-day in fewer universities than were
teaching it up to 1914. Poets are apt to have the last word, even in
politics.

The war with Mexico was only an episode in the expansion of the slave
power; the fundamental test of American institutions came in the War for
the Union. Here again Lowell touched the heart of the great issue. The
Second Series of "Biglow Papers" is more uneven than the First. There is
less humor and more of whimsicality. But the dialogue between "the Moniment
and the Bridge," "Jonathan to John," and above all, the tenth number, "Mr.
Hosea Biglow to the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly," show the full sweep of
Lowell's power. Here are pride of country, passion of personal sorrow,
tenderness, idyllic beauty, magic of word and phrase.

Never again, save in passages of the memorial odes written after the War,
was Lowell more completely the poet. For it is well known that his was a
divided nature, so variously endowed that complete integration was
difficult, and that the circumstances of his career prevented that steady
concentration of powers which poetry demands. She is proverbially the most
jealous of mistresses, and Lowell could not render a constant allegiance.
At thirty his friends thought of him, rightly enough, as primarily a poet:
but in the next fifteen years he had become a professor, had devoted long
periods to study in Europe, had published prose essays, had turned editor,
first of the _Atlantic_, then of the _North American Review_, and was
writing political articles that guided public opinion in the North. To use
a phrase then beginning to come into general use, he was now a "man of
letters." But during the Civil War, I believe he thought of himself as
simply a citizen of the Union. His general reputation, won in many fields,
gave weight to what he wrote as a publicist. His editorials were one more
evidence of the central pull of the Great Tradition; it steadied his
judgment, clarified his vision, kept his rudder true.

Lowell's political papers during this period, although now little read,
have been praised by Mr. James Ford Rhodes as an exact estimate of public
sentiment, as voicing in energetic diction the mass of the common people of
the North. Lincoln wrote to thank him for one of them, adding, "I fear I am
not quite worthy of all which is therein kindly said of me personally."
Luckily Lincoln never saw an earlier letter in which Lowell thought that
"an ounce of Fremont is worth a pound of