MR. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
WE question whether the death of Mr. James Russell Lowell will be felt even in the United States more keenly than it is felt in England. Whether as a poet, or as a critic, or as a statesman, the loss is as serious to his countrymen on this side of the Atlantic as to his country- men on the other. Indeed, Mr. Lowell never felt more at home than he did in London,—a city even the climate of which he appreciated as few Londoners appreciate it,—and he seemed to be as much the favourite of the best English society as any other Englishman, however great his genius and however popular his politics. During the years in which he was American Minister here, he rendered the greatest services in drawing the two countries nearer to each other, and he rendered them with that frank- ness, simplicity, and refinement of manner which has given rise to the remark that the most cultivated Americans seem to be incapable of that official pride and self-importance which so often destroys the charm of European diplomatists, and sometimes even of Euro- pean statesmen. Mr. Lowell's simplicity was at least as remarkable as his wit, and his good sense as con- spicuous as his sensitiveness. Indeed, he was a keener and severer critic of his own susceptibilities than any one else could be ; so that two distinct personalities appeared to live together in his brain, one of them exhibiting all the delicacy and sensitiveness of a poet of unusually fine organisation, the other all the shrewdness and knowledge of the world of an unusually wide and caustic cosmo- politan experience. It is not at all usual for qualities embodying these very different and very conspicuous forms of power to be combined in the same man. But in Mr. Lowell they were so combined. His mind was at once fine and sagacious, idealist and practical, humorous and businesslike, witty and sober ; so that while he was fastidious in his methods and delicate in his personal appreciations, of the idiosyncrasies of others, he never flinched from driving home the one practical impression which it became his duty as a diplo- matist to enforce. There was a question at one time whether the late Lord Granville or Mr. Lowell were the more accomplished and subtle in conveying, without offence, the suggestion or conviction which it might be the duty of either of them to impress on any one to whom the communication might not be welcome. And probably this is a point which would be very differently determined by different people. But though equal in courtesy and grace of manner to Lord Granville, we should say that Mr. Lowell had the greater power of the two to impress his meaning, even where it was a meaning painful and difficult to enforce, without conveying even the slightest tincture of personal discourtesy. Lord Granville was perhaps even fuller of the suaviter in mock, but Mr. Lowell never forgot the necessity, where the necessity existed, of conveying also the impression of the fortiter in re. With all his grace, there was a plain- ness of purpose in him which could not be mistaken.
In English and American literature, Mr. Lowell will hold always a very considerable place. The humour and satire of his " Biglow Papers" is unique in our poetry. Perhaps of all efforts in the region of political humour, they show the greatest results, for unquestionably they wielded more power in determining the issue of the con- flict between North and South, than any other literary effort of our century, or perhaps even of our race. They moulded the mind of New England for many years before the conffict broke out. They filled it with scorn for the tem- porisers and worldly politicians. They saturated it with his contemptuous estimate of the various vulgar and subtle self- deceptions by which cruel selfishness hides from itself the greediness, and rapacity of its own motives. They made the pro-slavery men appear ridiculous as well as arrogant. They made the trimmers in the North appear as mean as they were cowardly. And after the contest broke out, they filled the hearts of the Northerners with enthusiasm and courage and self-sacrifice and heroic fortitude. A more remarkable combination of satire and zeal, of scorn and pathos, of penetrating invective and ardent patriotism, of loathing for hypocrisy and of fiery sympathy with the oppressed, was never embodied in any series of political squibs. Indeed, they are much more than squibs. They contain the most scathing exposure of the greediness, the craft, the cowardice, the cruelty of the slaveowning and the trimming sections of the Union, which has ever been thrown into the form of political satire, or adorned with the play of political humour. The letters of Birdofredum Sawin and the creed of John P. Robinson will live in English literature for ages after the last slave has been set free, and probably till the last political trimmer has been held up to scorn,— which can hardly happen much before the advent of the Millennium. Surely never in any political satire was there so much genial fun combined with so caustic and brilliant a power of irony. That was what made the " Biglow Papers" so marvellous a power in the great controversy. There was lambent humour enough to diffuse a sense of genial and hearty laughter over an exposure of selfishness and insincerity so potent as to inspire one with a sort of awe of the man who wielded so sharp a rapier. One hardly knows whether the rich- ness of the humour is more fascinating than the keenness of the irony, or the keenness of the irony more overpowering than the richness of the humour. Mr. Lowell was a lyric poet of some force. But as a humorist and a satirist he wielded verse with a trenchant ease that has seldom been equalled in the history of literature,— never perhaps surpassed.
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