As a consequence his poems when published were as invertebrate as when he first wrote them, and of the revisions in detail many were shifted back to their original form. The degree to which he tempered the wind of self-criticism to his own poetical lambs is the more noteworthy on account of the acumen with which he commented as editor on the work of his fellow-poets.
On the other hand, his easy command of versification, his gift of phrasing, and his rich poetic imagination resulted in very many passages of beauty and feeling, particularly in the later odes like the Commemoration and Agassiz poems, into which he poured the fine fervor of his patriotism. In these his sincerity, his intellectual solidity, his idealism, and his nature-feeling combined with “the incontrollable poetic impulse which is the authentic mark of a new poem” and which Emerson ascribed to him in a journal entry of 1868.
BOOK LIST
Individual Author
James Russell Lowell. Works. Riverside Edition. 1890. 11 vols. Elmwood Edition. 1904. 16 vols. (Contains one more volume of literary essays, one more of poetry, and the three volumes of letters. C. E. Norton, editor. 1904.) These appeared in book form originally as follows: Class Poem, 1838; A Year’s Life, 1841; Poems, 1844; Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, 1845; Poems, Second Series, 1848; A Fable for Critics, 1848; The Biglow Papers, 1848; The Vision of Sir Launfal, 1848; Fireside Travels, 1864; The Biglow Papers, Second Series, 1867; Under the Willows and Other Poems, 1869; The Cathedral, 1870; Among my Books, 1870; My Study Windows, 1871; Among my Books, Second Series, 1876; Three Memorial Poems, 1877; Democracy and Other Addresses, 1887; Political Essays, 1888; Heartsease and Rue, 1888; Latest Literary Essays and Addresses, 1891; The Old English Dramatists, 1892; Last Poems, 1895; Impressions of Spain, 1899.
Bibliography
A volume compiled by George Willis Cooke. 1906. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. II, pp. 544–550.
Biography and Criticism
The standard life is by H. E. Scudder. 1901. 2 vols.
Benton, Joel. Lowell’s Americanism. Century, November, 1891.