his theory more and to particulars less; or, rather, that I ought to have had more space. But I had a gap to fill up,—just so much and no more. There is one passage[124] in it that I wager will make all of you laugh, and heavens! what fun I could have made of the book if I had been unscrupulous! But I soon learned to respect Wedgwood’s attainments, and resisted all temptation.”

Just as Lowell’s fun could find its way even into an index, so in his sober criticisms he would sometimes hide a jest for the delectation of especially discerning readers, as when in his article on White’s Shakespeare, he remarks incidentally: “To every commentator who has wantonly tampered with the text, or obscured it with his inky cloud of paraphrase, we feel inclined to apply the quadrisyllabic name of the brother of Agis, king of Sparta.” Felton, Longfellow tells us in a letter to Sumner, was the first to unearth the joke and to remember or discover that this name was Eudamidas.

Apart from his considerable criticism Lowell contributed to the volumes which he edited chiefly poems and political articles. He printed the “Ode to Happiness” already referred to, the notable verses on “Italy, 1859,” and the striking poem, “The Dead House,” which has an autobiographic interest, not from its being the record of an incident or even from the mood which it reflects, but from the fact that Lowell could write it at all and disclaim any personal connection with the theme. Mr. Norton has printed an interesting comment on the poem by Lowell,[125] and in another letter written a few days later Lowell adds: “I have touched here and there the poem I sent, and think of putting it in the Atlantic. Did you like it? It is pure fancy, though founded on a feeling I have often had,—but for æsthetic reasons I put an ‘inexpressive she’ into it.” In how healthy a mind must he have been, and how graciously healed in his new life to write thus without having his own great grief thrust itself between him and his poem.

Yet there was a poem entitled “The Home,” written at the same time which was rather a record of personal experience than a universal mood caught in terms of common life, and he cast it aside therefore and never printed it. It has its place in a memoir of his life.