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Page 1 : AMONG MY BOOKS Second Series by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL To R.W. EMERSON. A love and honor which more than thirty years have deepened, though priceless to him they enrich, are of little import to one capable of inspiring them. Yet I cannot deny myself the pleasure of so far intruding on your reserve as at least to make public acknowledgment of the debt I can never repay. CONTENTS. DANTE SPENSER WORDSWORTH MILTON KEATS DANTE.[1] On the banks of a little river so shrunken by the suns of summer that it seems fast passing into a tradition, but swollen by the autumnal rains with an Italian suddenness of passion till the massy bridge shudders under the impatient heap of waters behind it, stands a city which, in its period of bloom not so large as Boston, may well rank next to Athens in the history which teaches come l' uom s' eterna.

Page 16 : We are thankful for a commentator at last who passes dry-shod over the turbide onde of inappreciative criticism, and, quietly waving aside the thick atmosphere which has gathered about the character of Dante both as man and poet, opens for us his City of Doom with the divining-rod of reverential study. Miss Rossetti comes commended to our interest, not only as one of a family which seems to hold genius by the tenure of gavelkind, but as having a special claim by inheritance to a love and understanding of Dante. She writes English with a purity that has in it something of feminine softness with no lack of vigor or precision. Her lithe mind winds itself with surprising grace through the metaphysical and other intricacies of her subject. She brings to her work the refined enthusiasm of a cultivated woman and the penetration of sympathy.

Page 31 : Now the Christian idea has to do with the human soul, which Christianity may be almost said to have invented. While all Paganism represents a few pre-eminent families, the founders of dynasties or ancestors of races, as of kin with the gods, Christianity makes every pedigree end in Deity, makes monarch and slave the children of one God. Its heroes struggle not against, but upward and onward toward, the higher powers who are always on their side. Its highest conception of beauty is not aesthetic, but moral. With it prosperity and adversity have exchanged meanings. It finds enemies in those worldly good-fortunes where Pagan and even Hebrew literature saw the highest blessing, and invincible allies in sorrow, poverty, humbleness of station, where the former world recognized only implacable foes. While it utterly abolished all boundary lines of race or country and made mankind unitary, its hero is always the individual man whoever and wherever he may be.

Page 46 : [120] Convito, Tr. II. c. 8. [121] That is, wholly fulfil, rendono intera. [122] We should prefer here, "Nor inspirations won by prayer availed," as better expressing Nè l'impetrare spirazion. Mr. Longfellow's translation is so admirable for its exactness as well as its beauty that it may be thankful for the minutest criticism, such only being possible. [123] Which he cites in the Paradiso, VIII. 37. [124] Dante confesses his guiltiness of the sin of pride, which (as appears by the examples he gives of it) included ambition, in Purgatorio, XIII. 136, 137. [125] Convito, Tr. II. c. 11. [126] Purgatorio, XXVIII. [127] Purgatorio, XXVIII. 40-44; Convito, Tr. III. c. 13. [128] Purgatorio, XXVII. 94-105. [129] Psalm li. 2.

Page 61 : Seen close at hand, with its jealousies, intrigues, and selfish basenesses, the court had lost the enchantment lent by the distance of Kilcolman. A nature so prone to ideal contemplation as Spenser's would be profoundly shocked by seeing too closely the ignoble springs of contemporaneous policy, and learning by what paltry personal motives the noble opportunities of the world are at any given moment endangered. It is a sad discovery that history is so mainly made by ignoble men. "Vide questo globo Tal ch'ei sorrise del suo vil sembiante." In his "Colin Clout," written just after his return to Ireland, he speaks of the Court in a tone of contemptuous bitterness, in which, as it seems to me, there is more of the sorrow of disillusion than of the gall of personal disappointment.

Page 76 : And ye three handmaids of the Cyprian Queen, The which do still adorn her beauty's pride, Help to adorn my beautifulest bride. * * * * * "Crown ye god Bacchus with a coronal, And Hymen also crown with wreaths of vine, And let the Graces dance unto the rest,-- For they can do it best. The whiles the maidens do their carols sing, To which the woods shall answer and their echo ring." The whole Epithalamion is very noble, with an organ-like roll and majesty of numbers, while it is instinct with the same joyousness which must have been the familiar mood of Spenser. It is no superficial and tiresome merriment, but a profound delight in the beauty of the universe and in that delicately surfaced nature of his which was its mirror and counterpart.

Page 91 : Wordsworth's last college vacation was spent in a foot journey upon the Continent (1790). In January, 1791, he took his degree of B.A., and left Cambridge. During the summer of this year he visited Wales, and, after declining to enter upon holy orders under the plea that he was not of age for ordination, went over to France in November, and remained during the winter at Orleans. Here he became intimate with the republican General Beaupuis, with whose hopes and aspirations he ardently sympathized. In the spring of 1792 he was at Blois, and returned thence to Orleans, which he finally quitted in October for Paris. He remained here as long as he could with safety, and at the close of the year went back to England, thus, perhaps, escaping the fate which soon after overtook his friends the Brissotins. As hitherto the life of Wordsworth may be called a fortunate one, not less so in the training and expansion of his faculties was this period of his stay in France.

Page 106 : Footnotes: [323] "I pay many little visits to the family in the churchyard at Grasmere," writes James Dixon (an old servant of Wordsworth) to Crabb Robinson, with a simple, one might almost say canine pathos, thirteen years after his master's death. Wordsworth was always considerate and kind with his servants, Robinson tells us. [324] In the Prelude he attributes this consecreation to a sunrise seen (during a college vacation) as he walked homeward from some village festival where he had danced all night-- "My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows Were then made for me; bond unknown to me Was given that I should be, else sinning greatly, A dedicated spirit."--B. IV. [325] Prelude, Book II. [326] "I to the muses have been bound, These fourteen years, by strong indentures." Idiot Boy (1798).

Page 121 : Mr. Masson is quite right in choosing to modernize the spelling of Milton, for surely the reading of our classics should be made as little difficult as possible, and he is right also in making an exception of such abnormal forms as the poet may fairly be supposed to have chosen for melodic reasons. His exhaustive discussion of the spelling of the original editions seems, however, to be the less called-for as he himself appears to admit that the compositor, not the author, was supreme in these matters, and that in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases to the thousand Milton had no system, but spelt by immediate inspiration. Yet Mr. Masson fills nearly four pages with an analysis of the vowel sounds, in which, as if to demonstrate the futility of such attempts so long as men's ears differ, he tells us that the short a sound is the same in man and Darby, the short o sound in God and does, and what he calls the long o sound in broad and wrath.

Page 136 : That which is creative must create itself. In 'Endymion' I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest." This was undoubtedly true, and it was naturally the side which a large-minded person would display to a friend. This is what he thought, but whether it was what he felt, I think doubtful. I look upon it rather as one of the phenomena of that multanimous nature of the poet, which makes him for the moment that of which he has an intellectual perception. Elsewhere he says something which seems to hint at the true state of the case. "I must think that difficulties nerve the spirit of a man: they make our prime objects a refuge as well as a passion.