James Russell Lowell. By Ferris Greenslet. (A. Constable and Co.
6s. net.)—It is very pleasant indeed to be able to read in this book what one most likes to hear about the most gifted and genial of American humourists. (If we hesitate to use the phrase, it is not in the least from any fear of exaggeration, but because it may seem to ignore the other, the serious, side of Lowell's genius.) There was some storm in Lowell's early life,— a disappointment in love, and a general darkness of outlook ; when he was twenty he even contemplated suicide. "I remember putting a cocked pistol to my head, and being afraid to pull the trigger." Probably, as his biographer suggests, it was not his courage that failed so much as his humour that prevailed. Then he took to public affairs. He was an ardent Abolitionist, and even an advocate of woman's suffrage and total abstinence. At twenty-two he made the first of his literary earnings, receiving "a small but very acceptable honorarium" for some verse which he sent to a magazine,—the ways were not so thronged in 1840 as they are now. In this year his first volume of poems, "A Year's Life," appeared. Nominally his occupation was the Law. This he gave up a little later, and founded a magazine, the Pioneer, which lived for three numbers only, partly in consequence of an unfortunate failure in the editor's eyesight. Its only result was to leave him with a debt of £360. However, his literary affairs generally prospered, and in 1844 he was married. In 1848 the "Fable for Critics" appeared, to be followed very shortly by " Sir Launfal," and then by the " Biglow Papers." These are' is chief titles to fame. The third he certainly never surpassed. In 1853 his wife, a very remarkable woman, who had done much to shape his intellectual work, died. In 1854-55 he gave a highly successful course of lectures on English poets at Boston, and while ifwas going on wasappointed to succeed Long- fellow as Professor of French, Spanish, and Belles-Lettres at Harvard, with the generous permission which bad been accorded to his predecessor of spending a year of pieParation in Europe. We must quickly pass over his academical career, and come to the year 1817, when, more American°, he was appointed to represent the United States at . Madrid. From this place he was transferred in 1880 to London. The years that f011owed were, but for an overwhelming private sorrow, the happiest and the most successful of his life. These literary diploinatidts seem to do their work at least as well as the men who are regularly trained to it. In 1885 Lowell was recalled ; probably he would have resigned in any case; but ha left behind him a reputation for ability and savoir faire. He had had some difficult things to do and had done them well ; in his social capacity he had been, as might have been expected, admirable. Mr. Greenslet's book is an excellent performance. A better portrait of the man one could not wish to see. We may venture to remark that the text us receptus of Malherbe's famous poem is " Le pauvre dans sa cabane oil le chaume le oeuvre," not, as we see it here, "qui de chaume so couvre." Lowell actually quoted it in one of his despatches home. " Bellettristic" is a barbarous word, though it has the authority of Matthew Arnold.
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