JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL’S
EDITORSHIP OF
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

Thesis for the Degree of M. A.
Jeanette Beveridge '

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JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL'S

EDITORSHIP 0? In! ATLANTIC MONTHLY

Thesis for degree of M. A.

Jeanette Beveridge
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1937

THESIS:

 

 

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

Lowell's Life ............ . ............... ... 1
State of American Periodical Literature

in 1857 ..... . ............. .. 13
Launching of the Atlantic Monthly .......... 22

Lowell's Editorship of the Atlantic Monthly..

I. Attitudes and Editorial Policies .... 26

II. Crޤicism .......... ................. 39
III. Campaign Against Slavery ............. 52
IV. Fiction ..... .......... ............... 79
V, Chief Contributors. ...... ............ 91
VI. Conclusion ............. .. ......... .. 110

BibliograthOOOOOOOOOOO0000.0......OOOOOOOOOO ooooo 0.9.00‘113

CHAPTER I

LOWELL'S LIFE

Jdles Russell Lowell was born at Elmwood in Cambridge,
flassachusetts, February 22, 1918.

In a consideration of Lowell, his relation to his
time is of greatest importance. Thorndike says: ”It is
impossible to consider him.apart from his time or environ-
ment, or to Judge his writing apart from its value for the
United States. It has left something for posterity, but
its best energy was expended in the manifold tasks which
letters must perform as a builder of national civilization.
It is this service which makes him an eminent and in some

ways our most representative man of letters.'1

Lowell was first sent to a dame school and then to
Hr. lells' school to be prepared for college. From early
youth, Lowell had been a great reader and he continued to
find pleasure in books.

Having finished college, Lowell was faced with the
necessity of choosing a career. 31: father had expected
him to study law, but Lowell so disliked the idea that he
considered both the ministry and medicine before he finally
began reading law in 1838. The necessity of earning a
living forced his decision and then he changed his mind.

- 1 Cambrid e M 9; M29. Literature, 11, 245-246.

”Suddenly a fortnight only after making (his decision to
study law) he abandoned it, out of utter distaste. It was
after a great struggle, he says, but the struggle was
evidently one of those occasional self-communings of the
young man who is not pro-destined to any profession and

yet is unable to respond to the half articulate demands

on his nature. We cannot read Lowell‘s mind at this time
in the fragmentary confessions of his letters, and see

that the controlling influence was to secure ultimately the
right to devote himself to literature.'3

Lowell tried both business and lecturing as a possible
means of earning a living, but he found the first repellent
and the second unrmunerative, so he finally completed his
law course in 1839 and entered the office of Mr. Charles
Greely Loring.

Lowell's first volume of poems, A Year's Lgfe'was
published in 1841 and received good notices. Lowell warmed
himself with the praise for he hoped to support himself by
his writing. Instead he plunged himself into debt with the
Pioneer magazine venture.

In 1843, Lowell and Robert Carter entered into a con-
tract with Leland and Whiting of Boston, by which they were
to furnish five hundred copies of the magazine on the twentieth

of each month under penalty of $500 forfeit.

8 Horace Elisha Scudder, games Russell Lowell, I, 65.

The prospectus states frankly the high ideals of the
young editors, promises which were well performed:

FThe contents of each number will be entirely original
and will consist of articles chiefly from American authors
of the highest reputation.

'The object of the Subscribers in establishing the
Pioneer, is to furnish the intelligent and reflecting portion
of the Reading Public with a rational substitute for the
enormous quantity of thrice-diluted trash in the shape of
nalby-pamby love tales and sketches, which is monthly poured
out to them by many of our pepular magazines,--and to offer
instead thereof, a healthy and manly Periodical Literature
whose perusal will not necessarily involve a loss of time
and a detioration of every moral and intellectual faculty.

IThe Critical Department of the Bionger will be conducted
with great care and impartiality, and while satire and
personality will be sedulously avoided, Opinions of merit
and demerit will be candidly and fearlessly expressed.

'The [igneez will be issued punctually on the day of
publication, in the principal cities of the Union. Each
number will contain 48 pages, royal octave, double columns,
handsomely printed on fine paper, and will be illustrated
with Engravings of highest character, both on wood and steel.

“Terms: Three Collars a year, payable, in all cases

in advance. The usual discount made to agents...'3

3scudder, 22, c t., 1, 99-100.

The first number appeared in January 1843 and bore
on its cover a motto from Francis Bacon: "Reform, therfore,
without bravery or scandal of former times and persons; but
yet set it down to thyself as well to create good precedents
as to follow them.‘I

The Pioneer was greeted by many commendations. Brother
Jonathan printed the following criticism by Willie, quoted
on the cover of the February number of the Pioneer:

'J. R. Lowell, a man of original and decided genius,
has started a monthly magazine in Boston. The first number
lies before us and it justifies our expectations, viz.: -
that a man of genius who is merely a man of genius, is a
very unfit editor for a periodical. A man of taste and
common sense is worth twenty men of genius for any such
undertaking. In the first number are half a dozen articles
which will fall still-born.... yet they are articles of a
very refined and elevated character."

Lowell was in New York having his eyes treated as the
second and third number appeared. At the end of the
number for larch an announcement appeared explaining that
the absence of any prose from the pen of Ir. Lowell and the
apparent neglect of letters and contributions addressed
to him personally was due to his absence in New Ybrk in

attendance upon Dr. Elliot, a distinguished oculist. The

4 Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, p. 737.

announcement also promised that Lowell would resume his
essays on the poets and dramatists in the fourth number and
that he would again take up general supervision of the mag-
azine.5

There was, however, no fourth number. The third number
had been late and publishers claimed the forfeit. They
offered to waive this forfeit if the contract should be
altered so as to require them to take only as many cepies
as they could sell. The editors were forced to step print-
ing for lack of credit. Lowell had promised his personal
credit and the unfortunate venture left him in debt for
several years.6

Lowell's enforced absence was, no doubt, in a large
measure, responsible for the failure of the Pioneer. Willis
was probably correct in thinking that America was not yet
ready to receive and appreciate such a magazine. But certainly
he was wrong in his emphatic statement "that a man of
genius(J. R. Lowell).... is a very unfit editor for a
periodical". Fourteen years later Lowell launched a magazine
and conducted it in such a way that there remains in our
ndnds no doubt regarding his fitness as an editor.

At about this time, Lowell began to be more than ever
interested in the anti-slavery movement, and, with the zeal

of a reformer, he sought an outlet for his sentiments.

5 Hott,‘gp. o;t., p. 737.
3 c. 1:. Norton, Letterg 9; games Russell Lowell, I, 73, 82.

Scudder says that at this time Lowell found himself confront-
ing a monstrous denial of the truth of freedom issuing
in the human brotherhood when he contemplated slavery in
America. But Lowell doubted whether poetry was the prOper
medium for the anti-slavery cause. "His mind circled about
this problem; his convictions called upon him with a loud
voice to make good his professions; his instinctive sense
of congruity which is hardly more than an alternate form
of the sense of humor, forbade him to make poetry the maid
of all work for the anti-slavery cause, and he sought dili-
gently to resolve this particular form of spiritual activity
into the elemental preperties of freedom, and so to find V
therein a true medium for the sustenance of poetry.'7

Lowell married Maria White in 1844 and their married
life marks a distinct period in Lowell's writing. During
the winter of 1845, Lowell expended much energy in writing
anti-slavery articles for the Broadwaz Journal and ggghem's
Egg;;;;_. His wife was an ardent supporter of the anti-
slavery cause and his own natural indignation was heightened
by her zeal. “Lowell had now become clearly identified with
the anti-slavery cause and did not shrink from using the
phrase 'we abolitionists'. His reputation as a poet had
steadily risen......The leaders of the anti-slavery cause

welcomed him as an important coadjutor."8

7 Scudder, o . cit., I, 138.

8 Ibid., p. 91.

6

In 1848, Lowell made a definite arrangement with the
Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society
to furnish a weekly contribution for the Anti-Slavery Standard.

In addition to this writing, the years 1847 and 1848 were

Thg vgsion 2; Sir Launfal, and The Biglow Papers.
The period 1851-1857 was marked by a series of important

occurrences. The first was the death of flaria Lowell who
had influenced Lowell's writing since their meeting. A
period of uncertainty followed her death, but in 1855,
Lowell's successful series of lectures on English poetry
resulted in his appointment as Smith Professor of the French
and Spanish Languages and Literature, and Professor of
Belles Lettres in Harvard Colleges He held this position
for twenty years, during which period he gave liberally to
the college of his best and became more than ever a scholar.9
However, although Lowell's academic work provided an
outlet, it could not satisfy his demand for expression.
He had at this time, had some foreign travel, having been
abroad in 1851. His domestic cares were in the hands of
Miss Frances Dunlap, whom he had married early in 1857.
"There can be little doubt“, Scudder writes, “that at this
period of his life Lowell was poised for flight as it were

having reached a stage where all conditions were most

9 Scudder, 22. cit., I, 397.

favorable for the full expression of his powers. It is
true that his academic work....did in a measure supplant a
freer poetic movement. But it may not unfairly be affirmed
that Lowell's attitude toward poetry was always that of
expectation of some greater figt to come..."10

It was apprOpriate that a man of such talent should
be chosen as the editor of the new magazine, the Atlantic
Honthlz, launched in November, 1857. The magazine was
successful from the beginning and Lowell continued as editor
until 1861, when he resigned.

