certain that his readers are more numerous than those of any poet except the Psalmist David.”—F. H. Underwood, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, p. 233.

"Longfellow seldom gives us new thoughts, but he puts our best thoughts into the best words with that high art which conceals itself. He cannot create, but he cannot touch without adorning. There is nothing in his works of the world-revealing insight of the deepest penetrating imagination; but from nature, man, and books he constantly throws new illuminations on homely truth. [His poems] enhance our joys, soften our sorrows, and mix like music with our toil, floating upwards in storm and calm. "John Nichol, American Literature, p. 196.

LECTURE II.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891).

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Lowell was born in Cambridge, Mass., of distinguished ancestry. His grandfather, John Lowell, was a member of the Continental Congress and Chief Justice of the first U. S. Circuit Court. His father, a Unitarian minister, was a man of great literary culture. James Russell Lowell is supposed to have inherited his poetic temperament from his mother. In his home at Elmwood he imbibed much that found reflection in his life and literary productions. He disliked school routine, but had a great love of books. In 1834 he entered Harvard, taking his degree in 1838. He learned sufficient law to be admitted to the bar, but the profession had little in it to attract Lowell, who early manifested a preference for literature. During most of the time he was supposed to be practicing law, he was reading and writing for periodicals. In 1843 he started The Pioneer. The following year he was married to Maria White, a woman of more than ordinary literary tastes and ability. Among other trials the death of Lowell's children, and that of his wife while abroad, added sorrows to his life, easily traced in some of his poems. He sought diversion in work, and his lectures on the English poets before the Lowell Institute (1855) tended to enhance his reputation. The same year he was appointed to succeed Longfellow in the professorship of Modern Languages at Harvard. This work gave him the opportunity to develop his literary and scholarly tastes. Lowell had an instinctive hatred for injustice of whatever form, and the slave problem brought out some of his most spirited poems. The influence of his wife also is seen in his anti-slavery productions, In 1857 Lowell married for his second wife

Frances Dunlap. Aside from his professional duties, which were somewhat irksome, he was editor of the Atlantic Monthly from 1857 to 1861, and of the North American Review from 1863 to 1872. His critical powers were largely developed in this editorial work. During all these years, from 1845 onwards, Lowell was writing poetry of various kinds, from The Vision of Sir Launfal to The Biglow Papers. Essentially a poet and scholar, Lowell was a man of affairs also, and was successively Minister to Spain (1877–1880) and Minister to England (1880-1885). Lowell was largely instrumental in drawing England and the United States into a closer relationship. His public services led to the production of some of his best literary and critical efforts. He was greatly honored both in America and in England. In 1873 Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D. C. L., and in 1884 Harvard the degree of LL. D. The death of his wife in 1885 and the infirmities of age resulted in his own death in 1891.

BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES.

G. W. Curtis, James Russell Lowell, An Address (Harpers, 1892). F. H. Underwood, James Russell Lowell, A Biographical Sketch (Osgood & Co., 1882). H. E. Scudder, James Russell Lowell, A Biography (H. M. & Co., 1901). E. E. Brown, Life of James Russell Lowell (Werner, 1887). E. E. Hale, James Russell Lowell and His Friends (H. M. & Co., 1899). J. L. and J. B. Gilder, Authors at Home (Cassell). W. D. Howells, Literary Friends and Acquaintance (Harpers, 1900). Lowell's Letters, 2 vols., ed. by C. E. Norton (Harpers, 1894).

CRITICAL REFERENCES.

Richard Garnett, Introduction to My Study Windows (London, 1886). F. H. Underwood, The Poet and the Man (Lee and Shepard, 1893). W. D. Howells, My Literary Passions (Harpers, 1895). G. E. Woodberry, Makers of Literature. Henry James, Essays in London and Elsewhere (Harpers, 1893). G. W. Curtis, Orations and Addresses, Vol. III (Harpers, 1894). William Watson, Lowell as a Critic (Macmillan Co., 1893). E. C. Stedman, Poets of America (H. M. & Co., 1885). H. R. Haweis, American Humourists (Chatto & Windus, 1883). For magazine articles see Alfred H. Welsh, English Masterpiece Course. See also "General References" above.

AUTHOR'S WORKS.

Class Poem, 1838. A Year's Life, 1841. Poems, 1844. Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, 1845. The Vision of Sir Launfal, 1848. Poems, 1848. A Fable for Critics, 1848. Biglow Papers, 1st Series,

Com

1848; 2d Series, 1867. Poems, 1849. Fireside Travels, 1864. memoration Ode, 1865. Poetical Works, 1869. Under the Willows, 1869. The Cathedral, 1869. Among My Books, 1st Series, 1870; 2d Series, 1876. My Study Windows, 1871. Three Memorial Poems, 1876. Democracy, and Other Addresses, 1887. Heartsease and Rue, 1888. Political Essays, 1888. Latest Literary Essays and Addresses, 1892. The Old English Dramatists, 1892. Letters, 1893.

The complete works of Lowell are published in the Riverside Edition, 12 vols. The complete poetical works are also published in the Cambridge, Cabinet, and Household Editions, each in one volume.

REQUIRED READING.

