_INTRODUCTORY NOTE_
_James Russell Lowell, poet, essayist, diplomatist, and scholar, was
born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on February 22, 1819, the son of a
Unitarian minister. Educated at Harvard College, he tried the law, but
soon gave it up for literature. His poem on "The Present Crisis,"
written in 1844, was his first really notable production, and one that
made a deep impression on the public mind. In the twenty years of
troubled politics that followed, one finds it constantly quoted. The
year 1848 saw four volumes from Lowell's pen--a book of "Poems," the
"Fable for Critics," "The Biglow Papers," and the "Vision of Sir
Launfal." The second of these exhibited the author as wit and critic,
the third as political reformer, the fourth as poet and mystic; and
these various sides of his personality continue to appear with varying
prominence throughout his career._
_On the retirement of Longfellow from the chair of belles-lettres at
Harvard in 1854, Lowell was elected to succeed him, and by way of
preparation spent the next two years in Europe studying modern
languages and literatures. In 1857 he became the first editor of the
"Atlantic Monthly," and after 1864 he collaborated with Charles Eliot
Norton in the editorship of the "North American Review." Throughout
the period of the war Lowell wrote much both in prose and verse on
behalf of the Union; his work on the "North American" was largely
literary criticism._
_In 1877 Lowell went to Spain as American Minister, and in 1880 to
London, where for five years he represented the United States with
great distinction, and did much to improve the relations of the two
countries. Six years after his return, on August 12, 1891, he died in
Elmwood, the house in Cambridge where he was born._
_Lowell's literary gifts were so various that it is difficult to say on
which of them his final reputation will rest. But it is certain that
he will long be esteemed for the grace, vivacity, and eloquence of the
prose in which he placed before the world his views of such great
American principles and personalities as are dealt with in the two
following essays on "Democracy" and on "Abraham Lincoln."_