Quite in contrast with Lowell, the humorist, is Lowell, the serious and dignified author. His patriotic poems display a courage and manliness in adhering to the right and cover a wide range in history. But it is in his descriptions of nature that his imagination manifests its greatest range of subtilty and power. “The Vision of Sir Launfal” is, perhaps, more remarkable for its descriptions of the months of June and December than for the beautiful story it tells of the search for the “Holy Grail” (the cup) which held the wine which Christ and the Apostles drank at the last supper.
Lowell’s prose writings consist of his contributions to magazines, which were afterwards gathered in book form, and his public addresses and his political essays. He was naturally a poet, and his prose writings were the outgrowth of his daily labors, rather than a work of choice. As a professor of modern languages in Harvard College (in which position he succeeded the poet Longfellow); as editor of the “Atlantic Monthly,” on which duty he entered at the beginning of that magazine, in 1857, his editorial work on the “North American Review” from 1863 to 1872, together with his political ministry in Spain and England, gave him, he says, “quite enough prosaic work to do.”
It was to magazines that he first contributed “Fireside Travels,” “Among My Books,” and “My Study Window,” which have been since published in book form. These publications cover a wide field of literature and impress the reader with a spirit of inspiration and enthusiasm. Lowell, like Emerson and Longfellow, was an optimist of the most pronounced type. In none of his writing does he express a syllable of discontent or despair. His “Pictures from Appledore” and “Under the Willows” are not more sympathetic and spontaneous than his faith in mankind, his healthful nature, and his rosy and joyful hope of the future.
In 1877, Mr. Lowell was appointed minister to Spain by President Hayes, and, in 1880, was transferred, in the same capacity to London. This position he resigned in 1885 and returned to America to resume his lectures in Harvard University. While in England, Mr. Lowell was lionized as no other minister at that time had been and was in great demand as a public lecturer and speaker. Oliver Wendell Holmes thus writes of his popularity with the “British Cousins:”
By what enchantment, what alluring arts,
Our truthful James led captive British hearts,—
Like honest Yankees we can simply guess;
But that he did it, all must needs confess.
He delivered a memorial address at the unveiling of the bust of the poet Coleridge in Westminster Abbey. On his return to America, this oration was included with others in his volume entitled “Democracy and Other Addresses.” (1887).