James Russell Lowell
JLTST forty years ago the hulk of Lowell's letters were published by Charles Eliot- -1Tattd1W (republished - 1904)—and others' appeared in the biographies of Horace Scudder and Ferris Greenslet. The present collection comes from various sources, the largest individual one being the letters to his daughter Mabel. They are, therefore,-in the nature of a "shakings of the bag." They are none the less capable of interest for that. Indeed their very slightness; in many cases, leads us into the company of Lowell when he is most off his guard, and shows him in his more charming aspect of father, husband, and friend.
The more one brings to such a book, naturally, the more one gets out of it. The very mention of places and people known elsewhere and otherwise has its own joy. But even to thoSe for whom there is no magic in such names as Elmwood, Southborough, Concord, Duxbury, here is a complete picture of a man who was famous in his day, whose reputation as a' critic is still intact—in a period when we have so many more critics are there six men whose reputations are as assured as Lowell's ?—and who was a typical representative of a peen.; liarly interesting little society, the Boston of the eighties of the last century. The Bostonians here are far better than The Bostonians of Henry James. Here is the solidity of the well- trained professor—one of the last to hold a fair balance between culture and information ; since his day Harvard has gone over to Dr. Dry-as-dust. Here, too, is the touch of stodginess for which Boston is notorious ; the more than a touch of snobbery—commemorated in "The Lowells speak only to the Cabots and the Cabots speak only to God." One sees the Puritan in his care for his dollars, and in his scruples about not getting too much—'1 The Nation paid me fifty dollars for a. sonnet; they offered me a hundred but I would not take it." And one sees the dry humour of the recluse and book-worm all over him. "I received the other day a draft of £20 from Sampson Low as copyright on 9,000 copies of Among my Books. Sampson has turned Philistine and means to let others do-the grinding for him." Which is one of the neatest turns against a publisher recorded. Incidentally the remuneration of authors in the 1880's was evidently of the worst. Lowell's profits, if his book sold at a shilling, works out at about 4 per cent., and at two shillings, 2 per cent.
Even to those not interested either in the place or the period this collection of letters offers the interest of a novel.
One traces the student through his first appointment, to his
rise to fame, his editorship of the Atlantic Monthly—which, in his time, could look down its nose at Harpers—to his appoint-
ment to a diplomatic post,, to his wife's death, and a tragic kineliness of old age. Leslie Stephen Went so far as to say of the quality of Lowell's letters, ," I don't think Cowper or Gray or anyone could write better." Stephen, as a friend of LOwell's, was perhaps overkind ; but if he merely meant the human quality it is another matter. Like or dislike him, a real man comes out in these letters, a man to fear rather than thlove, a friend rather than a companion, a husband rather than a lover, a critic, which is what he was and was destined
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