say on Thoreau is quite as unsatisfactory as Stevenson's. It is true that
the famous longer essays on Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Dryden,
Milton, are full of irrelevant matter, of facile delightful talk which
often leads nowhere in particular. It is true, finally, that a deeper
interest in philosophy and science might have made Lowell's criticism more
fruitful; that he blazed no new paths in critical method; that he
overlooked many of the significant literary movements of his own time in
his own country.

But when one has said all this, even as brilliantly as Mr. Brownell has
phrased it, one has failed to answer the pertinent question: "Why, in spite
of these defects, were Lowell's essays read with such pleasure by so many
intelligent persons on both sides of the Atlantic, and why are they read
still?" The answer is to be found in the whole tradition of the English
bookish essay, from the first appearance of Florio's translation of
Montaigne down to the present hour. That tradition has always welcomed
copious, well-informed, enthusiastic, disorderly, and affectionate talk
about books. It demands gusto rather than strict method, discursiveness
rather than concision, abundance of matter rather than mere neatness of
design. "Here is God's plenty!" cried Dryden in his old age, as he opened
once more his beloved Chaucer; and in Lowell's essays there is surely
"God's plenty" for a book-lover. Every one praises "My Garden
Acquaintance," "A Good Word for Winter," "On a Certain Condescension in
Foreigners" as perfect types of the English familiar essay. But all of
Lowell's essays are discursive and familiar. They are to be measured, not
by the standards of modern French criticism--which is admittedly more deft,
more delicate, more logical than ours--but by the unchartered freedom which
the English-speaking races have desired in their conversations about old
authors for three hundred years. After all,

"There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays
And every single one of them is right."

Lowell, like the rest of us, is to be tested by what he had, not by what he
lacked.

His reputation as a talker about books and men was greatly enhanced by the
addresses delivered during his service as Minister to England. Henry James
once described Lowell's career in London as a tribute to the dominion of
style. It was even more a triumph of character, but the style of these
addresses is undeniable. Upon count