[24] William Page, the artist, whom Lowell first knew through the Whites.
[25] “Goethe’s poetic sense was the Minotaur to which he sacrificed everything. To make a study he would soil the maiden petals of a woman’s soul.”—“Lessing,” in Literary Essays, ii. 195.
[26] It is very likely under the impetus given by Maria White that Lowell took a place as delegate to the Anti-Slavery Convention held in Boston, 17 November, 1840.
[27] Letters, i. 67-69.
[28] James Russell Lowell and His Friends, pp. 72-76.
[29] “I have enjoyed the society of my fair cousin Maria very much. She has shown me several of James’s letters, and I think I never saw such perfect specimens of love-letters,—those in any novel you ever read are perfectly indifferent compared to them. Without being silly in the least, they are full of all the fervor and extatification which you would expect from the most ardent lover.”—L. L. Thaxter to T. W. Higginson, 19 January, 1842.
[30] “I am obliged to stay at home whenever Father goes to Boston, and as he usually goes thither on the four first days of the week, I am rather closely prisoned.”—J. R. L. to R. Carter, 31 December, 1843.
[31] Thomas W. White, the editor.
[32] The sonnet, “To the Spirit of Keats,” was the first of the two; the other was “Sunset and Moonshine,” not retained by the poet in his final collection.
[33] “[Mrs. Longfellow] was the first stranger that ever said a kind word to me about my poems. She spoke to me of my Year’s Life, then just published. I had then just emerged from the darkest and unhappiest period of my life, and was peculiarly sensitive to sympathy. My volume, I knew, was crude and immature, and did not do me justice; but I knew also that there was a heart in it, and I was grateful for her commendation.”—J. R. L. to H. W. Longfellow, 13 August, 1845.