oks, and a few others.

There was not a large sale for books of poetry in this country at that
time, and these first ventures of Lowell fared much like other books of
that day. If he was not quite as badly off as poor Thoreau, who, a year
after his first thousand was printed, wrote to a friend that he was now
the owner of a library of about a thousand volumes, over nine hundred of
which he wrote himself, he certainly was not far ahead of that original
writer in the matter of sales. His books, however, attracted some
attention, and could hardly be classed under the head he proposes for
certain books, in the "Fable for Critics," namely, "literature suited to
desolate islands,"--

"Such as Satan, if printing had then been invented,
As the climax of woe would to Job have presented."

Mr. Lowell was married in 1844 to Miss Maria White, of Watertown near
Cambridge, the lady to whom some of his first poems were addressed, and
who was herself a writer of very sweet and tender verse. Mrs. Lowell was
most beautiful and accomplished, a fit wife for a poet, and the maker of
a restful but inspiring home. Beautiful children came to them to gladden
their lives for a little season; but all except one were recalled in
early infancy, and the grief of the parents was both acute and lasting.
Many a time, as he tells us, he--

"looked at the snow-fall,
And thought of the leaden sky
That arched o'er our first great sorrow
When that mound was heaped so high."

And only in after-years he--

"Remembered the gradual patience
That fell from that cloud like snow,
Flake by flake, healing and hiding
The scar of our deep-plunged woe."

For many years a pair of tiny baby-shoes, half-worn, hung over a
picture-frame in the poet's study, and told their sad tale of the little
feet that had gone on before. Like Sydney Smith, Lowell learned to think
that "children are horribly insecure,--that the life of a parent is the
life of a gambler;" and he held the one who still remained to him with
a trembling grasp for a long time. Happily, she was spared to him, and
still adds interest and pleasure to his life.

Mr. and Mrs. Lowell went to Europe in 1851, and spent a year in travel,
partly for the benefit of Mrs. Lowell's health, which was always
delicate. They spent the greater part of their time in Italy, although
they made brief tours in France, Switzerland, and England. About a year
after their return Mrs. Lowell