As a result partly of his difficulty in securing satisfactory criticism and partly of his own aptitude for work of this kind, Lowell wrote more than forty reviews in the department during his editorship, besides several articles in the body of the magazine which were really reviews, like his careful study in two numbers of White’s Shakespeare. He was in such friendly communication with Mr. White regarding his work that it would have been idle to wear any mask in his presence, and Mr. White wrote him in great excitement over the first of the two articles. “I am very much obliged to you for your kind letter,” Lowell replied; “I never saw a man who did not think himself indifferent to praise, nor one who did not like it. In this country, where praise (or blame) is so cheap, one can’t think much of the old laudari ab laudato, for the laudatus himself may be the celebrated Snooks, but I think I know how to value it from a man of discernment. I hope you will like the last half of my article as well as the first. It is honest, anyhow, and kindly meant, and I endeavored to avoid all picking of flaws. Years ago I laid to heart the saying of an old lady—‘that the eleventh commandment was—Don’t twit.’ ...
“I don’t like reviewing, especially where the author is an acquaintance. I find it so hard to be impartial, but in your case I think my commendation would lose half its force were it not qualified with some adverse criticism. Please believe that I wrote all with the kindest feelings.”
Lowell certainly had nothing of that superficial habit of reviewing which is at the bottom of most of the unsatisfactory work of this kind. In reviewing White’s Shakespeare, for example, he read over twice every word of the commentary and notes and then laid the book aside that his impression might settle and clarify before he wrote his criticism. Swift as he was in writing, there was, for the most part, a long period of brooding over his creative work and in study over his criticism. He wrote an article, for instance, on “Wedgwood’s Dictionary,” and complained regarding it to Mr. Norton: “You know my unfortunate weakness for doing things not quite superficially. So I have been a week about it—press waiting—devil at my elbow (I mean the printer’s)—every dictionary and vocabulary I own gradually gathering in a semicircle round my chair,—and three of the days of twelve solid hours each. And with what result? at most six pages, which not six men will care anything about. And now it is done I feel as if I had taken hold of the book the wrong way, and that I should have devoted myself to his theory more and to particulars less; or, rather, that I ought to have had more space. But I had a gap to fill up,—just so much and no more. There is one passage[124] in it that I wager will make all of you laugh, and heavens! what fun I could have made of the book if I had been unscrupulous! But I soon learned to respect Wedgwood’s attainments, and resisted all temptation.”
Just as Lowell’s fun could find its way even into an index, so in his sober criticisms he would sometimes hide a jest for the delectation of especially discerning readers, as when in his article on White’s Shakespeare, he remarks incidentally: “To every commentator who has wantonly tampered with the text, or obscured it with his inky cloud of paraphrase, we feel inclined to apply the quadrisyllabic name of the brother of Agis, king of Sparta.” Felton, Longfellow tells us in a letter to Sumner, was the first to unearth the joke and to remember or discover that this name was Eudamidas.
Apart from his considerable criticism Lowell contributed to the volumes which he edited chiefly poems and political articles. He printed the “Ode to Happiness” already referred to, the notable verses on “Italy, 1859,” and the striking poem, “The Dead House,” which has an autobiographic interest, not from its being the record of an incident or even from the mood which it reflects, but from the fact that Lowell could write it at all and disclaim any personal connection with the theme. Mr. Norton has printed an interesting comment on the poem by Lowell,[125] and in another letter written a few days later Lowell adds: “I have touched here and there the poem I sent, and think of putting it in the Atlantic. Did you like it? It is pure fancy, though founded on a feeling I have often had,—but for æsthetic reasons I put an ‘inexpressive she’ into it.” In how healthy a mind must he have been, and how graciously healed in his new life to write thus without having his own great grief thrust itself between him and his poem.
Yet there was a poem entitled “The Home,” written at the same time which was rather a record of personal experience than a universal mood caught in terms of common life, and he cast it aside therefore and never printed it. It has its place in a memoir of his life.
“Here once my step was quickened,
Here beckoned the opening door,
And welcome! thrilled from the threshold
To the foot it had felt before.
“A glow came forth to meet me,
The blithe flame laughed in the grate,
And shadows that danced on the ceiling
Danced faster with mine for a mate.
“‘Glad to see you, old friend,’ yawned the armchair,
‘This corner, you know, is your seat;’
‘Rest your slippers on me,’ beamed the fender,
‘I brighten at touch of your feet.’
“‘We know the practised finger,’
Said the books, ‘that seems all brain,’
And the shy page rustled the secret
It had kept till I came again.