"IN a liberal sense," wrote Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman some years ago, "and somewhat as Emerson stands for American thought, the poet Lowell has become our representative man of letters.' Lowell still stands as America's representative man of letters, not because he has struck the highest note, but because he has the greatest breadth and versatility, and has woven into his prose and verse more of the warp and woof of American life and thought than any one else. It is a far cry from the noble and lofty strain of the "Commemoration Ode" to the quaint humor and shrewdness of Hosea Biglow, and yet both have made a strong appeal in widely different ways, not only to America, but to all the English-speaking world.

James Russell Lowell was born in Cambridge, Mass., on February 22, 1819. His father was the Rev. Charles Lowell, and his grandfather was the Judge John Lowell who founded the Lowell Institute in Boston. He graduated at Harvard College in 1838, and was admitted to the bar in Boston in 1840. He never practiced law, however, but began his career as an author shortly after his admission to the bar, by publishing a volume of poems under the title of "A Year's Life." His first book was never republished, though a few of the poems in it were preserved by the author. In 1844 Lowell married Maria White, the gifted woman who had inspired "A Year's Life." Being an ardent abolitionist, she influenced Lowell into becoming a warm advocate of this cause, which he espoused with his whole heart and soul, and advocated with glowing words and flaming pen.

Indignation at the Mexican War and hatred of slavery were the direct inspiration of the humorous but caustic "Big

Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold,
As if her veins were sapless and old,

And she rose up decrepitly

For a last dim look at earth and sea.

II

Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate,
For another heir in his earldom sate;

An old, bent man, worn out and frail,

He came back from seeking the Holy Grail;
Little he recked of his earldom's loss,

No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross,
But deep in his soul the sign he wore,
The badge of the suffering and the poor.

III

Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare
Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air,
For it was just at the Christmas time;
So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime,
And sought for a shelter from cold and snow
In the light and warmth of long-ago;

He sees the snake-like caravan crawl

O'er the edge of the desert, black and small,
Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one,
He can count the camels in the sun,

As over the red-hot sands they pass

To where, in its slender necklace of grass,

The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, And with its own self like an infant played, And waved its signal of palms.

IV

"For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;"-
The happy camels may reach the spring,
But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing,
The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone,
That cowers beside him, a thing as lone
And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas
In the desolate horror of his disease.

V

And Sir Launfal said, "I behold in thee
An image of Him who died on the tree;

Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns,

Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns,

And to thy life were not denied

The wounds in the hands and feet and side:

Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me;

Behold, through him, I give to Thee!"

VI

Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes
And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he
Remembered in what a haughtier guise

He had flung an alms to leprosie,

When he girt his young life up in gilded mail
And set forth in search of the Holy Grail.
The heart within him was ashes and dust;
He parted in twain his single crust,
He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink,
And gave the leper to eat and drink:

'T was a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread,

'T was water out of a wooden bowl,—

Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed,

And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty soul.

VII

As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face,

A light shone round about the place;

The leper no longer crouched at his side,

But stood before him glorified,

Shining and tall and fair and straight

As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate,

Himself the Gate whereby men can

Enter the temple of God in Man.

VIII

His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, That mingle their softness and quiet in one

And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,

And over it softly her warm ear lays:
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light,

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen

Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,

And lets his illumined being o'errun

With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?

Now is the high-tide of the year,

And whatever of life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer,

Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
We are happy now because God wills it;

No matter how barren the past may have been,
'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green;
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing;

The breeze comes whispering in our ear,
That dandelions are blossoming near,

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,

HOLMES, born in 1809 and dying in 1894, was the descendant of a scholarly New England ancestry. After graduating at Harvard, he began life as a professor and practitioner in medicine; he was married in 1840, and lived all his life in Boston. He twice visited Europe, first as a young fellow of one-and-twenty, and again, after more than half a century, as a veteran of letters, known and loved in both hemispheres. Of all our writers, he is the sunniest, the wittiest, and most discursive, and one of the least uneven.

Until 1857, Holmes had written nothing beyond occasional poems, excellent of their kind, but not of themselves sufficient to make a reputation. But in that year, the Atlantic Monthly was started and Holmes contributed to it a series of unique essays entitled, "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." They had the form of familiar dialogues between a group of diverse but common types in a boarding-house, upon all manner of topics. They immediately caught the fancy of all readers, and lifted Holmes to a literary altitude where he ever after remained. Two years later "Elsie Venner," his first novel, a study in heredity and in American village character, was published; it is good, but not in the same class with the best imaginative work. The same criticism must be passed、 on "The Guardian Angel," his second effort in fiction, which appeared in 1867. Both have so much merit that one wonders not to find them better. But they make it plain that Holmes's proper field was the discursive essay and the occasional poem; and here his fame is solid and secure.

Wit rather than humor characterizes Holmes; yet he has the tenderness which usually accompanies only the latter. His