teeped himself
in Spenser and the other Elizabethans. They were his literary ancestors by
as indisputable an inheritance as a Masefield or a Kipling could claim. He
had been brought up to revere Pope. Then he surrendered to Wordsworth and
Keats and Shelley, and his earlier verses, like the early work of Tennyson,
are full of echoes of other men's music. It is also true that in spite of
his cleverness in versifying, or perhaps because of it, he usually showed
little inventiveness in shaping new poetic patterns. His tastes were
conservative. He lacked that restless technical curiosity which spurred Poe
and Whitman to experiment with new forms. But Lowell revealed early
extraordinary gifts of improvisation, retaining the old tunes of English
verse as the basis for his own strains of unpremeditated art. He wrote "A
Fable for Critics" faster than he could have written it in prose. "Sir
Launfal" was composed in two days, the "Commemoration Ode" in one.

It was this facile, copious, enthusiastic poet, not yet thirty, who grew
hot over the Mexican War and poured forth his indignation in an
unforgettable political satire such as no English provincial poet could
possibly have written. What a weapon he had, and how it flashed in his
hand, gleaming with wit and humor and irony, edged with scorn, and weighted
with two hundred years of Puritan tradition concerning right and wrong! For
that, after all, was the secret of its success. Great satire must have a
standard; and Lowell revealed his in the very first number and in one line:

"'T aint your eppylets an' feathers
Make the thing a grain more right."

Some readers to-day dislike the Yankee dialect of these verses. Some think
Lowell struck too hard; but they forget Grant's characterization of the
Mexican War as "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a
weaker nation." There are critics who think the First Series of "Biglow
Papers" too sectional; an exhibition of New England's ancient tendency
towards nullification of the national will. No doubt Lowell underestimated
the real strength of the advocates of national expansion at any cost.
Parson Wilbur thought, you remember, that

"All this big talk of our destinies
Is half on it ign'ance an' t'other half rum."

Neither ignorance nor rum was responsible for the invasion of Belgium; but
at least one can say that the political philosophy which justifies forcible
annexation of territory is taught to