The critical reviews of Longfellow’s Dante from the hands of competent scholars were few, but one published in a daily journal called out a letter from Lowell to the friend who sent it to him, which gives with frankness Lowell’s estimate of the translation. “The review,” he writes, “does not change my opinion of Mr. Longfellow’s translation—not as the best possible, by any means, but as the best probable.... Nobody who is intimate with the original will find any translation of the ‘Divina Commedia’ more refreshing than cobs. Has not Dante himself told us that no poetry can be translated? But, after all is said, I think Mr. Longfellow’s the best thus far as being the most accurate. It is to be looked on, I think, as measured prose—like our version of Job, for example, though without that mastery of measure in which our Bible translators are unmatched except by Milton. I mean where they are at their best, as in Job, the songs of Debórah and Barak, the death of Sisera, and some parts of the Psalms. Mr. Longfellow is not a scholar in the German sense of the word, that is to say, he is no pedant, but he certainly is a scholar in another and perhaps a higher sense, I mean in range of acquirement and the flavor that comes of it.”

Specific criticism, with all the painstaking of which he was capable, was but the obverse of the medal which Lowell struck in his literary work. On the face was his generous delight in his books. “The Nightingale in the Study,” written in the summer of 1867, holds in capital form a genuine confession that there was an appeal to him from nature in literature which did not antagonize the appeal made to him by the world of natural beauty, yet sometimes constrained and invited him in tones he could not resist, even though the birds without were calling him. Mr. Leslie Stephen who visited him in the summer of 1868, renewing an acquaintance begun five years earlier and ripening into a friendship which meant much to Lowell ever after, has given a pleasant account of the impression made upon him by the poet in his study at Elmwood. “All round us,” he says, “were the crowded book-shelves, whose appearance showed them to be the companions of the true literary workman, not of the mere dilettante or fancy biographer. Their ragged bindings and thumbed pages scored with frequent pencil marks implied that they were a student’s tools, not mere ornamental playthings. He would sit among his books, pipe in mouth, a book in hand, hour after hour; and I was soon intimate enough to sit by him and enjoy intervals of silence as well as periods of discussion and always delightful talk.”[32]

It was a quarter of a century since Lowell had collected his fugitive poems, though he had meantime published the second series of “The Biglow Papers,” and when 1868 came in he was moved to make a new volume which should include the poems he had been printing, chiefly in the Atlantic. It was with this in mind that he took up a fragment of a poem written a score of years before, rewrote and added to it, designing to make it the title poem in the volume. He printed it first in the June Atlantic, under the title “A June Idyll.” In sending it he wrote to Mr. Fields: “In the first flush of having just finished and copied it (for which I was obliged to miss Dickens last night) I am inclined to think there is something characteristic.... Surely there are good bits in it, and it is good for more than usual, or good for nothing. If I haven’t made a spoon, I have certainly spoiled a horn that would have turned out a very good one. You sometimes find fault with my names. I have called this ‘A June Idyll,’ which is just what it is. Do you object?”

Mr. Fields, either himself or through a friend, wrote a very appreciative notice of the poem in the Boston Advertiser, which drew from Lowell this response to his friendly editor:—

That the poem at once found disinterested friends is evident from the letter which Lowell writes in acknowledgment of the praise which the poet, Dr. Parsons, gave it. “Something more than half of it,” Lowell says, “was written more than twenty years ago, on the death of our eldest daughter; but when I came to complete it, that other death, which broke my life in two, would come in against my will, so that you were right in your surmise. I was very glad you liked it, and your letter touched me deeply, as you may well conceive.”

In September Lowell made out a tentative list of the poems to be included in the volume, and wrote to Mr. Fields: “I think it best not to include any humorous poems in this collection. They can come by and by, if they are wanted. They would jar here. Some I may be able to shorten somewhat in printing, but commonly I find it hard work to improve them after they are dry, though I seem to see well enough where and how much they need it. The poems of the war I shall put by themselves at the end, so as to close with the Ode as I begin with the Idyll. How I do wish the whole of them were better—now that I am putting them between stiff covers to help them stand alone! ‘Bad is the best’ is a good proverb—but how if the best is bad? Well, here and there one catches a good strain, but I feel very hopeless about them.”

