I send herewith a poem of Miss Barrett[37] which came with the letters you sent me. She sent three others, and promises more in a very pleasant letter. I shall send on quite a budget of prose, I hope, soon, but cannot use my eyes much. I am going to answer an article on the copyright question by O’Sullivan in the forthcoming Democratic Review. I must see proofs of Miss Barrett and all my own pieces.... I must not write any more or I shall not get home these six months.
January 22.... My dear, good, kindest, best friend, you know that I would not write a word that should knowingly pain your loving heart. So forgive whatever there has been in my other letters to trouble, and only reflect how anxious I must naturally feel, away from home as I am, and left a great part of the time to the solitude of my own thoughts by the total deprivation of the use of my eyes.
Willis is under Dr. E.’s care also, and yesterday introduced himself to me, and said all manner of kind things. He had meant to write to me, giving me his experience in editing, and had long been anxious to know me, &c., &c. This morning he came and took me to church with him, and altogether overwhelms me with attention. His wife is a very nice pretty little Englishwoman, with a very sweet voice. W. said he wrote the notice in the Jonathan as the most judicious way of helping the magazine, giving your own philosophic theory as to its possible results....
January 24.... I must write an article for the next number, and yet I do not see very well how I am to do it. For I can scarcely get through one letter without pain, and everything that I write retards my case and so keeps me the longer here. But I love Keats so much that I think I can write something good about him.
Willis continues very kind, and I begin to think that he really likes me. At least he said the same to Dr. E. about me that he told me to my face. He told the Dr. (I copy it the more readily that I know it will delight you) that I had written the most remarkable poem that had been written in this country, and that I was destined to be the brightest star that had yet risen in American literature. He told me, also, that I was more popular and more talked about and read at this time than any other poet in the land, and he is going (or was) to write an article in the Jonathan to that effect. These things you must keep in your own heart. He promises to help the Pioneer in every way he can, and he will be able to do us a great deal of good, as he has last week taken half the ownership of the Jonathan on condition of solely editing it. He talks of paying me to write letters for him from Boston....
John Neal lectures here to-night. I have not seen him, and I do not know whether I shall hear him, for if I get a package from you to-day, as I hope I shall, I shall hardly have 25 cents left to buy a ticket with. So you think we have succeeded. They are the pleasantest words I have heard since I have been here. But we must not feel too sure yet. I think we shall succeed. Folks here (some of them) say that we shall beyond our utmost expectation....
Saturday.... You shall have some copy from me on Wednesday morning if I get blind by it. Where is Brownson? Don’t print nonsense. Better not be out till the middle of March. But you are only trying to frighten me. Do not print nonsense, for God’s sake. Print the history of Mesmerism. Write an article on Japan. If I were to read over your letters again in order to answer them categorically, I should not be able to use my eyes for a week. You do not recollect that I undergo an application or an operation every day. If I could see you for ten minutes I could arrange all. I perhaps may come on and return hither again. Do not hint this to any one, for if Maria heard of it, she would be expecting anxiously every day. I am sick to death of this place, yet it does me good spiritually to stay here. I must not write any more. In your next letter ask all questions and I will answer....
Lowell stayed on in New York on account of his eyes till the end of February. At a period when Mrs. Child could gravely write and publish in a book “Letters from New York,” to go to New York from Cambridge was nearly equivalent to a winter abroad. As his letters to Carter show, with the disabilities under which he labored Lowell could do little at reading or writing, and he used the opportunity for social occupation. Page he had already come to know, and he had made the acquaintance through the Miscellany of Charles F. Briggs, whom now he took into warm friendship. Mr. Briggs was a diligent man of letters, best known to the public of that day as “Harry Franco,” and through him Lowell fell in with many writers and book people. But he was most impatient to return, and now that his magazine had ceased he found himself with no routine labors, but with a mind full to overflowing.
The real pursuit of Lowell during 1843 was poetry, and poetry of a lofty character. In the Ode which he wrote in 1841 beginning,—
“In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder”—