The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays
by James Russell Lowell

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Title: The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays

Author: James Russell Lowell

Release Date: December 27, 2004 [EBook #14481]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE FUNCTION OF THE POET
AND OTHER ESSAYS

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

COLLECTED AND EDITED BY
ALBERT MORDELL

KENNIKAT PRESS, INC./PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y.

THE FUNCTION OF THE POET

1920 by Houghton Mifflin Company

Reissued in 1967 by Kennikat Press

PREFACE

The Centenary Celebration of James Russell Lowell last year showed that
he has become more esteemed as a critic and essayist than as a poet.
Lowell himself felt that his true calling was in critical work rather
than in poetry, and he wrote very little verse in the latter part of his
life. He was somewhat chagrined that the poetic flame of his youth did
not continue to glow, but he resigned himself to his fate; nevertheless,
it should be remembered that "The Vision of Sir Launfal," "The Biglow
Papers," and "The Commemoration Ode" are enough to make the reputation
of any poet.

The present volume sustains Lowell's right to be considered one of the
great American critics. The literary merit of some of the essays herein
is in many respects nowise inferior to that in some of the volumes he
collected himself. The articles are all exquisitely and carefully
written, and the style of even the book reviews displays that quality
found in his best writings which Ferris Greenslet has appropriately
described as "savory." That such a quantity of good literature by so
able a writer as Lowell should have been allowed to repose buried in the
files of old magazines so long is rather unfortunate. The fact that
Lowell did not collect them is a tribute to his modesty, a tribute all
the more worthy in these days when some writers of ephemeral reviews on
ephemeral books think it their duty to collect their opinions in book
form.

The essays herein represent the matu