Lowell meant to call his volume “A June Idyll and other Poems,” but Mr. Fields pointed out that Whittier’s new volume just about to appear was to carry the title of “A Summer Idyll.”[33] Lowell retorted: “Why the devil should Whittier bag my title? I can’t claim a copyright in ‘Idyll,’ that is in the dictionary—but, June ‘Idyll’ was mine. It will be thought his poem suggested mine, as it was with the ‘Present Crisis,’ though mine was written two years before. However, J. G. W. is welcome to anything of mine, for he is a trump, and after all the milk is spilt. But if his volume is not advertised, might I not insist? It’s of more consequence to me than to him, for I have nothing else that will look so well in the vanguard. But if it’s all up, how would ‘Appledore and other Poems’ do? It is a pretty name enough, and the poem is one of my longest,—though not, perhaps, the one I would otherwise have put first. My dedication, I think, is good, and that will take the edge off.”

Mr. Fields suggested that he should give the volume the title of his place, “Elmwood,” but Lowell replied: “I can’t bear ‘Elmwood,’ and the more I think of it, the more I can’t bear it—’tis turning one’s household gods upon the town, as it were. No, never! They have endured me for fifty years, and I won’t desert ’em in their old age. Let me have my hermitage to myself. (I had eight visitors this morning—one of whom wanted me to read ‘The Biglow Papers’ to him.) But I have it now. Instead of ‘June Idyll,’ which was the pis aller of a prosaic mind, I shall call it ‘Under the Willows.’ Like all great discoveries, it is simple, and, you may depend upon it, it is the thing. It means everything and nothing. I can’t make the poem over so as to suit ‘Elmwood,’ and so I shall settle upon this, fixed as a butterfly, stable as the Horse-railway stables. You can’t move me. The man that moved Chicago couldn’t move me. I am happy, and discharge my mind of the whole concern. I shall now devote my evening to the ‘Flying Dutchman’ in peace, and write you something clever for the Atlantic. I snap my fingers at you and Bazin,[34] wore he even the helmet of Mambrino. Nothing can touch me further. ‘Under the Willows and other Poems’—it satisfies every want, and will be immensely popular. The basketmakers will buy up the first edition and the gunpowder makers the second. Then comes the general public, mad with curiosity to know what the d—l I mean. I am charmed with my own powers of invention. A duller man would have said ‘Under the Elms,’ or some such things. Let me alone for tickling the fancy of a purchaser. I know what they want.”

To Mr. Norton he writes, reciting his tribulations over the name of his book, and adds: “I was suddenly moved to finish my ‘Voyage to Vinland,’ part of which you remember was written eighteen years ago.[35] 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 melodious, and we think it pretty good here, as does Howells.”

Again we quote a passage from Emerson’s unprinted journal, dated December, 1868: “In poetry, tone. I have been reading some of Lowell’s new poems in which he shows unexpected advance on himself, but perhaps most in technical skill and courage. It is in talent rather than in poetic tone, and rather expresses his wish, his ambition, than the uncontrollable interior impulse which is the authentic mark of a new poem, and which is unanalyzable, and makes the merit of an ode of Collins or Gray or Wordsworth or Herbert or Byron, and which is felt in the pervading tone rather than in brilliant parts or lines; as if the sound of a bell, or a certain cadence expressed in a low whistle, or booming or humming to which the poet first timed his step as he looked at the sunset, or thought, was the incipient form of the piece, and was regnant through the whole.”

