strophes, rather than to the perfection of these poems as artistic
wholes. Lowell's personal lyrics of sorrow, such as "The Changeling,"
"The First SnowFall," "After the Burial," have touched many hearts.

His later lyrics are more subtle, weighted with thought, tinged with
autumnal melancholy. He was a most fertile composer, and, like all the
men of his time and group, produced too much. Yet his patriotic verse
was so admirable in feeling and is still so inspiring to his readers
that one cannot wish it less in quantity; and in the field of political
satire, such as the two series of "Biglow Papers," he had a theme and a
method precisely suited to his temperament. No American has approached
Lowell's success in this difficult genre: the swift transitions from
rural Yankee humor to splendid scorn of evil and to noblest idealism
reveal the full powers of one of our most gifted men. The preacher
lurked in this Puritan from first to last, and the war against Mexico
and the Civil War stirred him to the depths.

His prose, likewise, is a school of loyalty. There was much of Europe in
his learning, as his memorable Dante essay shows, and the traditions of
great English literature were the daily companions of his mind. He was
bookish, as a bookman should be, and sometimes the very richness and
whimsicality of his bookish fancies marred the simplicity and good taste
of his pages. But the fundamental texture of his thought and feeling
was American, and his most characteristic style has the raciness of our
soil. Nature lovers like to point out the freshness and delicacy of his
reaction to the New England scene. Thoreau himself, whom Lowell did not
like, was not more veracious an observer than the author of "Sunthin'
in the Pastoral Line," "Cambridge Thirty Years Ago," and "My Garden
Acquaintance." Yet he watched men as keenly as he did "laylocks" and
bobolinks, and no shrewder American essay has been written than his "On
a Certain Condescension in Foreigners." Wit and humor and wisdom made
him one of the best talkers of his generation. These qualities pervade
his essays and his letters, and the latter in particular reveal those
ardors and fidelities of friendship which men like Emerson and Thoreau
longed after without ever quite experiencing. Lowell's cosmopolitan
reputation, which was greatly enhanced in the last decade of his life,
seemed to his old associates of the Saturday Club only a fit recognition
of the learning, wit, and