COPYRIGHT, 1893 AND 1894, BY THE CENTURY COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

:

This edition consists of five hundred and seventy-five

copies, of which five hundred are for sale

THE Centenary Celebration of James Russell Lowell
last
year showed that he has become more esteemed
as a critic and essayist than as a poet. Lowell him-
self felt that his true calling was in critical work
rather than in poetry, and he wrote very little verse
in the latter part of his life. He was somewhat cha-
grined that the poetic flame of his youth did not con-
tinue to glow, but he resigned himself to his fate;
nevertheless, it should be remembered that "The
Vision of Sir Launfal," "The Biglow Papers," and
"The Commemoration Ode" are enough to make
the reputation of any poet.

The present volume sustains Lowell's right to be considered one of the great American critics. The literary merit of some of the essays herein is in many respects nowise inferior to that in some of the volumes he collected himself. The articles are all exquisitely and carefully written, and the style of even the book reviews displays that quality found in his best writings which Ferris Greenslet has appropriately described as "savory." That such a quantity of good literature by so able a writer as Lowell should have been allowed to repose buried in the files of old magazines so long is rather unfortunate. The fact that [ v ]

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