There were two essays written in the fall of 1868 which are very expressive of Lowell’s nature. “My Garden Acquaintance” records delightfully that attachment to one spot which was made possible not merely by long life at Elmwood, but by that sympathy with life which enabled him to suck the juices from nature, not by roving, but by that attitude of listening and observing which sometimes belongs to home-keeping wits. “A Certain Condescension in Foreigners,” though it was at first sight a clearing of his mind such as his letters repeatedly show, grows warm with that passion for his country and the ideas it stood for, which had been burned into him by his personal experience in the war and by his constant brooding over the deep realities which underlay the meaning of the war. He returned to political writing under stress of need for copy in the January North American with “A Look Before and After.” The Review itself had become somewhat more of a burden to him, for Mr. Norton went abroad in the summer of 1868 for an indefinite stay, and though Mr. E. W. Gurney, who took his place, was competent, Lowell felt the responsibility rather more than when he had easily left the main business to Mr. Norton. Moreover, the special work which he and his friend had undertaken had, in a measure, been accomplished, and the Review, though winning a succes d’estime, had not that worldly success which reconciles one to drudgery. There is a half-vexed, half-humorous letter to Mr. Fields, dated Elmwood 10 P.M. Thursday, 1868, which was 24 September. “The express has just brought,” he writes, “your note asking for the log of the North American on her present voyage. The N. A. is teak-built, her extreme length from stem to stern post 299 feet 6 inches, and her beam (I mean her breadth of beam) 286 feet 7 inches and a quarter. She is an A 1 risk at the Antediluvian. These statements will enable you to reckon her possible rate of sailing. During the present trip I should say that all the knots she made were Gordian, and of the tightest sort. I extract from log as follows:—

“11 July. Lat. 42° 1´, the first officer, Mr. Norton, lost overboard in a fog, with the compass, caboose, and studden-sails in his pocket, also the key of the spirit-room.

“25 July. Lat. 42° 10´, spoke the Ark, Captain Noah, and got the latest news. 26, 27, 28, dead calm. 29, 30, 31, and 1 August, head winds N. N. E. to N. E. by N. 15 August. Double reef in foretopsl, spoke the good ship Argo, Jason commander, from Colchos with wool.

“17 August, dead calm, schooner Pinta, Capt. Columbus, bound for the New World, and a market, bearing Sou Sou West half South on our weather bow. Got some stores from him.

“20. Capt. Lowell cut his throat with the fluke of the sheet anchor.

“So far the log.

“Now for the comment. Toward the 1st September I received notice that the Review was at a standstill. Mr. Gurney was at Beverly, ill and engaged to be married. I had not a line of copy, nor knew where to get one. I communicated with G. and got what he had—viz: two articles, one on Herbert Spencer, and t’other on Leibnitz. I put the former in type, but did not dare to follow with the latter, for I thought it would be too much even for the readers of the N. A. By and by, I raked together one or two more,—not what I would have but what I could. James’s article on Spanish G.”[36] is good and ought to go in. So of the Siege of Delhi. We want something interesting, and we must have some literary notices. As I receive none of the books, of course I had to depend on others for these, and I have got as many as I could. I have edited the number for October because it was absolutely necessary,—not, surely, because I desired it. I have read all the proof and have done all that I agreed not to do when I made my engagement with Crosby & Nichols. All I promised to give them was my name on the cover, and I supposed T. & F. succeeded to their agreement. I have much more than kept my word. The October number can’t be printed by Saturday.

“But I am altogether willing that it should be, only in that case my name must be withdrawn from the cover. I never desired to be its editor, and I put my resignation in your hands. Get some better man, say——, who can write on all subjects equally ill at a moment’s notice. I wash my hands of the whole concern. I will read the rest of the proof of this number if you wish, for that is in the bond, but for January look out for somebody who can make something out of nothing. I recommend——.” Six days later he wrote again:—

“Correct estimates from log thus: 25 September. Lat. 42° 10´. Captain Lowell committed suicide by blowing out his brains with the gafftopsl halyards. There can be no doubt of the fact, as the 2nd officer recognized the brains for his (Cap. L.’s), he being familiar with them.

