[4] “My grandmother,” Lowell once said, “was a loyalist to her death, and whenever Independence Day came round, instead of joining in the general rejoicing, she would dress in deep black, fast all day, and loudly lament ‘our late unhappy differences with his most gracious Majesty.’”
[5] In a review of the Book of British Ballads in The Pioneer, Lowell says: “And the dear ‘Annie of Lochroyan,’ too, made thrice dear to us by the often hearing it from lips that gave an original beauty of their own to whatever they recited.”
[6] He was named after his father’s maternal grandfather, Judge James Russell, of Charlestown.
[7] Robert Traill Spence Lowell was graduated at Harvard College in 1833. He became an Episcopal clergyman in 1842, went shortly after as a missionary to Newfoundland, had a parish later in New Jersey, then took the headmastership of S. Mark’s School, Southborough, Mass., and finally was called to the chair of Latin language and literature in Union College. He remained in Schenectady till his death, 12 September, 1891, just a month after the death of his younger brother. He had a distinct literary gift, and published several books, which were the outcome of his life in its varied scenes. The New Priest in Conception Bay has vivid pictures of Newfoundland, and contains one character, Elnathan Bangs, who is as racy a Yankee in his own way as Hosea Biglow himself. The book unfortunately was published by Philips & Sampson just as Mr. Phillips died and the firm went into bankruptcy, and lost thus the advantage of a good start. It was revived a good many years later, but never enjoyed the vogue it might have had. Mr. Lowell’s experiences at S. Mark’s lay behind a story for schoolboys, Antony Brade, and his life in Schenectady suggested A Story or Two from an Old Dutch Town. He published also Fresh Hearts that Failed Three Thousand Years Ago, and Other Poems, a book which his brother had the pleasure of reviewing in the Atlantic. His best known poem, “The Relief of Lucknow,” appeared also in the Atlantic, under his brother’s editorship.
[8] Mary Traill Spence Lowell was born 3 December, 1810, was married to Samuel Raymond Putnam, 25 April, 1832, and died in Boston, 1 June, 1898. She was a woman of intellectual power and literary accomplishment. She chose to write anonymously, but the books she wrote, Records of an Obscure Man, The Tragedy of Errors, Fifteen Days, and The Tragedy of Success, though remote from the current of popular taste in her day, not only disclose a most thoughtful nature, and one profoundly interested in great subjects of racial and philosophical moment, but not infrequently are exceedingly felicitous in expression.
[9] In a lecture on Spenser, given in 1856, Lowell said, “The Faery Queene was the first poem I ever read, and I had no suspicion of any double meaning in it.”
[10] “An Epistle to George William Curtis,” 1874.
[11] Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, pp. 170, 171.
[12] Said at the commemoration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the West Church, Boston, 1887.
[13] The Power of Sound: a rhymed lecture, pp. 22, 23.