Lowell contributed reviews and articles to the Atlggtic
until 1863, when he joined Charles Eliot Horton in editing
the [2;32,Asgricag Begiew. The fortune of this magazine
was at a low ebb when Lowell accepted the joint editorship-
with Horton. Scudder describes the state of the magazine
thus:

”The figggh American Beziew which had been founded by
a number of cultivated gentlemen in Boston in 1815, was
modelled on the famous quarterlies of Great Britian, and
had for fifty years been the leading representative in
America of dignified scholarship and literature. At times
it had been spirited and aggressive, but for the most

part it had stood rather for elegant leisure and a somewhat

1° Scudder, 22, cit., I, 406.

remote criticism. ' 11

Lowell and Norton issued their first number in January,
1864 and Lowell wrote a political article in nearly every
number during the remainder of the war and early stages of
reconstruction.

When the war was over Lowell collected and published
his miscellaneous verse of the preceding twenty years in
.Enggz‘thg Willows (1868). His odes and longer poems, he
published in a volume entitled.2hg Cathedral (1870).

Lowell had devoted much time to the criticism of the
masters of English and a few masters of foreign literature,
notably Dante. The result of these studies was a long
succession of essays which make‘up the volumes Agggg'gy
222m (1870). Ex £3291 mm (1871). Asses 22 mars.
Second Sgries (1876). These volumes comprise Lowell's main
contributions to literary criticism.

Lowell was appointed minister to Spain in 1877. Thorn-
dike says, 'The mission was a recognition of his distinction
not merely as a man of letters but as a representative of
the best American culture, and this distinction Lowell
maintained in a number of addresses on both literary and
political themes, represented by the volume Deggcracz
3.22 9.31.2.9}; Addressee(1886)' 13

The educated men of America were delighted when, in

11 Scudder, gp. cit., II, 45.
13 Cambgidge History of Ameggcan Literature, II, 247.

10

1880, Lowell was appointed as English minister. ”They

felt at once that they had a spokesman,” Scudder writes.
'And it may be fairly said that Americans generally were
gratified; for a man of letters who has won high recognition,
especially if his work has been in the field of poetry,
history, or general literature, occupies a secure place

in the regard of his countrymen, and is subject to loss
suspicion or jealousy than one in any other conspicuous
position. ....It is doubtful if any other author, save
Longfellow, would at once have been so accepted by Americans
as their prOper representative in London."13

Regarding Lowell's reception in England, Scudder says,
“On the other side, though the English as a great reading
body are not very familiar with American literature, the
leaders of opinion, the class that stands nearest the government
know it generously, and while it would be necessary to make
the acquaintance of a representative of American law, business
or politics, a representative of American letters and scholar-
ship would already be a familiar name. Certain it is that
Lowell in going to London went at once into the midst of
friends.” 1‘

Lowell's mission in England lasted until 1885 when the
election of Cleveland to the presidency made it clear that
Lowell was to bring to a close his diplomatic life in England,
although some of his friends there and in America clung

13 Scudder, 22. cit., II, 260-261.
14 Ibid., p. 261.

11
to the illusion that the light way in which he wore the party
dress might make it possible for a democratic president
to retain in office a man who had made himself so acceptable.

Lowell's friends in England laid plans to keep him
with them but he refused because of the claims of his family
and the feeling that as an American, he had a certain duty
to his own country, and should not, therefore, form any
permanent connections in England.

Hrs. Lowell died in 1885, and Lowell went to live with
his daughter at Deerfoot farm, Southborough, Massachusetts.
He continued to spend his summers in England and upon his
return from England in 1889, his daughter arranged to bring
her children and make a home for Lowell in Elmwood. So he
was able to spend his last years in comfort in his home.

Lowell had published Political Essays and Heartsease
and Rue in 1888. How in 1889—1890, he prepared a uniform
edition of his works. With this he took great pains, going
over the Papers with care.

In the spring of 1891, Lowell looked forward to more
writing. Shut in now by illness, he spent his time reading,
and received his friends as he was able to see them. He
died in the middle of the summer of 1891.

Lowell was a poet, critic, teacher, essayist, and
lecturer, but it is his work as editor of the Atlantic that
will continue to live for in beginning such a magazine he
established an American institution at a time when he was

most capable of giving his best and at a time when America

was ready to receive such a publication.

12

3

CHAPTER 11
State of American Periodical Literature
in 1857

In lovember, 1838, General horris wrote in the
miniatures:
'These United States are fertile in most things,
but in periodicals they are extremely luxuriant. They
spring up as fast as mushrooms in every corner, and like
all rapid vegetation, bear seeds of early decay within
them...... They put forth their young green leaves in
the shape of promises and prospectuseeo-blossom through
a few numbers and then comes 'a frost, a killing frost, in
the form of bills due and debts unpaid.... The average
age of periodicals in this country is found to be six months."1
In 1850, seven years before the first issue of the
Atlantic Honthlz, there were about six hundred publications
ether than newspapers.2‘ The following list includes the
chief magazines in existence in 1857, which had begun by

1850, and indicates the length of life.3

The American Baptist Magazine (Boston) 1803-1909
Recorder (Boston 1816-1867
.American Farmer Baltimore).l819-1897,

fillets, 2n. fig,” p. 341.

.
O ’ O

p.
is. , 787-809.

 

14

Albion.(Boston) 1822-1875

lew York Mirror (New York) 1823-1857

Teacher's Offering, (Philadelphia) 1823-1864

Christian Examiner (Boston) 1824-1869

Bibical Repertory (Princeton) 1825-1884

African Repository (washington) 1825-1892

National Preacher (Philadelphia) 1826-1866

Youth's Companion Boston) 1827-1929

Bibical Repository (Andover) 1831-1850

Spirit of the Times (New York) 1831-1861

Baltimore Saturday Visitor (Baltimore ) 1832-1850

Catholic Herald (Philadelphia ) 1833-1860

Knickerbocker Magazine (New York) 1833-1865

Raine Farmer (Augusta) 1833-1924

Cultivator (Albany) 1834-1865

Southern Literary lesson or (Richmond, vs.) 1834-1864

Christian Review (Boston 1836-1863

united States Magazine and Democratic Review (Washington)
1837-1859

Medical Examiner (Philadelphia) 1838-1856

Herchanta' Magazine and Commercial Raview (New York)
1839-1870

Iassachusetts Ploughman (Boston) 1840-1906

low Genesse Farmer and Gardener's Journal (Rochester)
1840-1865

Graham's lagazine (Philadelphia) 1840-1858

Ladies' Repository (Cincinnati) 1841-1876

Robert Kerry's Huseum (Boston) 1841-1872

Peterson's Ladies' National Magazine (Philadelphia)
1842-1893-

Philadelphia Home Weekly (Philadelphia) 1842-1872

New York Journal of Hedicine (New YbrkO 1843-1860

Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science,

and Art (New Ybrk) 1844-1907

Universalist Quarterly (Boston) 1844-1891

Liberal Christian (New Yerk) 1845-1877

Indiana Farmer (Indianapolis) 1845-1917

Eater-Cure Journal (New York) 1845-1910

Commercial Review of the South and West (New Orleans)
1848-1880

Flag of our Union (Boston) 1846-1865

Home Journal New Ycrk) 1846-1901

National Era Washington) 1847-1860

New England lachanic (Boston) 1847-1865

New York Picayune (New York)1847-1860

Friends' Review (Philadelphia; 1847-1894

Massachusetts Teacher (Boston 1848-1874

Plough, the Loom and the Anvil (Philadelphia) 1848-1859

valley Farmer (St. Louis) 1848-1916

Church Review New Ybrk) 1848-1891

Theological and Literary Journal (New York) 1848 -1864

15

Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal (Columbus) 1848-1864

Independent (New York) 1848-1928

New England Farmer Boston) 1848-1871

Mercersburg Review Mercersburg, Pa.) 1849-1926

Ohio Cultivator (Columbus) 1849-1864

From this list it is evident that a large number of
magazines of the period were of agricultural or religious
nature. Of the literary group, there were three fairly

important monthlies existing at the time of the beginning
of the Aglgptic: Qrahgm'g Magaz;ne(Philade1phia) 1840-1858;

Egickerbockgr Magazine (New Ybrk) 1833-1865; gniteg fitatgg

W a; Democpatic ESE-3!. (Washington) 1837-1859.
George P. Graham bought the 925333 in 1839 and the
Gentleman's Magagi§e_the next year. He combined these
two into a new magazine which he called rah 's a magazine
which not only became one of the most important in the
United States, but displayed a brilliance in the five years
1841-1845 which has seldom been matched in American magazine
history.‘ .Among the contributors for the first year were
Lowell, Edgar Allan Poe, Mrs. Sigourney, Alfred B. Street,
and Thomas Buchanan Read. In the second year contributions
were made by William Cullen Bryant, James Fenimore Cooper,
Richard Henry Dana, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Mrs.
Frances Osgood.5

Grahggis was distinguished by its illustrations, poetry

by famous contributors, and light essays. The literary

4 Matt, g2, ' ., p. 344.
5 I§i§,, p.5%8¥

16

criticism was uneven and not significant as a whole.
Ater 1845 the magazine languished, forced by that time to
meet the competition of Harpeggi. In 1858, re m' was

transformed into the Ladigs' Illustratgg Maggzing, later
swallowed up by oblivion.6

'The contribution of W W to American
literary development was of two kinds: it showed that
adequate and even liberal payment for contributions might
actually be profitable, and raised the level of such payments
materially by its influence; and it published some import-
ant work by the best American writers of the time. Its
contents were designed to be amusing rather than profound:
in its lighter essays we have the beginnings of what came
to be magazinish writing in contra-distinction from the dull
and heavy review style all too prominent at that time."7

A magazine which was started slightly earlier and
lasted longer than mm was the W W
Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Whittier,
and Holmes were among the contributors. The feature of
the magazine was the “Editor's Table", a column by the
editor, Lewis Gaylord Clark, which included "some chat with
‘correspondents, some talky book notices, and notes on the
drama, music and the fine arts, many clippings from contem-
porary newspapers, some gossip and reminiscences, selected

verse, and many well-told anecdotes”.8

6 Hott, pp. 0 ., p. 555.
3 Ibid., p.55 .
IBTEI, pp. $089610.

17

The criticism on literature, art, and music is
intersting but not important. The magazine tried to hold
favor with both northern and southern readers and consequently
received criticism from both sides. By 1850, the magazine
had begun a downward pace and passed out of existence in
1865.9

A magazine which successfully mixed politics and literature
was the M §tates W and pemgggatig 3211.1! founded
in 1837. The magazine was largely occupied with politics
and adopted a 'vigorous middle-of-the-road policy”.10
However, the the years 1840-1845, it was more literary than
during other years and printed the contributions of Lowell,
Whittier, Longfellow and lhitman.11

The combination of excellent literature and vigorous
articles on political, social, and economic questions made
the magazine and important periodical under O'Sullivan's
editorship during the years 1836-1846, but later it
detiriorated until it ceased to exist in 1859.