“30 September. Captain L. reappeared on the deck, having only been below to oversee the storage of ballast, whereof on this trip the lading mainly consists. What was thought to be his brains turned out on closer examination to be pumpkin pie, though the second officer was unconvinced and the Captain himself could not make up his mind.

“The fact is I was cross, and did not quite like being brought up with such a round turn at my time of life. I had done all I could, and was hoping that the literary notices would make up for the rest. I had been disappointed in three body articles by Bigelow, Poole, and Willard (on von Bismarck). Gurney will take hold of the next number and it will all go right. Say beforehand how many sheets you are willing to allow, and we will keep as near the wind as we can, but don’t—well, never mind, but I am as touchy as if I were even poorer than I am.”

The publication of “Under the Willows” brought Lowell some of those expressions of admiration and affection for which the friends of a writer gladly use such occasions. The publishing of a book is like an announcement of an engagement,—an opportunity for one’s friends to show their affection unreservedly. Among the notes which pleased Lowell was one from Mr. Aldrich who had lately come to Boston to edit Every Saturday, and in his pleasure he sent a copy of the special edition of the Commemoration Ode with this letter.

That Lowell himself knew how to give pleasure with praise is evident enough from the several letters which Mr. Norton has printed, to Mr. Aldrich, to Mr. Howells, to Mr. Gilder, and to other younger writers. He was constantly sending pleasant messages and writing notes with unaffected expressions of enjoyment, and his friendly feeling made it easy for the editor of the Atlantic to consult him with reference to contributions even from strangers. Thus he wrote to Mr. Howells: “I would be burned at the stake—nay, I would agree to be shut up alone for an hour with —— before I would acknowledge (I spelt it without a d!) a poem to be good unless it was so. I would be burned at two stakes, and be shut up with —— and —— ere I would say a good word for the verses of a rising young author. But I expect to see and like your poem in the next Atlantic. It is good, despite Mrs. Howells and the anapests,—or whatever other kind of pests they were.

“Go by your ear, my dear boy, or by Madam’s and leave Latin prosodies to —— and the other profound scholars who understand ’em, but be sure that the plot of your little poem is so charming that it will take all the lovers and loved, and who else is worth caring for?

“I tried it on Mrs. Lowell (you know we have a bit of Darby and Joan left in us still) and she purred at once. No: it is good and subtle (or subtile, I don’t know which, thanks to Mr. Nichols), but it is either you like.

“P.S. You have a real vein, so don’t be bothered, but make it as good as you can and thank the gods.”

And again, in answer to some questions Mr. Howells had asked him respecting the Isles of Shoals, apropos of the articles by Mrs. Thaxter then to appear in the Atlantic: “‘Londoner’s’ is right. The names of the islands are ‘Haley’s,’ otherwise (and better) ‘Smutty-nose,’ ‘Star,’ always called ‘Star-island,’ ‘Hog,’ which Mrs. T. no doubt calls ‘Appledore,’—the name of a village that once stood on it,—‘Cedar,’ ‘White,’ ‘Malaga,’ and ‘Duck.’ There you have ’em all.

“Now I have a favor to ask of you—Se io meritai di voi assai o poco—and that is to have the sheets of the life of Landor sent me. I guess I could make something out of them, which perhaps you boys hardly could. By the way, I was very much pleased with your notice of that fellow’s (Sebright,[37] I think) Congressional reminiscences. It made me laugh, and was so fine (so subtile) that the man himself, despite his name, will never feel the edge of it. I always had great expectations of you,—but I am beginning to believe in you for good. You are the only one that hasn’t cheated me by your blossom. I like your flavor now, as once I did your perfume. You young fellows are dreadfully irreverent—but don’t you laugh—I take a kind of credit to myself in being the first to find you out. I am proud of you. But see how Fate takes me down! As I wrote the words, it began to rain on my hay. Absit omen. And may it be long before you are mown!

“As for your gigantic boongalong there in Boston,—I fancy it is like Niagara, a thing that one can reckon mathematically. It is but one voice raised to the nth power or so. And I remember that the Colosseum was where the early Christians used to be martyred. Now I got up this morning at half past six, and therefore count myself among the early Christians.

