his work,
like most of the first book of poems, Lowell found in later life to be
unworthy of reprinting.

The income from his writings, though small, was sufficient for him to
marry in 1844; and not long after this event he became a regular
contributor to the _Anti-Slavery Standard_. In this appeared the first
series of the _Biglow Papers_, in which, through vigorous prose and
verse, largely in the Yankee dialect of Hosea Biglow, he protested
against the evils that brought on the Mexican War. The collected numbers
of the series were published in 1848 and shared the popularity of two
other of Lowell's greatest works, produced in the same year,--the _Fable
for Critics_ and _The Vision of Sir Launfal_, a beautiful narrative poem
filled with the spirit of Christian brotherhood.

It was not long after this that Lowell began to feel that his work as a
writer for the abolitionist cause was narrowing in its effect. For
"red-hot" reform he had no liking. It seemed to him that the hope of his
cause lay not so much in treating others harshly as in living according
to the high principles that the reformers professed. "The longer I
live," he wrote, "the more am I convinced that the world must be healed
by degrees. I see why Jesus came eating meat and drinking wine and
companying with publicans and sinners. He preached the highest doctrine,
but he lived the life of other men.... Let us sow the best seed we have
... and convert other men by our crops, not by drubbing them with our
hoes or putting them under our harrows." He decided, then, to take life
in a more leisurely way and let the poetic power that he considered his
best gift express itself freely.

In 1851, accompanied by his wife and his two children, Lowell visited
Europe. The months spent abroad gave him much wished-for opportunities
for study and observation, but they were darkened by the death of his
son Walter. Close upon this sorrow came the death of Mrs. Lowell in the
following year (1853), after the return of the family to Elmwood. From
that time for many months the poet could find relief from his keen sense
of loss only in his literary work, and in the companionship of his
daughter Mabel, the only one of his four children who had lived.

Some lectures on the English poets given at the Lowell institute in
1854-55 found so much favor with the authorities at Harvard College that
soon afterward he was appointed to succeed Longfellow as professor of
foreign languages a