Closely related to the general monthly periodicals were
those which were designed chiefly for women. Many of these
were criticized and scoffed at for their printing of a
great amount of sentimental trumpery. However, much that

was of a high standard also appeared in them. The most
important of these magazines was mm mm m

9 Mott o . ci . .613.
10b i, p. ssf.’ p
11 ., p. 680.

18

Louis A. Godey bought Mrs. Sarah J. Hale's Ladies'
Magazine and combined it with his own Lady's Book in 1837.
He obtained along with the magazine, its former owner as
editor. With Mrs. Hale as literary editor and Godey as
publisher, the magazine flourished.

“All the popular writers of the time appeared in the
Ladyjs Book between 1837 and 1850, the magazines best literary

 

period. Among the 'authoresses' were Miss Leslie, at one
time an assistant editor; Mrs. Sigourney, another editor,...
'Grace Greenwood' who edited Godey's Lady's Dollar Newspaper
for a time; Miss Catherine M. Sedgwick, author of Hope
Leslie, and much else; Mrs. Caroline M. S. Kirkland, notable
for her western sketches and stories; and Harriet Beecher
Stowe, not yet famous.“13

Men who contributed to Godey's were George P. Morris,
William Gilmore Simms, T. 8. Arthur, Bayard Taylor, and
Nathaniel Parker Willis. Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes and
Hawthorne were among the contributors also, and Poe's
”The New York Literati'I raised a great commotion. In spite
of these contributors, Godey's never became a literary
magazine of high standard. The poetry and press was largely
light and sentimental. The remainder of the magazine was
taken up with fashions, recipes, facy work, biographical

sketches of famous women, and short articles on music and

13 Mott, c . cit., p. 585.

19'
art. The colored fashion plates and art engravings formed
an extremely important part of the magazine. There was
no mention of politics or problems of the day and the war
and the slavery question passed without mention.

In 1878, Godey died and Hrs.Hale surrendered her editorial
responsibilities. The magazine had been best in the forties
and had slipped into decline later. How in spite of a
reduction in price, its popularity waned until it was absorbed
by the m in 1898.

Godcz's Lady's B22! is important as a history of
manners, taste, and costume. Although its literary standard
was not high, the magazine was important for several
other reasons: “because of the prominence of figdgglg
contributors, for to name them over would be to call the
roll of the principal writers of Amwrica; because of its
encouragement ls writers, for it was not far behind.fixanam;§
in liberal payments to contributors; because of its pepular
success.... and because of its influence on its competitors,
for it was the model for many similar attempts, as well
as a molding force on more sober magazines.'13

The most successful of the magazines modelled upon
manna 5.221: was W Ladies' National
Ilfllllfllp This magazine forged ahead of digxln,after
the Civil War, but died the same year, 1898;

Besides these five magazines, the M mm m,

a quarterly, was important. The large number of religious

13 Mott, o . cit., p. 585.

20

papers were important also, for, although they gave much

attention to theolO‘Y, they also gave space to other matters:

literature, politics, science, philosophy, and social problems.“14
Reveiwing the histories of the five periodicals,

Graham's, Knickerbocggg'g, the,ngggzgtLp.finggfi,,figdgxlg

and Peterson'g, and noting that these were the chief period-

icals of the day, it is plain that there was an open field

for the Atlantic. Graham'g saw its best years in 1841-

1845, began a rapid decline shortly after and ceased to

exist in 1858; Knickerbockgr'g likewise began a decline

in 1850, and although it lasted until 1865, certainly did

not furnish competition for the Ajlgnjig. The unijgd.31gigg

Magazine and Democrat“ £21m had passed its best period
in 1846 and had died in 1859. These magazines contained

almost no really good criticism and there was a real need
in this field. Some magazines had failed to take a stand
against slavery lest they antagonize Southern subscribers
and their middle-of-the-road policy did not give strength
to political writings. The Eignggz,and the 2131, magazines
of high literary tone had passed out of existence.

In the year 1857, there was a need for criticism of
a group of rising American authors; there was a need for
intelligent discussion of pressing political and social

problems; there was a need of a magazine to receive the

1‘ Matt, 22. cit., p.369.

work of the older group of authors and the new literary

generation which was to follow the war.

21

22
Launching the Atlantic Monthly

By the year 1850, the greater New England writers of
the nineteenth century were well started on their careers,
but Boston had succeeded in maintaining no general literary
magazine of first rank.1

In 1663, Mr. Francis Henry Underwood had persuaded
J. P. Jewett and Company to stand behind him in establishing
a new magazine. “These publishers had issued Q2313 12215
gggig.which Phillips, Sampson and Company had refused for
fear of alienating their southern customers; and it was
only natural that J. P. Jewett, the head of the house,
should see eye to eye with Underwood in his vision of a
periodical which should unite the strongest forces of
expression in the Joined cause of letters and reform. As
early, therefore, as 1853-four years before the first issue
of the Atlggtic-Underwood is found in active correspondence
with the chief writers of the country, especially the
outstanding New England group, in the interest of a magazine
to make its appearance at the beginning of 1854.'2

Hear the end of 1853, the Jewett firm met with failure
and Underwood went to the offices of Phillips and Sampson
where he became reader and literary adviser.3 Mr. Phillips

was the head of the firm and through Mr. Lee, Phillips'

% fign%£;%g_. tor of American Literatuze, II, 165.
. elo ec owe— t antic gnthl; and its Makers p. 16.
3 Scudder, o .___u ' 177130 5"“. """'

23

Only partner, Underwood won Phillips to his scheme for
beginning a magazine.
Underwood had been the active manager but now Mr.
Phillips took the leading place. Underwood, who had done
all the preliminary work, remained an obscure figure, content
te nominate the first editor and serve as his office assistant.
Mr. Phillips called tagether Cabot, Motley, Longfellow,
Lowell, Holmes, Emerson, and Underwood for the purpose of
discussing the magazine project. Regarding this meeting
Phillips wrote to his niece: ,
"They seemed so well pleased that they adjoumned,
and invited me to meet them again tomorrow (the 20th),
when I shall again meet the same persons with one other
(Whipple, the essayfist) added to that brilliant constellation
of philosOphical, poetic, and historical talent. Each one
is known alike on both sides of the Atlantic, and is
read beyond the limits of the English language:4
Longfellow's Journal gives an account of the second
dinner held for the purpose of discussing the magazine
project.5
'At a dinner given by Mr. Phillips, the publisher in
the summer of 165?, there were present Longfellow, Emerson,
Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Motley, Edmund Quincy, and other

critics of high reputation. The plans for the new magazine

g Scudder, 22. cit., I, 411. t _
M. A. DeWOIfe flows, The Atlantic Monthly and ts Makers, p. 19.

34

were discussed and arranged at this dinner. Mr. Underwood
nominated Lowell as editor-in-chief and his name was received
with enthusiasm. Holmes suggested the name, the Atlantic
Menthly. The success of the enterprise was assured from

the start, and a new era in.American literature was
.established.‘

Preliminary financial arrangements were made in May.
Lowell's salary was to be $2500.6 Poems were to be paid
for at the rate of $50 each and prose at $6 per page.
Apparently this was liberal, for Lowell wrote to a questioning
contributor:

“You must be content. Six dollars a page is more than
can be got elsewhere, and we only pay ten to folks whose
names are worth the other four dollars. Capite? What
we may be able to do hereafter, I know not. I shall
always be for liberal pay.'7

The first issue of the Atlan§;c was dated November,
1857, and appeared late in October.8 Ten of the fourteen
authors who made the principal contributions were Motley,
Longfellow, Emerson, C. E. Horton, Holmes, Whittier, Mrs.
Stowe, J. T. Trowbridge, Lowell, and Parke Godwin.

The AJlnntLg,had for its sub-title "A Magazine of
Literature, Art, and Politics." The magazine announced

its own political aim on the back cover of the first issue:

3» Scudder, 2g. o;§., I, 421.
8 owe: Th9 Atlantig Monthly ggd_;yg Makers, p. 24.

25

"In politics the Atlantic will be the organ of no
party or clique, but will honestly endeavor to be the ex-
ponent of what its conductors believe to be the American
idea. It will deal frankly with persons and with parties,
and which alone makes the true basis of a true and lasting
national prosperity. It will not rank itself with any set
of antics; but with that body of men which is in favor of
Freedom, National Progress, and Honor whether public or
private."9

The magazine also announced its intention of accepting

contributions of foreign as well as native writers.

