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Biography and Characterization: James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays

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Biography and Characterization: James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record David J. Brewer, et al., eds.  The World’s Best Essays.  1900. Biography and Characterization:
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
By William Vincent Byars (1857–1938) THE “BIGLOW PAPERS” of 1846–48 immortalized Lowell. Those who admire most his later work in the upper walks of literary criticism have not demonstrated to the satisfaction of the public at large—which in every such case is the court of last resort—that Lowell did not surpass himself for a lifetime in them. He was transported out of himself by the events of the decade of the Mexican War, and his hot indignation at the manner in which that weak republic was overrun drove him to humor in simple despair of doing the subject justice by serious denunciation. When he makes Mr. Biglow quote the patriotic editor of the time, we can see the white heat of Lowell’s indignation under the pretense of humor in such lines as these:—  “I du believe wutever trash   ’ll keep the people in blindness,— Thet we the Mexicuns can thrash   Right inter brotherly kindness, Thet bombshells, grape, an’ powder ’n’ ball   Air good-will’s strongest magnets, Thet peace, to make it stick at all,   Must be druv in with bagnets.” This whole essay, “The Pious Editor’s Creed,” both in its prose and in its still more effective doggerel verse, remains unsurpassed in its field, and one generation after another which hears the cant and witnesses the crimes by which greed supports rapacity, will thank Lowell that when the press and the pulpit were alike committed to the species of “civilization” which goes out “with a Bible in one hand and a revolver in the other,” he had the courage and the spirit of human sympathy which transcended all restrictions of provincialism and spoke for the universal rights of mankind. Of the second series of “Biglow Papers” which he wrote when the whole country was paying the penalty for the Mexican conquest, it is unnecessary to speak. He lived to regret, as every other American of his moral plane must regret, that the prophetic indignation he felt in ’48 became a part of the subconsciousness of that higher general intellect which is as enduring as the race and as inflexible in its retributions as the great principles which control the movement of the tides and direct the course of the hurricane. Had he lived a century later, Lowell might have become a very great poet. But his sympathies with the world-struggles of his time tempted him always to use his poetical faculty as a weapon, where otherwise it might have been used as a lamp. “The Vision of Sir Launfal” is an admirable poem, but it is as far surpassed in force by the best of his political poems as his “Biglow Papers” surpass in reality the critical essays of his later years. It would be invidious and unjustifiable to say that one who had written so much and such meritorious verse is at his best in his prose, but it is certainly true that Lowell never sacrificed the critical instinct to the poetic; and of the critical faculties prose is not only the natural, but the only natural vehicle of expression.

1   Lowell was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 22d, 1819. Graduating at Harvard College in 1838, he published three years later “A Year’s Life,” and followed it up in 1844 with a second book of verse. Others followed in 1848, and at intervals until 1876. “The Vision of Sir Launfal” in 1845, “A Fable for Critics” in 1848, and the “Biglow Papers” in 1846–48, had given him full assurance of an enduring reputation, and when Longfellow resigned his professorship at Harvard, Lowell became his successor. From 1857 to 1862 he edited the Atlantic Monthly, and from 1863 to 1872 the North American Review. From 1877 to 1885 he remained abroad as minister to Spain and to Great Britain. After his return he delivered a course of lectures on the “English Dramatists” at the Lowell Institute. Besides lecturing and speaking on subjects of popular interest, he continued to take the most active interest in politics until his death, August 12th, 1891. With George William Curtis and William Cullen Bryant, he gives the best illustration we have had in the United States of the power of the “Scholar in Politics.” From the time he wrote the “Biglow Papers” until his death, he carried at the point of his single pen at least as much power as the greatest newspaper in the country. He made as many mistakes in using it as most men make in learning to realize their capacities and responsibilities; but it is his chief glory, as it must be of every efficient man, that he did not allow the dread of mistakes or the shame of failure to prevent him from doing his best to the top of his bent. He was essentially a New Englander, and a great New Englander. When continental America produces a man representing to itself Lowell’s relation to New England, we shall certainly have a man indeed.

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