Education
His acquaintance with books and his schooling began early. He learned
his letters at a dame school. Mr. William Wells, an Englishman, opened
a classical school in one of the spacious Tory Row houses near
Elmwood, and, bringing with him English public school thoroughness and
severity, gave the boy a drilling in Latin, which he must have made
almost a native speech to judge by the ease with which he handled it
afterward in mock heroics. Of course he went to Harvard College. He
lived at his father's house, more than a mile away from the college
yard; but this could have been no great privation to him, for he had
the freedom of his friends' rooms, and he loved the open air. The Rev.
Edward Everett Hale has given a sketch of their common life in
college. "He was a little older than I," he says, "and was one class
in advance of me. My older brother, with whom I lived in college, and
he were most intimate friends. He had no room within the college
walls, and was a great deal with us. The fashion of Cambridge was then
literary. Now the fashion of Cambridge runs to social problems, but
then we were interested in literature. We read Byron and Shelley and
Keats, and we began to read Tennyson and Browning. I first heard of
Tennyson from Lowell, who had borrowed from Mr. Emerson the little
first volume of Tennyson. We actually passed about Tennyson's poems in
manuscript. Carlyle's essays were being printed at the time, and his
_French Revolution_. In such a community--not two hundred and fifty
students all told,--literary effort was, as I say, the fashion, and
literary men, among whom Lowell was recognized from the very first,
were special favorites. Indeed, there was that in him which made him a
favorite everywhere."
Lowell was but fifteen years old when he entered college in the class
which graduated in 1838. He was a reader, as so many of his fellows
were, and the letters which he wrote shortly after leaving college
show how intent he had been on making acquaintance with the best
things in literature. He began also to scribble verse, and he wrote
both poems and essays for college magazines. His class chose him
their poet for Class Day, and he wrote his poem; but he was careless
about conforming to college regulations respecting attendance at
morning prayers; and for this was suspended from college the last term
of his last year, and not allowed to come back to read his poem. "I
have heard in later years," says Dr. Hale, "what I did not know then,
that he rode down from Concord in a canvas-covered wagon, and peeped
out through the chinks of the wagon to see the dancing around the
tree. I fancy he received one or two visits from his friends in the
wagon; but in those times it would have been treason to speak of
this." He was sent to Concord for his rustication, and so passed a few
weeks of his youth amongst scenes dear to every lover of American
letters.