9 Howe, §§2.Atlantic Monthly and its Makers, p. 27.

CHAPTER III
LCWELL‘S EDITORSHIP OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
I,Attitudes and Editorial Policies

Lowell began his work as editor with enthusiasm and
continued throughout his editorship to be a careful, con-
scientious director of the magazine. He often lamented
the necessity of so much reading of manuscripts and proofs.
In December, 1857, he wrote to Norton:

“tor a lazy man I have a great deal to do. A magazine
allows no vacations. What with manuscripts and proofs and

what not, it either takes up or breaks up all one's time...."1

That Lowell was determined to make the best magazine
possible even though it meant the sacrifice of his own
comfort is illustrated in his letter to Norton in 1858:

.....“My work for the last fortnight mi ha fatto magro
in good earnest-the work and the worry of it. Phillips
was so persuaded of the stand given to the Mggggygg,by the
Cheats article that he has been at me ever since for
another. So I have been writing a still longer one on
Cushing. I think you will like it though on looking over the
Cheats article this morning I am inclined to think that on

the whole the better of the two. Better as a whole, I mean,

1 Morton, 22, 033., I, 280-281.

27

for there are passages in this beyond any in that, I think.
These personal things are not such as I should choose to do;
but one must take what immediate texts the newspapers afford
him, and I accepted the responsibility in accepting my post.
I am resolved that no motives of my own comfort or advantage
shall influence me, but I hate the turmoil of such affairs,
despise the notoriety they give one, and long for the day
when I can be vacant to the muses and to my books for their
own sakes. I cannot stand the worry of it much longer
without a lieutenant. To have questions of style, grammar,
and punctuation in other people's articles to decide, while
I want all my concentration for what I am writing myself-
to have added to this personal appeals, from ill-mannered
correspondents whose articles have been declined, to attend
te-to sit at work sometimes fifteen hours a day, as I have
done lately-makes me nervous, takes away my pluck, compels
my neglecting my friends, and induces the old fits of the
blues. However, the worst is that it leads me to bore my
friends when I do get at them. To be an editor is almost as
bad as being President..."2

Again Lowell wrote:

“This endless reading of manuscripts is hard work and

takes a great deal of time; but I have resolved that

3 Norton, 22. ci§., I, 285-286.

28

nothing shall go in which I have not first read. I wish
to have nothing go in it that will merely do, but I fear
I cannot keep up so high a standard. It is astonishing
how much there is that leaps Just short of the line of
good and drops into the limbo of indifferent....' 3

Lowell was not averse to work but methodical work
was difficult flflglhim and the magazine's demands for punctual
reading and correspondence often irked him. To Mr. White
in 1859, Lowell wrote:

'I used to be able to answer letters in the month during
which I received them, but now they pile up and make a
Jam behind the boom of my occupations, till they carry every-
thing before them, and after a little confused whirling
float placidly down to the ocean of Oblivion. I do not
know if it be so with everybody but with me the perpetual
chance of interruption to which I am liable induces a kind
of stolid despair. I am afraid that at this moment there
are at least a hundred and fifty unanswered letters in and
on and round my desk, whose blank looks seem to say 'how
long?' Your letter came just in the midst of a bother in
the Atlantic, which it took all my diplomacy to settle so
that both sides should not bite their own noses off, to which
mad meal they had violent appetites. It is all 'fixed'

now, and things go smoothly again-but meanwhile the hiatus

3 C. 1. Norton, 'Launching of the Magazine ' Atlantic Monthl
V, 579 (November, 1957)

29

in my correspondence grew daily wider.”4

He wrote to another friend:

'I am at last even with my manuscripts. It is
splendid. Such a heap as had gathered. It had snowed
poems and tales and essays, and an eddy had drifted them
into my study knee-deep. But I have shovelled myself out,
and hape 't is the last great storm of the season."5

'If my letters are dry,.. Lowell wrote to White, “it is
no fault of mine. I am overworked and overworried and
everinterrupted. I can't write a genial letter, but I want
you and like you all the same. If ever I get back to my
old nest among the trees at Elmwood, and I am no longer
professor or editor, with time enough to follow up a doubtful
passage of Shakespeare or a bit of diletante philology,-
then what pleasure I should have in corresponding with you
and exchanging thoughts and suggestions. But now, if any-
thing occurs to me, I feel too tired to communicate it to
anybody, for my days are so broken that I am forced sometimes
to sit up till the birds sing to get any time for my own
studies."6

The first issue of the Atlantic had announced the
high ideals of the magazine and it was Lowell's intention

Scudder, pp. c_i_t. ,I, 442.

flit; p. .4.

(DUMP

to keep the standard of the contents high. Lowell wrote to
a friend:

“The magazine is going to be free without being
fanatical and we hope to unite in it all available talent
of all shades of opinion. The magazine is to have opinions
of its own and not be afraid to speak them, but I think we
shall be scholarly and gentlemanlike.'7

In June, 1860, the Atlantic published a paper on the
works of Roger Bacon by Charles Eliot Norton. To James
T. Fields, Lowell wrote the following which illustrates
the firmness of his editorial policy of making the magazine
consistently good:

'Mr. Nichols tells me that you sighed a little over
Eggyy articles and instanced that on Roger Bacon. All Ham
connexion is at a discount in these secession days-but I
think you are wrong-not merely about that article which
seemed to me as interesting as it was thorough-but on the
general question. I hope I need not say that I never let
any personal feeling influence me consciously in editing
the magazine-so do not think it is Norton I am defending.
I stick to the principle. If we make our magazine merely
entertaining how are we better than those Scribes and
Pharisees the Harpers? We want to make it interesting

to as many classes of people as we can, especially to such

7 Scudder, g2. cit., I, 424.

31

as give tone to public Opinion in leterary matters, if there
be any such in America."8

Again Lowell stated his policy clearly in writing to
Richard Grant White who feared that his article on
Shakespeare would be received with disfavor.

'I don't care whether the public are tired of the
Divine Villiams or not-a part of the magazine as long
as I shall have anything to do with it, shall be expressly
ngy,for the Mob (of well-dressed gentlemen who read with
ease.)"9

And again, Lowell wrote:

'There is constant pressure upon me to 'popularize'
the magazine, which I resist without clamor.'1°

Although Lowell took clear issue on some questions,
he was careful not to involve the magazine in aimless
controversies. When the Albghy controversy came up, Lowell
wrote:

'I am urged to take ground in the Albany controversy,
but do not feel that there is any ought in the matter, and
am sure the Trustees will beat in the end. I think it would
be unwise to let the magazine take a losing side unless
clear Justice required it. Am I not right?" 11

It is clear from Lowell's letter of resignation 13

8 M. A. DeWolfe Howe, New Letters, p. 99.
9 Scudder, o . gi3,, I, 323.

10 bid., p. 24.

ll .

12 Norton, Letters, 1, 310.

32

that he had become somewhat accustomed to the trials of
editing and was less anxious over the performance of his
duties. The salary which the Atlantic afforded him had
given him greater ease in financial matter but he welcomed
the release from the daily demands of editorial life. Yet
his term as Atlantic editor had without a doubt served to
enrich his life and to prepare him for the enterprises which
lay ahead.

The year 1857 was an important one for Lowell. In
September of that year he married Kiss Frances Dunlap. The
academic year 1856-1857 ... his first as professor of Ear-
vard College. In November the first issue of the Atlantic
appeared with Lowell as editor.

The fifties saw a sudden springing up of "literary
weeds“. In fiction, a number of books by feminine writers,
created and nourished by chez's Lagllg,§22§, became best
sellers. The best sellers were Susan Warner's The Egg;
1&22.!2£l29 1850; Qgeerlz, 1853, 104,000 copies in three
years; 1;}; £9135 £3215 Fanny's Portifclio, 1853, by
“Fanny Fern'(8arah Willis Parton), 80,000 copies the first
year.13

13 Fred Lewis Pattee, The irs Century _£,American Literature,
p. .

33

Into a literary world Of such unhealthy sentimentalism,
Lowell launched his magazine, a crusade against insincerity,
and a movement toward realism. Demille points out that
Lowell had himself once been a sentimentalist or a UtOpian
reformer. “Outgrowing this, like many converts he con-
ceived a bitter dislike for his older faith and endeavored
with all his powers to smash the idol of his earlier worship.
Beginning with the essay on Wordsworth in 1854, he devoted
a large part of his criticism through the years 1854-1870
to a smashing attack on sentimentalism. He considers the
Wordsworthian view of nature as a consoler and a refuge
‘an unhealthy and unnatural piece of sentimentalism. For
the same reason he condemns Thoreau.'14

Ia editing the Atlantic, Lowell was very frank in
his criticism of his contributors. He dared to suggest
changes in the poems submitted by Emerson and by Whittier
and to revise the manuscript of Thoreau until that individual
refused longer to contribute to the magazine.15

Aa essay of Emerson's, ”Illusions“, appeared in the
first number of the Atlantic and there were four of his
pools: “The Romany Girl“, “The Chartiist's Complaint“,
”Days”, and "Brahma“. On September 14, 1857, Lowell wrote

to Emerson:

14 George E. Denille Literary griticism i§.America p. 63.
15 Pattee, First Century g_, merican i eratur , p.,584.

34

'About these poems I ought to say that when I spoke
of printing all four I was perhaps greedy, and Mr. Underwood
says we can't afford it, reckoning each as a separate poem-
which means giving $50 apiece for them. Forgive me for
coming down into the kitchen thus, but as I got the magazine
into the scrape, I must get it out. My notion was that
all the poems would be published at once in a volume, and
that therefore it would be alike to you. I ought to have
thought that you sent them for selection,-- and I will never
be so rapacious again till I have another so good a chance.
If I am to have only one, give me 'Days'. That is as limpid
and complete as a Greek epigram. I quarrel, though, with
one word 'hypocritic', which I doubt does not give the
very shade of meaning you intended. I think you did wish
to imply intentional taking-in?'16
0n loveaber 19, 1857, after the first number of the
Atlantic had appeared, Lowell wrote again to Emerson:
“Meanwhile they are advertising the Atlantic in the
very best way and Ir. Underwood tells me that the orders
for the second number are doubling on those for the first.
I think you will find the second an improvement....
The 'Solitade and Society' has only one fault, that it is

not longer, but had it been only one page there would have

16 Scudder, _2, cit., I, 414.

35

been enough in it. Did you use the word daysman17

deliberately? It has a technical meaning and I suppose you
used it in that sense."18
Scudder says, ”It may hot be unfairly said that Emerson
was the only one of his contemporaries whom Lowell addressed
as if he were profoundly conscious of his relation to
him as a pupil to his master."19
Another writer of prominence whose work Lowell
dared to criticize was John Greenleaf Whittier. Lowell
printed Whittier's 'The Gift of Tritemiue' in the first
number of the Atlantic and "Skipper Ireson's Ride” in the
second number. 0n lovember 4, 1857, on receiving the
latter poem, Lowell wrote to Whittier:
'I thank you heartily for the ballad which will go
into the next number. I like it all the better for its
provincialism,-in all fine pears, you know, we can taste
the old packers. I know the story well. I am familiar with
larblehead and its dialect, and as the burthen is intentionally
provincial, I have taken the liberty to print it in such a

way as to give the peculiar accent thus:

17 ”He envied every daysman and drover in the tavern their
manly speech.‘ Corrected and reprinted: "He envied
every drover and lumberman.‘

13 u. A. DeWolfe Howe New otters pp. 94-95.
19 Scudder, 4;. c;3.,’:‘,"n§——". ’

36

'Cap'n Ireson for his horrd horrt
Was torred and feathered and carried in a corrt.’