The University Extension examination on Lowell will comprise the following:

POEMS: The Present Crisis, Biglow Papers, The Courtin', Indian Summer Reverie, To the Dandelion, Under the Willows, After the Burial, She Came and Went, The Changeling, The Vision of Sir Launfal, Commemoration Ode.

PROSE: Abraham Lincoln, Democracy, and either My Garden Acquaintance or Among My Books.

LECTURE OUTLINE.

I. Influences Affecting Lowell's Work in Literature.—Ancestry, early education and surroundings (contrast Whittier). Residence at Elmwood. Marriage, and the slavery question. Travel abroad. Professorship at Harvard. The Atlantic Monthly. Minister to Madrid and St. James.

II. Lowell as a Patriotic Writer.-Natural antipathy for injustice. Slavery a fit subject for righteous indignation. Moral sincerity and poetic power brought out by the attempts to extend slavery (see The Present Crisis). Patriotism with Lowell a genuine sentiment aroused by concrete examples (see Abraham Lincoln, and Commemoration Ode).

III. Lowell the Humorist and Satirist.-An examination of Biglow Papers, Fable for Critics, What Mr. Robinson Thinks, etc. Best effects secured through turn of phrase, unexpected rhymes (cf. Hudibras), Yankee dialect, biting sarcasm, odd figures, extravagant whims and incongruities, a sparkling wit and a racy style,—and, above all, by hard common sense and

flashes of perennial truths. Lowell and Holmes compared as humorists.

IV. Lowell the Lyric Poet.-Too analytical, too obscure in thought and allusion, too careless in use of figures of speech to take first rank as a lyrist. Spontaneity and melody lacking. Some exceptions. Allegory and didacticisms obtrude too frequently. Over-weighted thought forbids fluency and luminosity. But in Lowell's best verse the first essentials of poetry are present in no small degree, sincerity, passion, imagination (cf. The Dandelion, The Changeling, Under the Willows, After the Burial, Rhacus). The Vision of Sir Launfal as representing Lowell's highest art as a poet.

V. Lowell the Essayist and Critic.-Range and depth of interest in men and affairs, in books and in learning. Variety of subject matter and expression equaled only by vigor of mind and wholesomeness of spirit. Conscious faults: obscurities, vagaries, anticlimaxes, puns and even coarsenesses thrust into thoughts and feelings of finest texture; careless style and structure, discursiveness, lack of restraint. However, on the whole, our best body of prose works.

VI. Lowell as America's Greatest Man of Letters.-Range of and desire for learning. Philosophic thought. Manly sincerity. The problems of life and death. Poet of freedom, of nature, and of human nature. A vigorous optimism. A dominant personality. A cosmopolitan spirit. Vastness of literary production. A thoroughly "literary" man.

CRITICAL APPRECIATIONS.

"Few Americans know how to use the classics with due reticence; Mr. Lowell constantly abuses them. His pages are perpetually pestered with schoolboy commonplaces, and confused by abstractions

more bombastic than metaphysical. Few of his ballads are wanting in fine lines; but most of them are spoilt by incongruities. "-John Nichol, American Literature, p. 223.

"He is, indisputably, a poet, but, more of a philosopher than a singer. And he is a poet of nature, with this addition, that when he sees a landscape he paints, and, at the same time, looks through it, and perceives its true significance and its ideal relations."F. H. Underwood, The Poet and the Man, p. 98.

a poet who is our most brilliant and learned critic and who has given us our best native idyl, our best and most complete work in dialectic verse, and the noblest heroic ode that America has produced, each and all ranking with the first of their kinds of English literature of the modern time."-E.. C. Stedman, Poets of America, p. 347.

"His genius was an instrument that responded in affluent harmony to the power that made him a humorist and that made him a poet, and appointed him rarely to be quite either alone."-W. D. Howells, Literary Friends and Acquaintance, p. 250.

"His literary sense was a constituent part of all his thinking and feeling, adding to everything that he wrote an artistic quality without in the least diminishing the impression of earnestness and sincerity."W. C. Bronson, A Short History of American Literature, p. 249.

"In a liberal sense, and somewhat as Emerson stands for American thought, the poet Lowell has become our representative man of letters."-E. C. Stedman, Poets of America, p. 304.

LECTURE III.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882).

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Born at Boston, the son of a clergyman whose ancestors for six generations had been clergymen, all of them men of sterling character. Ralph Waldo's father died when the former was but eight years old. The boy's mother was left in straitened circumstances, and the son was inured to hardships from the start. (See Angels of Toil and Want.) His aunt, a woman of strong intellect and devout spirit, was a great influence in moulding his character. He was quiet and studious at school, caring little for sports, and showing no special talent or genius. Working his way through college, he took his degree in 1821. After a short and by no means brilliant experience in school-teaching, Emerson took up the study of divinity, and was appointed to preach at the Second Church in Boston, 1829. About this time he was married, but his wife died in 1831. Owing to certain scruples concerning the formal side of religion, Emerson left his charge in Boston in 1832, and the same year sailed for Europe owing to declining health. Abroad he met a number of men of letters, particularly Thomas Carlyle, with whom he established a lifelong friendship. (See Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle.) In 1833 Emerson began his long lecture career. In 1835 he married a second time, and settled at Concord for the rest