“I forgot to tell you that George Curtis liked your Venetian poem very much. So did I.”

His position naturally made him the recipient of many commissions for securing the publication of poems and other manuscripts, and his friendliness drew him into many letters of counsel, and it might be encouragement. To one whose acquaintance he had made through a contribution which he had accepted when editor of the Atlantic, he wrote in answer to a letter in which she had confessed to discouragement over hostile attack on a more recent work:—

There is another letter drawn out from him by a stranger who was concerned over a case of literary honesty, which is interesting as showing how sensitive Lowell was in all matters pertaining to his art. “You ask,” he writes, “my judgment on a point of literary morals. In the case you set forth I find it hard to judge of the facts without some knowledge of the character of the man, because thoughtlessness, want of moral sensibility, and loose habits of mind generally, may in the particular instance tend to lenify our judgment of the ethical quality of the offence, without in the least changing our opinion of its discreditable nature as respects good scholarship and honest literature. There can be no question that every article (such as you describe) should have had the name of its true author at the head of it, so that no man who read could fail to know whose work he was reading. Nay, I think we should be so scrupulous in such matters as to acknowledge even an apt quotation when we owe it to another man. For example, I suppose I must have read the ‘Divinia Commedia’ of Dante at least thirty times with minute attention and yet it had never occurred to me that cima di giudizie was literally Shakespeare’s phrase, ‘top of judgment,’ till Mr. Dyce pointed it out in a note on ‘Measure for Measure.’ I should never think of using it as an illustration without giving credit to Mr. Dyce. Even had I found the coincidence noted on the margin of my own copy of Dante, I should still have quoted Dyce for it as having first mentioned it in print, in order to avoid even the appearance of evil. I think an honest man can easily resolve any doubt he may have in such matters by asking himself the simple question, Do I gain any credit that does not belong to me by letting it pass for my own? If I do, it is stealing, neither more nor less, for there is no real distinction between picking a man’s pocket of his money and filching the fruits of his industry or thought from a book.

“In literature proper, originality consists of such an energy of nature as enables a man so to infuse thoughts or sentiments common to all with his own individuality as to give them a new character—flavor would be the better word—commending them anew to the general palate. Chaucer is a capital instance in point. He formed himself wholly on foreign models, helped himself to plots, incidents, and reflections from any and everywhere, and yet is on the whole fresher than almost any of our poets. I always liked him the better for remembering in his ‘House of Fame’ the pipes of those

for he was, I doubt not, paying the debt he owed to some nameless minstrel.

“In matters of research and scholarship, the question seems to present itself under a somewhat different aspect. All learning is of necessity to a great extent second-hand—but here also there is a manifest distinction between appropriating another man’s scholarship and assimilating it. In the one case it lies a mere load of indigestible rubbish upon the brain; in the other, it is dissolved and worked over into a new substance, giving sustenance and impulse to one’s native thought. So that after all, whether in literature or scholarship, the point is not so much what a man has taken, as whether he has made something new of what he has taken.[38] If he have not, then he should make punctilious acknowledgment of the sources whence he drew. It is one thing to be indebted to a man for a hint that sets us on a path of original research and discovery, and quite another to rob him of his journals and publish them as one’s own. So as to giving credit where it is due; I would not thank a guide-post, but I must pay a guide. I may read by a man’s lamp, but if I tap his gas pipe, I ought to attach a gasometer that shall record precisely how much I borrow.

“The leading case in this branch of literary ethics is the famous one of Schelling et als. against Coleridge. For the defence we should take into account the defendant’s lifelong habits of mental dissipation, his own really great learning which might make him careless alike in borrowing and lending, and above all the effect of opium in blurring the memory and deadening the nerves of moral sensation. On the other hand, it would be urged that he lifted (to borrow a word, peculiarly apt here, from the loose dialect of the border) from foreigners whose property would be least liable to identification by his countrymen; he did it by translation and transfusion, thus, as it were, obliterating the marks of former ownership; and above all (in the case of A. W. Schlegel) he did it in oral lectures, thus driving his stolen cattle so hurriedly by in a way to baffle detection.