That's the way I've always 'horrd it',- only it began
'Old Flud Ireson.‘

I'I’cu see that ‘Tritemius'zgs going the rounds. I
meant to have sent you the proofs and to have asked you
to make a change in it where these four rhymes come together
(assonances, I mean),-- 'door', 'poor', 'store', 'more'.

It annoyed me but I do not find that anyone else has been
troubled by it and everybody likes the poem....."31

Lowell's policy of complete frankness is illustrated
further in his correspondence with James T. Fields. Fields
contributed five articles to the Atlantic during Lowell's
editorship. In 1860, Lowell wrote to him:

”I forgot to speak to you about your article which I
liked so much.as to wish it had been longer. They spell
Coliseum Colosseum nowadays."3a

Lowell included praise as well as some criticism in
his letter to T. W. Higginson, in 1858. Higginson had
contributed four articles in 1857-1858. His article,
"Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet“, was to appear in the
January number for 1859. Upon receiving this article,
Lowell wrote:

”I like your article so much that it is already in

20 Atlantic lionthll I 62.
31 Scudder, oi. cit:, I, 417.

33 Howe, How etter , pp. 99—100.

3?

press as leader of the next number. You misunderstood me.

I want no change except the insertion of qualifying 'perhaps'
where you speak of the natural equality of the sexes, and
that as much on your own account as mine-beoause I think

it not yet demonstrated.

I'I only look upon my duty as a vicarious one for Phillips
and Samson, that nothing may go in (before we are firm on
our feet) that helps the 'religious' press in their warfare
on us.... I never allow any personal notion of mine to
interfere except in cases of obvious obscurity, bad taste,
or bad grammar.

'Ae for your own contributions, I may say to you as I
always have to Ir. Underwood, that they are Just to my
liking-soholarly, picturesque, and above all, earnest-

I think the most telling essays we have printed.'33

If Lowell was frank in his criticism of his contributors,
so was he generous in his praise when he felt that the
writer was worthy of it. In December 1860, he wrote to
William Dean Howells:

I'I am glad the papers have had taste enough to find
out the goodness of fThe Pilot's Story'.84 Goethe tells
us to ask the boys and the blackbirds which are the ripest

cherries, but the public seems seldom to have much either of

33 lorton,. otter , I, 287-288.
3‘ mum; at H.323.

38

boy or blackbird in it, and newspaper editors still seldomer;
but I shan't think the worse of your poem because they like
it, for I liked it myself. lore than that, I thought it

a really fine poem. Accordingly, I am glad to hear that

you are to send us another..."35

Bayard Taylor contributed four articles to the
Atlantic during Lowell's editorship. One of these, “The
Confessions of a ledium', appeared in December, 1860.
Shortly after receiving it, Lowell wrote to Taylor:

I'I am very glad you did not forget to send the 'Spiri-
tualist' article you spoke of when here. I like it, and
Ir. Fields says that you shall have your 8100 for it.
You.have dotted out with great nicety the waving
boundary-line that divides self-deception from humbug--

ma-cheating from thee-cheating."36

35 Norton, Letters, I, 306.
33 Howe, lew Ieiterg, p. 100.

39
II.Criticism

Of the sixty five articles which Lowell wrote for the
Atlantic while he was editor, forty were articles of review
and criticism.

In the first issue of the A ant 8, Lowell began a
department which he called the Round Table. He apparently
decided that such a department would be unappreciated by
Atlantic readers or that a department of Literary Notices
would serve better. The first such article, which was also
the last, contained the following statement of Lowell's
intentions regarding the department:

'La Raga has her table, too, and at fitting times in-
vites to it her various Eminent Hands. It is a round table,-
that is, rounded by the principle of rotation,55 for how
could she settle points of precedence with the august heads
of her various Departments without danger of the dinner's
growing cold? Substantial dinners are eaten thereat with
Homeric appetite, nor, though implotus venter non vult
studere libenter, are the visits of the Muse unknown. At
these feasts no tyranny of speechemaking is allowed, but
the bonbons are all wrapped in original copies of verses by
various contributors, which having served their festive turn,
became the property of the guests. Reporters are not admitted

for the eating is not done for inspection, like that of

40

the hapless inmates of a menagerie; but La Mags herself
sometimes brings away in her pocket a stanza or so which
she esteems worthy of a more general communication. Last
month she thus sequestered the following Farewell addressed
by Holmes to the Historian of William the Silent."1

And then follows the poem which it was Lowell's
purpose to introduce.

The department of Literary Notices which took the place
of the Round Table contained the best writing that Lowell
could obtain for the matter of book reviews was of great
consequence to him. In his letter to Richard Grant White,
June 10, 1858, Lowell wrote:

'There is no one cpprobrium.of American scholarship
and letters so great, as the general laxity and debasement
of criticism."3

That Lowell considered White an expert is revealed
in his letter of March 8, 1859:

"There is nothing I so especially desire as to have
'experts' make the Atlantic their pulpit. As long as I
continue editor, I wish you to understand that your criticisms
will always be welcome, on no ground of personal friendship,
but because I know they will be of value. I particularly
wish to have the department of 'Literary Notices' made more
full. I find so few people whom I can trust to write a review!"3
1 James Russell Lowell, “The Round Tgble,'Atlantic Month11,I, 121.

a Scudder, o . cit., I, 431.
3 IQid., p. 31

41

White contributed six aricles to the gtlggtgg during
Lowell's editorship. Three of them were Shakespeare articles.
“Shakespeare'sArt'4 appeared as the leader of the June
1859 number. “William Shakespeare, Attorney and Scholar'5
appeared in JUIy, 1859. In September 1858, White published
“The Collier-Folio Shakespeare."6

In January and February 1859, Lowell published two
articles in the Atlantic in which be reviewed White's Shakespeare.
In the first of these articles Lowell discussed White's
high qualifications and his dexterity in dealing with his
subject. He also pointed out what seemed to him White's
shortcomingh.

"We have spoken of Mr. White's remarkable qualifications,I
Lowell wrote. 'We shall new state shortly what seem to be
his faults. We think his very acumen sometimes leads him
into fancying a meaning where none exists, or at least none
answerable to the clarity and precision of Shakespeare's
intellect; that he is too hasty in his conclusions as to
the pronounciation of words and the accuracy of rhymes in
Shakespeare's day, and that he has been seduced into them
by what we cannot help thinking a mistaken theory as to certain
words, as moth and nothing for example; that he shows, here
and there, a glimpse of Americanism especially misplaced
in an edition of a poet, whose works do more than anything

else perhaps to maintain the sympathy of the English race;

4 Atlant c Monthl , III, 657.
5 bid., , 4.
6 ., p. 512.

43

and that his prejudice against the famous corrected folio

of 1682 leads him to speak slightingly of Ir. Collier, to
whom all lovers of our early literature are indebted, and
who alone, in the controversy excited in England by the pub-
lication of his anonymous corrector's emendations, showed,
under the most shameful provocation, the temper of a gentle-
man and the self-respect of a scholar."7

It was this adverse criticism which Lowell referred
to in his letter to White:

'I don't like reviewing,“ wrote Lowell, IIespecially
where the author is an sequaintance. I find it so hard to
be impartial, but in your case I think my commendation would
lose half its force were it not qualified by some adverse
criticism.'8

The foregoing letters and quotations are intended to
show that the matter of criticism and book reviews was
important to Lowell. The nature of his contributions to
the department of Literary Notices may be seen from the
following complete list of such articles published in
the Atlantic during his editorship:

7 Atlantic Monthly, III, 121.
8 Scudder, g2. cit., I, 433.

43

Beatrice Cenci(Guerrazzi) 1:638

Library of Old Authors (Smith) 1:760, 883

Dramatic Works of John Webster 2:119

White's Shakespeare 3:111, 241

Courtship of Miles Standish 3:129

Bittersweet 3:651 ‘

Dictionary of Authors (Allibone) 3:775

Index to Catalogue of Boston City Library 3:777

To Cuba and Back (R. H. Dana, Jr.) 4:132

Memoir of Theophilus Parsons, by his Son 4:132

The New and the 01d (Palmer) 4:383

Country Life (Capeland) 4:384

Dictionary of Americanisms 4:638

History and Description of New England (Coolidge and
Mansfield) 43645

Reply to the Statement of the Trustees of the Dudley
Observatory (B. A. Gould, Jr.)
4:650

