Chapter IV

_POEMS_, _THE BIGLOW PAPERS_, _FABLE FOR CRITICS_, _VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL_

Lowell’s first poetic flights were strong-winged. ‘Threnodia,’ ‘The Sirens,’ ‘Summer Storm,’ ‘To Perdita, Singing,’ whatever their faults, have a richness, a melody, a freedom of structure, an almost careless grace, that are captivating. Here was no painful effort in production with the inevitable result of frigidity and hardness.

The poet’s gift matured rapidly. There is strength in such poems as ‘Prometheus,’ ‘Columbus,’ ‘A Glance behind the Curtain,’ rare beauty in ‘A Legend of Brittany,’ ‘Hebe,’ and ‘Rhœcus,’ a mystical power in the haunting lines of ‘The Sower,’ passion and uplift in ‘The Present Crisis,’ ‘Anti-Apis,’ the lines ‘To W. L. Garrison,’ and the ‘Ode to France,’ while in ‘An Interview with Miles Standish’ is a promise of that satirical power which was presently to find complete expression in _The Biglow Papers_.

Early in his career Lowell announced his theory of the poet’s office, which is to inspire to high thought and noble action, not merely to please with pretty fancies and melodious verse. The ‘Ode,’ written in 1841, is an expression of his poetic faith. The ethical and reforming bent in Lowell’s character was so strong as to make it difficult for him, true bard though he was, to look on poetry as an art to be cultivated for itself alone.

Inspiriting as were stanzas like ‘The Present Crisis,’ Lowell’s power became most effective in the anti-slavery struggle when the outbreak of the Mexican War led to the writing of _The Biglow Papers_. Printed anonymously in a journal, copied into other newspapers, the question of their authorship much debated, these satires were at last adjudicated to the man who wrote them, but not until he himself had heard it demonstrated ‘in the pauses of a concert’ that he was wholly incapable of such a performance.

Of the characters of the little drama, Hosea Biglow, the country youth, stands for the plain common-sense of New England, opposed to the extension of slavery whatever the means employed, and above all by legalized murder with an accompaniment of drums and fifes. The Reverend Homer Wilbur acts as ‘chorus,’ and by his learned comments surrounds the productions of the country muse with an atmosphere of scholarship. Birdofredom Sawin is the clown of the little show.

Many finer touches have become obscure by the lapse of time, and _The Biglow Papers_ is now provided with historical notes; but the energy, the spirit, and the unfailing humor of the work are perennial. Lowell was most fortunate in his verbal felicities. Who could have foreseen that so much danger lurked in a middle initial, or that a plain name of the sort borne by the former senator from Middlesex contained such comic potentialities?

We were gittin’ on nicely up here to our village,
With good old idees o’ wut’s right an’ wut aint,
We kind o’ thought Christ went agin war an’ pillage,
An’ thet eppyletts worn’t the best mark of a saint;
But John P.
Robinson he
Sez this kind o’ thing’s an exploded idee.

Lowell was surprised at his own success. What he at first thought ‘a mere fencing stick’ proved to be a weapon. The blade was two-edged, and the Yankees did well to fall back a little when he lifted it against the enemy. For in writing _The Biglow Papers_ Lowell took real delight in noting the oddities and laughing at the foibles of his own New Englanders, a people whom he loved with all tenderness, but to whose faults he was not in the least blind.

In 1861 the little puppets were taken out of the box where they had lain for fifteen years and furbished up for a new tragi-comedy. The second series of _The Biglow Papers_ was read no less eagerly than the first had been. Quite as brilliant as their predecessors, the later poems are more impassioned, and in those touching on English hostility to the North the satire is bitterly stinging.

While the numbers of the first series were in course of publication Lowell produced a rhymed primer of contemporary American literature under the title of _A Fable for Critics_. It was an improvisation, and therefore the buoyancy, the jovial off-hand manner, the impudence even, were a matter of course and all in its favor. Often penetrating and just in his criticisms, Lowell was invariably amusing, and in the cleverness of the rhyme and word play quite inimitable.

Two months after the appearance of the _Fable_ the popular _Vision of Sir Launfal_ was published. Though undoubtedly read more for the sake of the preludes than for the slight but touching story, it is by no means certain that the preludes, brought out as independent poems, could have won the number of readers they now have. In other words, _The Vision of Sir Launfal_ has a unity which it seems on first acquaintance to lack.