The public, meanwhile, began at once to exercise that censorship which is a somewhat whimsical but very substantial witness to the value of an enterprise which is only technically private. The Lowell Institute, for example, is on a foundation so exclusively personal that there is not even a nominal board of trustees to be consulted in its management: the courses of lectures which it offers are absolutely free; yet ever since its establishment it has been subjected to criticism, good or ill natured, which would seem to imply some indefeasible right on the part of the public that criticises. Really, the criticism is simply an ingenuous expression of the profound interest which the public takes in a noble trust. Somewhat in the same way when the Atlantic was established, the public refused to regard it as offering wares which people might buy or not as they liked. It recognized it as a literary organon, as a power for good or ill; it was immensely interested in it, and showed its interest by attacking it severely on occasions.
Such an occasion, especially, was the appearance of Dr. Holmes’s “Professor at the Breakfast-Table,” in which this writer, who had leaped into popularity through the “Autocrat,” delivered himself of opinions and judgments which were regarded by a good many as dangerous and subversive, all the more dangerous by reason of their wit and entertaining qualities. If one could believe many of the newspapers, Dr. Holmes was a sort of reincarnation of Voltaire, who stood for the most audacious enemy of Christianity in modern times.
Some intimation of what Lowell was to encounter as editor may be gathered from a few words in a letter to T. W. Higginson, written at the end of his first year, when “The Autocrat” had already drawn the fire of one class of critic.
“I only look upon my duty,” he says, “as a vicarious one for Phillips and Sampson, that nothing may go in (before we are firm on our feet) that helps the ‘religious’ press in their warfare on us. Presently we shall be even with them, and have a free magazine in its true sense. I never allow any personal notion of mine to interfere, except in cases of obvious obscurity, bad taste, or bad grammar.” And Mr. Norton prints[123] a letter written shortly after to Dr. Holmes, which shows clearly the cordial support which the editor gave his contributor.
In one respect Lowell held a somewhat different position from that occupied by later editors. The Atlantic was so little troubled by competitors, and its company of contributors was so determined by a sort of natural selection, that Lowell’s editorial function was mainly discharged by the exercise of discrimination in the choice of articles, and the distribution of material through successive numbers; he had little to do in the way of foraging for matter. It must not be supposed, however, that there was anything perfunctory in his editorship. He was in love with literature, and his fine taste stood him in good stead, not only in the rejection of the commonplace, but in the perception of qualities which might redeem an otherwise undistinguished poem or paper. He had, too, that enthusiasm in the discovery of excellence which made him call his friends and neighbors together when he had found some pearl of great price; an enthusiasm which he was very sure to share with the author. He gave thus to the magazine that character of distinction which conscientiousness alone on the part of the editor, or even careful study of conditions, cannot give.
He was, to be sure, a trifle negligent of the business of writing to his contributors. He left as much of the correspondence as he could to Mr. Underwood, but in his somewhat capricious fashion he might make an article an excuse for a long and friendly letter. To one of his contributors who pursued him for his opinion upon some accepted manuscripts, he wrote a little testily: “You have a right to frankness and shall have it. I did like the article on —— better than the other, and I should like the —— one particularly. But what of that? other folks may have liked the other better, for aught I know. The fault of our tastes is in our stars, not in ourselves. My wife can’t endure ‘The Biglow Papers,’ and somehow or other her dislike of them is a great refreshment to me and makes me like her all the better. But I think it is rather hard on an editor to expect him to give his opinion about everything he prints—I mean as to whether it is specially to his taste or not. How long would my contributors put up with me if I made Archbishops of Granada of them all? I tell you again, as I have told you before, that I am always glad of an article from you, let it be what it will, but (don’t you see?) I am gladdest when it is such a one as only you can write. If I could only print one number made of altogether such, I could sing my nunc dimittis with a joyful heart.” A little of the fret of his life in this particular appears in a whimsical tirade which he sent to Mr. Norton on the eve of a flight to the Adirondacks in the summer of 1859:—
