FIRST VENTURE.
James Russell Lowell
After his graduation he set about the study of law, and for a short
time even was a clerk in a counting-room; but his bent was strongly
toward literature. There was at that time no magazine of commanding
importance in America, and young men were given to starting magazines
with enthusiasm and very little other capital. Such a one was the
_Boston Miscellany_, launched by Nathan Hale, Lowell's college friend,
and for this Lowell wrote gaily. It lived a year, and shortly after
Lowell himself, with Robert Carter, essayed _The Pioneer_ in 1843. It
lived just three months; but in that time printed contributions by
Lowell, Hawthorne, Whittier, Story, Poe, and Dr. Parsons,--a group
which it would be hard to match in any of the little magazines that
hop across the world's path to-day. Lowell had already collected, in
1841, the poems which he had written and sometimes contributed to
periodicals into a volume entitled _A Year's Life_; but he retained
very little of the contents in later editions of his poems. The book
has a special interest, however, from its dedication in veiled phrase
to Maria White. He became engaged to this lady in the fall of 1840,
and the next twelve years of his life were profoundly affected by her
influence. Herself a poet of delicate power, she brought into his life
an intelligent sympathy with his work; it was, however, her strong
moral enthusiasm, her lofty conception of purity and justice, which
kindled his spirit and gave force and direction to a character which
was ready to respond, and yet might otherwise have delayed active
expression. They were not married until 1844; but they were not far
apart in their homes, and during these years Lowell was making those
early ventures in literature, and first raids upon political and moral
evil, which foretold the direction of his later work, and gave some
hint of its abundance.
About the time of his marriage, he published two books which, by their
character, show pretty well the divided interest of his life. His bent
from the beginning was more decidedly literary than that of any
contemporary American poet. That is to say, the history and art of
literature divided his interest with the production of literature, and
he carried the unusual gift of a rare critical power, joined to hearty
spontaneous creation. It may indeed be guessed that the keenness of
judgment and incisiveness of wit which characterize his examination of
literature sometimes interfered with his poetic power, and made him
liable to question his art when he would rather have expressed it
unchecked. One of the two books was a volume of poems; the other was a
prose work, _Conversations on Some of the Old Poets_. He did not keep
this book alive; but it is interesting as marking the enthusiasm of a
young scholar treading a way then almost wholly neglected in America,
and intimating a line of thought and study in which he afterward made
most noteworthy venture. Another series of poems followed in 1848, and
in the same year _The Vision of Sir Launfal_. Perhaps it was in
reaction from the marked sentiment of his poetry that he issued now a
_jeu d'esprit, A Fable for Critics_, in which he hit off, with a rough
and ready wit, the characteristics of the writers of the day, not
forgetting himself in these lines:
There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb
With a whole bale of _isms_ tied together with rhyme;
He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders,
But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders;
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching
Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching;
His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well,
But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell,
And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem,
At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem.
This, of course, is but a half serious portrait of himself, and it
touches but a single feature; others can say better that Lowell's
ardent nature showed itself in the series of satirical poems which
made him famous, _The Biglow Papers_, written in a spirit of
indignation and fine scorn, when the Mexican War was causing many
Americans to blush with shame at the use of the country by a class for
its own ignoble ends. Lowell and his wife, who brought a fervid
anti-slavery temper as part of her marriage portion, were both
contributors to the _Liberty Bell_; and Lowell was a frequent
contributor to the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, and was, indeed, for a
while a corresponding editor. In June, 1846, there appeared one day in
the _Boston Courier_ a letter from Mr. Ezekiel Biglow of Jaalam to the
editor, Hon. Joseph T. Buckingham, inclosing a poem of his son, Mr.
Hosea Biglow. It was no new thing to seek to arrest the public
attention with the vernacular applied to public affairs. Major Jack
Downing and Sam Slick had been notable examples, and they had many
imitators; but the reader who laughed over the racy narrative of the
unlettered Ezekiel, and then took up Hosea's poem and caught the gust
of Yankee wrath and humor blown fresh in his face, knew that he was in
at the appearance of something new in American literature. The force
which Lowell displayed in these satires made his book at once a
powerful ally of an anti-slavery sentiment, which heretofore had been
ridiculed.