“You will find in Mrs. Nelson Coleridge’s Introduction to the ‘Biographia Literaria’ an eloquent and even passionate vindication of her father from the charge of plagiarism. It does her honor as a daughter, but is hardly convincing. Coleridge’s acknowledgment of general indebtedness to Schelling and others was, to speak mildly, wholly inadequate, and his evasions in regard to Schlegel leave a very painful impression on the mind. If he was not lying, he was so shamefully inaccurate in dates (to his own advantage) as to have all the appearance of it.

“Now, your case (I mean the one you present) is in many respects very like this—almost identical with it indeed....

“In the old trials, one of the questions on which the jury were called on to pass was, ‘Did he fly for it?’ That is, I suppose, ‘Did he give that proof of conscious guilt?’ I should ask the same question in this case. Is there any evidence of an attempt at concealment?

“But, abstractedly from any opinion we may form of the person, the action was one altogether discreditable and contemptible. We cannot be too scrupulous on any point of morals in a country where members of Congress see no dishonor in selling appointments to the Army and Navy.”

Dr. Thomas Hill, who was president of Harvard in 1868, asked Lowell in the summer of that year to look over some papers he had received from Virginia and to give his opinion of them. They were the letters and journals of a Virginian gentleman, Mr. John B. Minor, who had visited New England in 1834, and Lowell found them exceedingly interesting. “Not the least engaging thing in the journal,” he wrote to the lady who had sent the papers, “is the character of the author, everywhere showing itself and everywhere amiable. So far as he is concerned, the whole journal might be printed verbatim, for there is not an indiscreet word, much less a breach of hospitality, from beginning to end. At the same time there are, of course, passages here and there which should be omitted in printing—I think not more than two or three at most—where he describes the personal appearance of those he met.”

The next day he wrote to Mr. Fields: “There has been put into my hands to dispose of, the Journal of a Virginia gentleman during a short tour in New England, partly on foot. The date—1834, which is now ages ago. There is not a great deal of it, but I found it truly entertaining. I think I could make selections from it that would run through four or five numbers of the Atlantic.... Now, do you want it? and if so, what do you think it would be worth? When I say it is entertaining, I do not mean for fanatics like me, who would cradle I know not how many tons of common earth for a grain of the gold of human nature, but for folks in general. It is not only interesting but valuable, and the character of the author, as it blinks out continually, most engaging. It seems to me remarkable that there is positively not an ill-natured word from the first page to the last. Now you know that I have once or twice pressed Sibylline books upon you which you wouldn’t take. Don’t let this one slip through your fingers. I think it might be published afterwards in a small volume with advantage, but of its adaptation to the Atlantic I have no doubt.”

The journal was printed in the Atlantic in the summer and fall of 1870, Lowell furnishing an introduction to the first number. It was no doubt under the influence of this new acquaintance with a fine type of Southern manhood, that Lowell wrote to Mr. Godkin, 20 November, 1868: “I confess to a strong sympathy 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 compatible with their honor to be so.”[39]

Mr. and Mrs. Fields were proposing to make a journey to Europe in the spring and summer of 1869, and asked Lowell to send his daughter in their company. Lowell wrote in reply, 19 January, 1869: “I have been thinking over your very kind invitation to Mabel, and, after turning it in every possible way, I have come to the conclusion that the only way to treat a generous offer is to be generous enough to accept it. My pride stood a little in the way, but my common sense whispered me that I had no right to feed my pride at my daughter’s expense. And moreover, my dear Fields, you left me a most delicate loophole for my pride to creep out of, in conferring on me a kind of militia generalship of the Atlantic Monthly while you were away. Now, if you will let me make it something real, that is, if you will let me read the proof-sheets, I can be of some service in preventing —— (for example, merely) from writing such awful English, and mayhap in some other cases, as a consulting physician. Moreover, I should like to translate for Every Saturday something now and then, as, for instance, the article on Déak and the dramatic sketch of Octave Feuillet, lately published in the Revue de Deux Mondes. May I?”