Forty-four Years of the Life of a Hunter 4:770

A First Lesson in natural History (Actaea) 4:773

Sir Rohan's Ghost 5:252

Lectures on the English Language (Marsh) 5:508

The Marble Faun (Hawthorne) 5:509

Poems by Two Friends 5:510

Ross of Travel and Study in Italy (Horton) 5:629

American Dictionary of the English Language (Webster) 5:631

Dies Irae (Coles)5:752

A voyage Down the Amoor (Collins) 5:757

Fresh Hearts that Failed Three Thousand Years Ago 5:759

The New Tariff Bill 6:124

Dictionary of English Etymology (Wedgwood) 6:248

Autobiographical Recollections (Leslie) 6:373

The Old Battle-Ground (Trowbridge) 6:376

Mr. Jarves's Collection 6:509

A Journey in the Back Country (Olmstead) 6:635

Home Ballads and Poems (Whittier) 6:637

A Forest Hymn (Bryant) 6:761

Loves and Heroines of the Poets (Stoddard) 6:761

Folk Songs (Palmer) 6:761

Ancient Danish Ballads (Prior) 7:124

Miss Gilbert's Career 7:125

Conduct of Life (Emerson) 7:254

Life of Andrew Jackson (Parton) 7:381

Poems (Rose Terry) 7:382

Elsie Venner (Holmes) 7:509

It was Lowell's bookish nature and conservative up-

bringing which give these early articles of criticism a tone

44

of uncertainty. Backed by tradition, Lowell felt safe and
secure, but of his contemporaries, Lowell was not able to
speak with authority. His uncertainties, doubts, hesitations,
and qualifications appear constantly throughout his Atlantic
reviews.

In reviewing Emerson's Conduct of;L;fg, Lowell wrote:

“There is no man living to whom, as a writer, so many
of us feel and thankfully acknowledge so great an indebt-
edness for enobling impulses,-none whom so many cannot abide.
What does he mean? ask these last. Where is his system?
What is the use of it all? What the deuse have we to do
with Brahma7'9

And then Lowell excuses himself from the answers by
stating that he does not prOpose to write an essay on Emerson
at the end of a February islanjig when the cause of secession
is immediate. He then calls Emerson a true genius.

”We meant only to welcome this book,“ wrote Lowell,
'and not to review it. Doubtless we might pick our quarrel
with it here and there; but all that our readers care to know
is, that it contains essays on Fate, Power, Wealth, Culture,
Behavior, Worship, Considerations by the Way, Beauty, and
Illusions. They need no invitation to Emerson. 'Would you

know', says Goethe, 'the ripest cherries? Ask the boys

9 gtlantic Mogthlz, 711, 254-255.

45

and the blackbirds.‘ He does not advise you to inquire of
the crows."10

This failure to analyze minutely, and to express a
personal opinion in convincing tones is marked again in
Lowell's review of Holmes' Elsi: Venner. Lowell seems
merely to be doubling public opinion.

“There is no need for our analyzing Elsie Venner,‘I

 

he writes, 'for all our readers know it as well as we do....
The variety, freshness, and strength which he (Holmes)

has lent to our pages during the last three years seem to
demand of us that we should add our expression of admiration
to that which his countrymen have been so eager and unanimous
in rendering.‘11

It is somewhat difficult to decide just what Lowell's
opinion was of Whittier. In reviewing Egg; Ballads ESQ
{2533, Lowell wrote:

"Whatever Mr. Whittier may lack, he has the prime merit
that he smacks of the 8011!12 Yet Lowell followed this crit-
icism with one in which he deplored Whittier's use of the
native idiom. The two criticisms are inconsistent.

'He makes abroad rhyme with God, law with war, us with curse,
scorner with honor, been with men, board with shared. For

the last two we have a certain sympathy as archaisms, but

Atlantic Menth , VII, 255.
13? on, .
12‘ hi ., v1, 638.

46

with the rest we can make no terms whatever-—'

I"The Garrison of Cape Ann': wrote Lowell,

“would have been a fine poem, but it has too much of the
<§nthor in it, and to put a moral at the end of a ballad is
like sticking a cork on the point of a sword.”14

After pointing out as Whittier's prime merit that he smacked
of the soil, Lowell has now condemned him for putting his
'Hew England heart"15 into his poem.

The criticism of Whittier's moralizing is the same which
Lowell offered in reviewing Longfellow's Courtship of Miles
Standish.

'We think his chief fault is too great a tendency to
moralize,' Lowell wrote, 'or rather, a distrust of his readers,
which leads him to point out the moral which he wishes to be
drawn from any special poem."16

Lowell was generous in praise of Hawthorne who had,
when Lowell wrote a review of The Marble Faun, been writing
about twenty years.

Lowell's opinion 0f P0017 may be gleaned at least to
a certain extent from this same review.

'The nineteenth century has produced no more purely

13 Atlantic nonthl , v1, 638.
14 TEIEJI"€3§. "'

15 d., 638.
15 bid., III, 129.
17 e probably cannot conceive of anybody's writing for

anything but a newspaper reputation, or for.posthumous
fame.'-Letters, I, 100

47

original writer than Mr. Hawthorne. A shallow criticism
has sometimes fancied a resemblance between him and Poe.
But it seems to us that the difference between them is the
immeasurable one between talent carried to its ultimate, and
genius,-between a masterly adaptation of the world of sense
and appearance to the purposes of Art, and a so thorough
conception of the world of moral realities that Art becomes the
interpreter of something profounder than herself.'18

These criticisms of living men and articles published
later by Lowell, are sufficient to prove that his judgment
had no very firm basis. In the old authors, Lowell found
and brought to light new aspects for appreciation and here
lay his real talent.

DoMille says that some men are born reviewers and

that Lowell had the ability but not the taste.19

Certainly it was with personal relief and pleasure that
Lowell turned from his study of the contemporary writers
to the leisurely perusal of the old poets.

Considering Lowell's criticism generally, Thorndike
writes:

'Lowell introcuces no new principles or methods into
literary criticism and he makes no search after novelties.
In these respects and in the part that his essays have played
in changing the direction of literary criticism, they may

18

19 Atlantic Honthl , v, 509.
Defiille, _p, cit., p. 71.

48

be regarded as less important than those which Matthew Arnold
was writing during the same decade. But this is mainly due
to the fact that Arnold's criticism was a part of'a definite
propaganda. When he gave up poetry and turned to prose, it
was with the pronounced intention of getting at the British
public, of entering on controversy, of preaching a new gospel,
that of culture which was to have its main ally in criticism.
Lowell's increasing use of prose was made from no such incentive.
The great cause to which he had been devoted had been won.
It was in part as a relief from controversy and propaganda
that he turned from political subjects to the leisurely
appreciation of his favorite authors. The essays have no
reforms to prepose. They are the summing up of many hours
spent in his library and his class-room."30

Reilly and Enerster afford an interesting contrast
in their views of Lowell as a critic. Reilly find in
Lowell an unusual capacity for enthusiasm coupled with
conservatism. He says that Lowell's knowledge of human nature
was limited and that otherwise, his knowledge was wide but
not always accurate. Lowell was only slightly interested
in the drama and novel, Reilly says, and he never attained
true detachment which is necessary for a great critic.21

In contrast to this unsparing criticism of Reilly, is

that of Feoreter:

20 Cambridge History 9; American Literature, II, 253.
31 Joseph John Reilly, James Russell Lowell as a Critic.

 

 

 

49

”In no other American of the nineteenth century has
the critical spirit manifested itself so comprehensively as
in James Russell Lowell. Despite the fact that he leaves
an impression of comparative superficiality and futility....
he must still be regarded as our most distinguished literary
critic."22

It was Lowell's aim as an editor to encourage American
writers and to further establish an American literature.
There is no doubt that the department of Literary Notices
was of some value at least in achieving this aim.

If Lowell's purpose in this early criticism was to
evangelize America to the cause of literature, then he in a
measure succeeded. Certainly his role as Atlantic editor
is historic. As a critic he leaned much on the side of
appreciation and enjoyment. He could talk and write with
fine enthusiasm of his reading, but when it came to sound
judgment of living writers, whose works were not yet supported
by age and tradition, Lowell floundered.33

lext to Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton contributed the
largest number of articles to the department of Literary
Notices. .

Morton was a painstaking, learned, and sympathetic

scholar, 'an autocrat in aesthetic matters.'34
Horton felt that it was his intellectual mission to spread

22 Herman Foerster, American Criticism p. 110.
23 Ban chk Brooks, The Flowering 2: New England, pp. 521-522.
24 Ibid., p. 458. ,

50

the gospel of art. Horton's consideration was only for the
art of the past. ''As Ticknor felt, in his heart of hearts,
that all the great writers were of the past,-Ticknor, who
lived out his days around the corner from Emerson, Hawthorne,
Thoreau, scarcely aware of their existence,-so Norton, who
made an exception of Ruskin's friends, Turner and the Pre-

Raphaelites, felt that the Renaissance was the end of art."25

The nature of Norton's contributions to the section
of reviews, may be seen from the following list which includes
all except five of his total contributions to the Atlantic

during Lowell's editorship:

The Life of Michael Angelo Buonarotte (Harford) 1:510
Galleries and Cabinets of Art ianggat Britian (Waagen)
: 5

