literature of
Northern to that of Southern Europe, from the Kalevala and the
Niebelungen Lied to the Provencal poets; from Wolfram von Eschenbach to
Rousseau; from the cycle of romances of Charlemagne and his peers to
Dante and Shakespeare. Some of these lectures, or parts of them, were
afterward prepared for publication, with such changes as were required
to give them proper literary form; and the readers of Lowell's prose
works know what gifts of native power, what large and solid acquisitions
of learning, what wide and delightful survey of the field of life and of
letters, are to be found in his essays on Shakespeare, on Dante, on
Dryden, and on many another poet or prose writer. The abundance of his
resources as critic in the highest sense have never been surpassed, at
least in English literature.

But considerable portions of the earlier as well as of the later
lectures remain unprinted, partly, no doubt, because his points of view
changed with the growth of his learning, and the increasing depth as
well as breadth of his vision. There is but little in manuscript which
he would himself, I believe, have been inclined to print without
substantial change. Yet these unprinted remains contain so much that
seems to me to possess permanent value that, after some question and
hesitation, I have come to the conclusion that selections from them
should be published. The fragments must be read with the fact constantly
held in mind that they do not always represent Lowell's mature opinions;
that, in some instances, they give but the first form of thoughts
developed in other connections in one or other of his later essays; that
they have not received his last revision; that they have the form of
discourse addressed to the ear, rather than that of literary work
finished for the eye.

If so read, I trust that the reader, while he may find little in them to
increase Lowell's well-established reputation, may find much in them to
confirm a high estimate of his position as one of the rare masters of
English prose as well as one of the most capable of critics; much to
interest him alike in their intrinsic character, and in their
illustration of the life and thought of the writer; and much to make him
feel a keen regret that they are the final contributions of their author
to the treasures of English literature.

_Charles Eliot Norton_

* * * * *

Hippel, the German satirist, divides the life of man