“To-day is Sunday; at least the bells have been shouting it, but ‘the Sabbath dawns no Sabbath-day for me.’ I have been reading proof and picking out manuscripts all the morning. Do you ever get desperate? I feel so now that I have got all my manuscript-household in order. They appal me by their mass. I look first at one box, and then at another, and—fill my pipe. ‘It is dreadful!’ as Clough’s heroine says in the Bothie. And 128 pages which it would take one so long to fill with his own stuff eats up that of other folks—no, I don’t mean that and would not allow such a metaphor to a contributor—is satiated so soon with that of other folks—that is, uses it up so slowly. Mille-dam! Have not two articles of —— been on hand now for a year? He seems to spin out his brains as tenuously and uselessly as those creatures that streak the air with gossamer—no chance of catching even a stray fly of thought. Nay, his object is, I fancy, precisely what that of the aforesaid creatures may be—merely to swing himself over a gap. He is my ink—my pen-and-ink-ubus. I could scalp him the rather as he wears a wig and is deaf, and so would not be likely to hear of it. Then there is —— who can’t express himself in less than sixteen pages on any imaginable topic. It is a terrible thing this writing for the press, by which a man’s pen learns gradually to go by itself as those Chinese servants are said to fan and sleep at the same time. ‘No, no, by heaven I am not ma-a-d!’ but I expect to be. I believe I have so far settled matters that everybody will think me a monster. But never mind, I get out of ear-shot to-morrow.”
How fully and carefully he could and would write under special urgency may be seen by the long letter which he addressed to Mrs. Stowe when “The Minister’s Wooing” had been running three or four months in the Atlantic. The letter was published in C. E. Stowe’s life of his mother, and is quoted also in Mrs. Fields’s “Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe.”
The criticism for which this letter was an excuse illustrates one very important element in Lowell’s editorial mind. However little he might exert himself to go afield for articles in the body of the magazine, he did not trust to luck for the critical notices. In that department he took great pains to secure competent workmen. To Lowell and his contemporaries this matter of book reviews was one of great consequence. In the evolution of literary periodical literature the article of the old Quarterly type, which was part a summary of a book, part a further contribution to the subject, and part a judgment on the author, had shed the first constituent, had lost much of the second, but preserved the third in a more condensed and, to a certain degree, in a more impersonal spirit. But criticism in its finest form was highly valued, and the form of the book review was accepted as recognized and permanent. When the Atlantic, therefore, was set up emphasis was laid on this serious side of literary study, and the causerie, the light persiflage which serves as a relief in most magazines of a literary type—the Atlantic itself has now its Contributors’ Club—was disregarded. To be sure, in the first number, Lowell printed what seemed to promise a gay side to the magazine, a leaf entitled “The Round Table,” the purpose of which, in this instance, was to introduce an occasional poem by Dr. Holmes, but I suspect he was either a little alarmed at the prospect of setting his table monthly with a dessert, or was satisfied that the “Autocrat” would serve the same end. At any rate, no second number of “The Round Table” appeared. But each month the last few pages of each number were given up, after the well-accepted tradition, to notices of new books with occasional surveys of current music and pictures.
Lowell’s estimate of the value of literary criticism is expressed in a letter to Mr. Richard Grant White, 10 June, 1858, apropos of a purpose Mr. White then had of starting a weekly literary journal in New York. “There is no one opprobrium of American scholarship and letters so great,” he says, “as the general laxity and debasement of criticism. With few exceptions our criticisms are venial (whether the pay be money or friendship) or partisan. An invitation to dinner may make a Milton out of the sorriest Flecknoe, and a difference in politics turn a creditable poet into a dunce.” Lowell relied on White for a certain amount of criticism and wrote him, 8 March, 1859, “There is nothing I so especially desire as to have ‘experts’ make the Atlantic their pulpit. As long as I continue editor, I wish you to understand that your contributions will always be welcome, on no ground of personal friendship, but because I know they will be of value. I particularly wish to have the department of ‘Lit. Notices’ made more full. I find so few people whom I can trust to write a review! Personal motives of one kind or other are always sure to peep out. I think I have gained one good from the fearful bore of reading manuscripts; it is gradually making me as impartial as a chemical test—as insensible, too, perhaps? That is the only fear.”