In the period of which I am speaking, Lowell was constantly writing and
pretty constantly printing, though still the superstition held that he
was an idle man. To this time belongs the publication of some of his
finest poems, if not their inception: there were cases in which their
inception dated far back, even to ten or twenty years. He wrote his
poems at a heat, and the manuscript which came to me for the magazine was
usually the first draft, very little corrected. But if the cold fit took
him quickly it might hold him so fast that he would leave the poem in
abeyance till he could slowly live back to a liking for it.
The most of his best prose belongs to the time between 1866 and 1874, and
to this time we owe the several volumes of essays and criticisms called
‘Among My Books’ and ‘My Study Windows’. He wished to name these more
soberly, but at the urgence of his publishers he gave them titles which
they thought would be attractive to the public, though he felt that they
took from the dignity of his work. He was not a good business man in a
literary way, he submitted to others’ judgment in all such matters. I
doubt if he ever put a price upon anything he sold, and I dare say he was
usually surprised at the largeness of the price paid him; but sometimes
if his need was for a larger sum, he thought it too little, without
reference to former payments. This happened with a long poem in the
Atlantic, which I had urged the counting-room authorities to deal
handsomely with him for. I did not know how many hundred they gave him,
and when I met him I ventured to express the hope that the publishers had
done their part. He held up four fingers, “Quattro,” he said in Italian,
and then added with a disappointment which he tried to smile away, “I
thought they might have made it cinque.”
Between me and me I thought quattro very well, but probably Lowell had in
mind some end which cinque would have fitted better. It was pretty sure
to be an unselfish end, a pleasure to some one dear to him, a gift that
he had wished to make. Long afterwards when I had been the means of
getting him cinque for a poem one-tenth the length, he spoke of the
payment to me. “It came very handily; I had been wanting to give a
watch.”