Memoir and Letters of the late Thomas Seddon 3:648

The Oxford Museum (Acland) 4:767

Plutarch's Lives (Clough ed.) 5:110

Twelve Years of a Soldier‘s Life in India (Hodson) 5:124

Friends in Council, New Series 5:125

The Simplicity of Christ's Teachings set forth in
Sermons (Brooks) 5:250

The West Indies and the Spanish Main (Tr0110pe) 5:375

Public Life of Captain John Brown (Redpath) 5:378

Le Prime Quattro Edizioni della Devina Commedia 5:622

Mademoiselle Mori 5:754

Essays and Reviews 6:633

Rogeri Bacon Opera 6:746

Collection of Rare and Original Documents, and Relations

Concerning the Discovery and Conquest of
America (Squier) 7:122

The Laws of Race 7:252

11 Politecinco 7:508

11 Comento Latino di Benvenuto Rambaldi (Tamburini) 7:629

35 Brooks, _p, cit., p. 458.

51

E. P. Whipple contributed nine articles to the
department of Literary Notices during Lowell's editorship.
Whipple, who was the chief reader for the firm of Ticknor
and Fields, had earned a reputation in America and England.
'As a writer for the North American, he had formed a method
of his own, discriminating, acute and often subtle, with none
of the ponderousness of his early models; and he was
discussing in his essays and lectures, such subjects as wit
and humour, the ludicrous side of life, genius,-intellectua1
health and disease, character, success and its conditions.
His estimates of early American writers were undoubtedly
over-friendly, but his papers on the English dramatists
and the Scottish and English critics were the best of the
kind in America, by far.‘36

36 Brooks, 22. cit., p. 480.

52
III. The Campaign Against Slavery

The Atlantic Monthly had begun its life at a most
critical period in the history of the United States. The
summer of 1857 was marked by a financial panic, the result
of the discovery of gold. Building of railroads and increase
in manufacturing had caused banks to loan money too freely
and finally the bubble could expand no further. With a few
exceptions, the western banks failed completely. So far
as the banks were concerned, the panic was of short duration
and by the spring of 1858, they began business transactions
again. But a few years of ”hard times” followed and it
was not until 1860 that industrial conditions were normal
again. '

Buchanan had been elected to the presidency in 1856.

He had been the minister in England and thus was not connected
with anything that had been done in America for three years.
He was acceptable to the South, which he had never opposed,
and he appealed to Northern conservatives of all parties

who thought the republican position on slavery a kind of
radicalism.

The chief issue of the campaign of 1856 was the
Kansas situtation. The unorganized Nebraska country west
of Missouri and Iowa became important as soon as the Oregon
question came up; and the migration to California and the
plans proposed for a railroad to the Pacific gave it added

interest. Attempts to have it made a territory had been

53

defeated by the slavery men, because under the Missouri
Compromise it would be free. A bill to create a Nebraska
territory was introduced in 1853. The bill, when finally
passed provided for two territories. Kansas, the more
southern of the two, it was expected would be settled by
slaveholders. Douglas, chairman of the committee on territories,
oalled his doctrine "popular sovereignty, since it gave the
people of the territories the right to settle the question
for themselves.

Buchanan finally won the election, but by a small margin.
The new republican party did exceedingly well for a party
which had never before taken part in a campaign. An important
part was played in this campaign by Harriet Beecher Stowe's
novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in book form in 1852,

 

as a protest against the execution of the fugitive slave
law. It was an earnest protest and it was scarcely possible
for anyone to read it without wishing to destroy the system.
The Southerners resented its pictures of slavery and slave-
holders. The situtation was not as bad as it was portrayed
but it was bad enough to cry for reform.

It was in answer to this cry that Edmund Quincy Opened
the Atlantic attack upon slavery in the second issue, with
his article "Where Will it End?“ Quincy was calling
to the attention of Atlantic readers, the strength and power
of the United States. The South, said Quincy, embraced

three hundred thousand more miles than the North, had

54

admirable Opportunities for carrying on commerce, possessed
all the raw materials for manufacturing. Yet the South
depended on the North for transportation and almost entirely
for commodities.

“With all the means and materials of wealth,“ wrote
Quincy, “the South is poor. With every advantage for gathering
strength and self-reliance, it is weak and dependent.-

Why this difference between the two?

”The 131 is not far to seek. It is to be found in the
reward which Labor bestows on those that pay it due reverence
in the one case, and the punishment it inflicts on those
offering it outrage and insult in the other....A man in
fetters cannot do the task-work that one whose limbs are
unshackled looks upon as a pastime. A man urged by the
prospect of winning an improved condition for himself and
his children by the skill of his brain and the industry of
his hand must needs achieve results such as no fear of torture
can extort from one denied the holy stimulus of hope....'I

Quincy believed the power of the slave party was far
out of proportion to the number of its supporters. The
North, he says, with many distractions has been at "the
mercy of whatever barbarian chief in the capitol could
throw his slave-whip into the trembling scale of party."1
It is impossible to tell the exact time when this tyranny
will end. But 'we know that when the great body of any

lMMonthlz, I, 244.

55

nation is thoroughly aroused, and fully in earnest to abate
a mischief or right a wrong, nothing can resist its energy
or defeat its purpose.'2

Quinay wrote a list of six articles for the Atlantic,
four of which were reviews. In one of these, the review
of Charles Mackay's 3 Life and Liberty in America4,

Quincy wrote:

”The subject upon which the author has labored most
earnestly is that of slavery. If the views he sets forth
are the results of his own investigation, he is entitled
to credit for unusual exactness. There is nothing new about
them to be sure; but there is also nothing absurd, which is

a great point. He maintains thg argumggt against Slavezy,

tha t o be racticall o r ls
igflgggcgg on the white pegplg 9: thg Sigvg gtgtgg, ggg
th ou h th m n th 8 on a a ...”

The injurious effect of the system upon the white peeple
of the South was one of the chief principles upon which
Quincy rested his argument against Slavery. He had already
marked this in his previous article.

“When we speak of the South as distinguished from the
North by elements of inherent hostility, we speak only of

the governing faction, and not of the millions of nominally

2 etlantic Mbnthlz, I, 248.
3 ar es Mackay was an Englishman travelling in America.
4 Atlantic Monthly, IV, 379.

56

free men who are scarcely less its thralls than the black
slaves themselves. This unhappy class of our countrymen
are the first to feel the blight which Slavery spreads
around it because they are nearest to its noxious power.
The subjects of no EurOpean despotism are under a closer
espionage, or a more organized system of terrorism than are
they."5

It was in January 1858 that the Atlantic attack really
got under way. In this issue, Lowell printed Parke Godwin's
article “The President's Message, a brief but sharp
criticism of the administration's policy.

Of those Atlantic contributors who were making an
effort to arouse public feeling for abolition, Lowell,
Godwin, and Quincy were the outstanding figures. Whittier,
who had done much for the cause, had withdrawn from the
field. He was only at home in the cause during its
prophetic phase and as it entered the violent phase that
preceded the war, he grew quiet.6

In these earlier issues, then, Lowell, Godwin and
Quincy were combining their efforts in making the attack.
Parke Godwin, a native of New Jersey and a graduate of
Princeton, assisted his father-in-law, William Cullen Bryant,
on the Evening Post. He took an active interest in literature

5 Atlantic Monthlz, I, 247.
6 rec 8, pp. cit., p. 401.

57

and art and was a figure of some literary importance.

In his first article, Godwin wrote a scathing criticism.
of Buchanan. His party had favored popular sovereignty in
Kansas and Buchanan induced Robert J. Walker to accept the
governorship. Northerners were in the majority in the
population and Walker gave up hope of saving Kansas for
slavery. When elections to constitutional convention were
announced, Walker urged free state peOple to vote, promising
that the constitution prepared should be submitted to the
people for approval. Of the small number of peOple who
took part in the election, the majority were for slavery.
When Southern politicians learned that pro-slavery men
controlled the convention they sent agents to Kansas and
arranged a scheme whereby a minority might control. The
constitution as a whole was not to be submitted to the peOplo,
but only the clause in reference to slavery. The vote was
to be on the constitution with slavery or the constitution
without slavery. If the latter prevailed the slaves already
in Kansas would not be liberated. The vote on the constitution
was to be thken by officers appointed by the convention.
Walker denounced these designs and protested to the president,
but he found Buchanan already committed to the Southerners.

Godwin discussed, in the first part of the article,
the President's policies in regard to the money question
and foreign relations. Having disposed of these matters,
Godwin reviewed the Kansas difficulty. 'By a miserable

58

juggle, worthy of the frequenters of the gambling house or
the race course, the peeple of Kansas have been nominally
allowed to decide the question of Slavery, and that permission
according to Mr. Buchanan, fulfills and completes all that
he ever meant, or his associates ever meant, by the promise
of pepular sovereignty!

“New this may be all that the President and his party
ever meant by that phrase, but it is not all that their
words expressed or the country expected. In the course of
the last three or four years, and by a series of high handed
measures, the established principles of the Federal Govern-
ment, in regard to its management of the Territories,-
principles sanctioned by every administration from Washing-
ton's down to Fillmore's,--have been overruled for the sake
of a new doctrine, which goes by the name of Popular Sov-
Ireignty. The most sacred and binding compacts of former
years were annulled to make way for it; and the Judicial
department of the government was violently hauled from its
sacred retreat, into the political arena, to give a gratuitous
coup-de-grsce to the old Opinions and the apparent sanction
of law to the new dogma, so that Popular Sovereignty might
reign triumphant in the Territories....'7

Godwin pointed to the fact that the main principle
of the Democratic platform had been the doctrine of popular

7 Atlantic Monthly , 1, 745.

59
sovreignty and that Buchanan had won the election through
his promises to secure it for Kansas.

"Under these pledges and promises, what has been the
performance? A Convention, for which, inasmuch as it was
illegally called by an illegal body, a large proportion
of the citizens of Kansas refused to vote, frames a Constitution
in the interest and according to the convictions of the
slenderest minority of the peOple; it incorporates in that
Constitution a recognition of the old Territorial laws to
the last degree offensive to the majority of the peOple;
it incorporates in it a clause establishing slavery in per-
petuity; it connects with it a Schedule perpetuating the
existing slavery, whatever it may be, against all future
remedy which has not the sanction of the slave-master; and
then, by a miserable chicane, it submits the Constitution
to a vote of the people, but it submits it under such terms,
that the peOple, if they vote at all, must vote for it,
whether they like it or not, while the only part in which
they can exercise any choice is the clause which relates
to future slavery. The other part, especially the Schedule,
which recognizes the existing slavery, and almost irremediahly,
the peeple are not allowed to pronounce upon. They are not
allowed to pronounce upon the thousand-and-one details of
the State organization; they are fobbed off with a trans-
parent cheat of 'heads' win,-etails you lose';-and the

whole game is nominated, POpular Sovereignty“.