While his daughter was travelling with Mr. and Mrs. Fields, Lowell wrote to Mr. Fields a piece of news anticipative of what came to an event a little less than ten years later: “Mabel’s letters overrun with happiness, which I fully share in reading them. I wrote her a long letter about nothing yesterday—but I did not tell her what you may (as a secret for you three), that I came very near being sent to Spain, and that in case the Senate should not confirm Sickles in December, the chances for me are the best. Judge Hoar told me when he was here the other day, that Mr. Fish was friendly, and that the Assistant Secretary was ‘zealous even unto slaying,’ as he was himself. So who knows but my name may get into capitals in the triennial catalogues yet? That, after all, is the main thing—for is it not a kind of fame as good as the next? For my own part, I can conceive of no place better to live or die in than where I was born.

“I hope Mabel makes a jolly companion. She always does for me.[40] If she is as happy as her letters show her, I think she must. Tell her I should have told her about Spain—but I forgot it. I shall have my choice of castles to live in, if I go there, of my own building.”

“For awhile last spring,” he wrote in December to Mr. Norton, “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.”[41] The new poem was “The Cathedral” which was issued in book form at Christmas, 1869, as well as in the Atlantic for January, 1870. He wrote it during the summer vacation and took great pleasure in the writing. He had told Mr. Howells what he was about, and on being asked for the poem for the Atlantic replied: “Up to time, indeed! the fear 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 indeed read it over consecutively.”[42] A little later he could write to Miss Norton: “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.’”[43] He dedicated the poem with special pleasure to Mr. Fields, who by the bye had persuaded him to substitute the name used for that he had chosen, a change which Lowell regretted in writing to Mr. Stephen, as depriving the poem of certain definite, local, and historical justification. “The Cathedral” drew from Mr. Ruskin warm praise. “The main substance of the poem is most precious to me,” he wrote, “and its separate lines sometimes unbetterable,” and he added some specific criticism on words, which Lowell met with more of his favorite instances of long-lived words brought over in the mental baggage of the early New England settlers. The letter in which he conclusively justifies himself is an excellent example of the reasoning of a philologist to whom words are alive, and not specimens in a museum.[44]

A correspondent had enquired in behalf of a friend, as had Ruskin, for his authority in using “decuman” in the line

and he replied: “My friendly catechist has certainly put in a fair claim to a speedy answer. Whence that word ‘decuman’ got into my memory I have no notion. It seems to have got embedded there during my eocene period, and hopped out lively as one of those toads we have all heard of the moment it got a chance. And the likeness was the nearer that it had ‘a precious jewel in its head.’ In short, the word was there—it was canorous, and it expressed just what I meant. So I used it unsuspiciously. I did not mean to make a conundrum—I never do, but I had made one. When I was asked for the solution, the answer was ready enough—‘the tenth wave,’ which was thought higher than the rest. But when I was asked for my authority! I thought I had met with it in Ovid. No! In Lucan. No! They both speak of the tenth wave, but not in that absolute way. I looked in my dictionaries. I found it at last in Forcellini. Then I went to my Ducange, and the authority cited was one of the Latin Fathers, I forget which. However, there it was, and with the meaning I had remembered.”

Although the title, “A Day at Chartres,” carries with it a notion of less formality, and has a picturesque quality, there is a fitness in the soberer title that permits the mind to play with the theme. For Lowell here builds upon the foundation of human life a fane for worship, and in the speculations which discriminate between the conventional and the free aspirations of the soul, constructs out of living stones a house of prayer. Nor is there absent that capricious mood which carved grotesques upon the under side of the benches at which the worshippers kneeled, so that when the reader, borne along by the high thought, stumbles over such lines as

he may, if he will, console himself with the reflection that the most aspiring Gothic carries like grimacing touches within its majestic walls.