1819-1891]

After receiving his degree from Harvard in 1838, Lowell decided upon the
law as the profession most suitable for him to follow, for at that time
a literary career in the United States held out no assurance of a
living, even to the best writers. In the preceding year he had written
to his intimate friend Shackford: "I thought your brother Charles was
studying law. I intend to study that myself, and probably shall be Chief
Justice of the United States." This modest prediction, however, was not
to be fulfilled, for after completing a course at the Harvard Law School
in 1840 and practicing with but slight interest and success for two
years, he gave up the law for a more congenial occupation.

His letters to his confidants "Shack" and Loring during the years at
college show his aspiration to become a poet. He reports from time to
time his progress in verse making and comments more or less favorably on
his "effusions." This writing of _pottery_--as it pleased him to call
it--continued with more serious interest after his graduation, so that
in 1840 he was ready to publish a volume of verse entitled "A Year's
Life."

The same year was marked by another event of special importance,--his
engagement to Maria White, a young woman who was herself a poet and who
was deeply interested in all the movements of thought that were making
toward freedom and justice before the Civil War. Her influence upon
Lowell was to strengthen greatly his confidence in his own best powers
as a man and a poet and to help develop in him the broad, kind
democratic feeling for his fellow-men that most endears him to his
readers. This growth of the poet's character seems the more remarkable
when it is considered that his father, a Unitarian minister, was a man
who, though most generous and well-meaning in his regard for others, was
well enough content with conditions in his country to feel little
sympathy with the reforms then being urged for securing fuller liberty
and equality. In his new enthusiasm Lowell turned away from the
influence of his younger days and became devoted to the cause of
abolition.

In 1842, after abandoning the law, he founded a magazine, _The Pioneer_,
which, however, was issued only three times. After this unsuccessful
venture he went back to his poetry, and late in 1843 published a second
volume of verse. In the following year appeared his first critical
studies in prose, _Conversations on Some of the Old Poets_. T