And what was worse, in Godwin's estimation, was the
President's argument that this was a fair settlement of the
question. In this new light, Popular Sovereignty was merely
designed to cover the right of the pe0ple to vote on a single
question, specially presented by an illegal body, under
electoral arrangements made by its new officers,- while all
the rest was merely unimportant and trivial.

'An old authority tell us that 'it is hard to kick
against the pricks'; and the President appears to have
experienced the difficulty, in kicking against the pricks of
his conscience. He had committed himself to a principle
which he is now compelled by the policy of his Southern
masters to evade, and is painfully embarrassed as to how
he shall hid his tracks. He knows, as all the world knows,
that this Jugglery in Kansas has been performed for no other
purpose than to secure a foothold for Slavery there, against
the demonstrated Opinion of nine-tenths of the peOple.

He knows, as all the world knows, that if the Convention

_ had had the least desire to arrive at a fair expression of
the popular will, on the question of Slavery or any other
question, it was easy to make a candid and honorable
submission of it to an election to be held honestly

under the recognized officers of the Territory; but he knows,
also, that under such circumstances the case would have been
carried overwhelmingly against the 'domestic institution,’

and thus have rebuked, with all the emphasis that an outraged

61

community could give to the expression of its will, the
nefarious conduct which 'the party' has pursued from

the beginning,-—and this was a consummation not to he
wished. He therefore wriggles and shuffles, with an absurd
and transparent inconsistency, to defeat the pepular will,
and yet mouth it bravely about 'the great principle of
Popular Sovereignty."

A month later, in the February Atlantic, Godwin again
discussed the Kansas situation in “A Brief Review of the
Kansas Usurpation.” Here again, Godwin pointed to the
Leeompton constitution as a scheme "to force the evils of
slavery upon an unwilling peeple', and pleaded for an end
of it. He points again to the extreme weakness of the
administration in dealing with the affair and he strengthened
his case with a historical review of Kansas since its es-
tabliehment as a territory.

There was no political article in the Harch number,
but in April Godwin and Lowell combined their efforts in
an article which was to be one of the strongest of its kind
during Lowell's editorship.

lr.unchanan had been in office a year and Godwin was
called upon to review this first year which he did in
an article of about eight pages,8 with the title, ”Mr.
Buchanan's Administration.“ Mr. Godwin was a trained
Journalist and he was both methodical and severe as he

examined Ir. Buchanan's record on the Mormon question,

8 Atlantic Monthly, 1, 745-754.

62
the financial question, the Filibuster question, and the
Kansas question. He analyzed clearly and gave results.

Then Lowell took up the argument.9 Scudder says:

'In the absence of any correspondence on the subject
it is reasonble to conjecture that, having received Mr.
Godwin‘s article and assigned it to the number, he was
constrained to think that forcible as it was in its indictment
of Ir. Buchanan's administration for errors and blunders,
it might well afford the starting point for a further arraign-
ment, not of the administration in particular but of the
nation itself so far as that was particeps criminis with
the administration in its role of attorney for the slave
power."10

“Looking at the administration of Mr. Buchanan,"
Lowell wrote, “from the point of view of enlightened states-
manship, we find nothing in it that is not contemptible;
but when we regard it as the credited exponent of the moral
sense of a majority of our people, it is saved from contempt,
indeed, but saved only because contempt is merged in a
deeper feeling of humiliation and apprehension. Unparralleled
as the outrages in Kansas have been, we regard them as
insignificant in comparison with the deadlier fact that the
Chief Magistrate of the Republic should strive to defend
them by the small wiles of a village attorney,- that, when

9 Lowell gave no explanation for adding to Godwin's article.
10 Scudder, gp. cit., II, 5.

63
the honor of a nation and the principle of self-government
are at stake, he should show himself unconscious of a higher
judicature or a nobler style of pleading than those which
would serve for a case of petty larceny,--and that he should
be abetted by more than helf the national representatives,
while he brings down a case of public conscience to the
moral level of those who are content with the maculate safety
which they owe to a flaw in an indictment, or with the dingy

innocence which is certified to by the disagreement of a

jury.'11

Lowell regarded this weakness and failure of the
administration as a natural consequence of the demoralization
which followed the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Bill.

He saw that the difficulty lay in a lack of organized public
sentiment and a resulting weakness of a sense of responsibility.
He laid the blame upon the individual voter and emphasized

the need for an awakening of the individual conscience.

The North, Lowell insisted, had wasted its strength in

internal bickerings.

'The advantage of our opponents has been that they have
always had some sharp practical measure, some definite and
immediate object, to oppose to our voluminous propositions
of abstract right. Again and again the whirlwind of oratorical

enthusiasm has roused and heaped up the threatening masses

11 Atlantic Monthlz, I, 754.

64

of the Free States, and again and again we have seen them
collapse like a water-spout, into a crumbling heap of dis-
integrated bubbles before the compaot bullet of political
audacity. While our legislatures have been resolving and
re-resolving the principles of the Declaration of Independence,
our adversaries have pushed their trenches, parallel after
- parallel, against the very citadel of our political equality."12

Lowell ignored Southern threats of disunion. He rebuked
his fellow countrymen for the political degeneracy and
closed his article with a plea for awakening:

'It lies in the hands of the peeple of the Free States
to rescue themselves and the country by peaceable reform,
ere it be too late, and there be no remedy left but that
dangerous one of revolution, toward which Mr. Buchanan and
his advisors seem bent on driving them. But the reform just
be wide and deep, and its political objects must be obtained
by household means. Our sense of private honor and
integrity must be quickened; our consciousness of responsibility
to God and man for the success of this experiment in practical
Democracy, in order to which the destiny of a hemisphere
has been entrusted to us, must be aroused and exalted.....
Prosperity has deadened and bewildered us....We believe there
is virtue enough left in the North and West to infuse health.

into our body politic; we believe that America will reassume

13 Atlantic Monthly, 1, 757.

65

that moral influence among the nations which she has allowed
to fall into abeyance; and that our eagle, whose morning—
flight the world watched with hape and expectation, shall

no longer trOOp with unclean buzzards, but rouse himself

and seek his eyrie to brood new eaglets that in time shall
share with him the lordship of these Western heavens, and
shall learn of him to shake the thunder from their invincible
wings.‘13

In this article Lowell has placed the blame for the
existing state of affairs, not upon political blunders, but
upon the disintegration of public conscience.

In June, 1858, Godwin took up the attack in his
article, 'The President's Phrophecy of Peace.“ Godwin's
tone is one of bitterness and sarcasm as he describes the
jubilance of the President over the outcome of the Kansas
difficulty, and the prospect of “peace“ and “prosperity".

In no uncertain terms, Godwin explains the real meaning of
this “peace“ and "prosperity“.

“This gentle peace, thus joyfully presaged, is to be
won by the submission of an inchoate State to a form of
government subjecting its inhabitants to institutions ab-
horrent to their souls and fatal to their prosperity, forced
upon them at the point of a bowie-knife and the muzzle of

a revolver by hordes of sordid barbarians from a hostile

13 Atlantic Monthly, 1, 759-760.

66

soil, their natural and necessary enemies...... And the
'prosperity' which is to wait upon this happy'peace'
glows with a like golden promise. It is a prosperity that
shall bless Kansas into a Virginia or a North Carolina
by virtue of the same means which has browned the Slave-
country with the wealth, the civilization, and the intelligence
it has to brag of. It is such a prosperity as ever follows
in the footsteps of Slavery,-a prosperity which is to
blight the soil, degrade the minds, debauch the morale,
impoverish the substance, and subvert the independence of
a loathing pOpulation, if the joy of the President and his
directors is to be made full. Such is the message of peace
and good-will which filled with prophetic raptures the hearts
which flowed together on that happy night, and such the
blessed prospects which made the air of Washington vocal with
the ecstasies of triumph."14

The peOple of Kansas had been offered a bait. They
had no opportunity to express their consent to or dissent
from the constitution which was being held over their
heads.. They were only to say whether they would accept
five million acres of land which Congress had offered for the
construction of railways. If they accepted, they would
immediately become a slave state. If they refused, the doors
of the Union would be closed to them forever. This plan
had been set up by the Committee of Conference.

14 Atlantic Monthly, II, 112.

67

Ittwas Godwin's belief that the people of Kansas were
intelligent enough and earnest enough in their support of
the cause of freedom to reject such a plan for obtaining
statehood. The peOple of Kansas, having accepted the Le-
compton Constitution could call a convention and substitute
another in its place, but such a policy would only bring
about an armed collusion with the general government.

Instead of this course, Godwin pleaded for caution and
patience.

'Let the men of Kansas remember that a yet greater trust
than that of providing for their own interests and rights
is in their hands. The battle they are to fight in this
quarrel is for the whole North, for the whole country, for
the whole world. Let them address themselves unto it with
calmness, with prudence, with watchfulness, with courage.
They are beset on every side by crafty and desperate enemies..
Let them organize such scrutiny everywhere that fraud and
violence cannot escape detection and exposure. Let them
observe most rigidly all the technical rules imposed upon
the electors, that no vote may be lost. Let them come to
the polls by thousands, and trample under their feet the
shabby bribe for which they are asked to trade away their
independence and their virtue. Let them be faithful and
never weary of maintaining the Agitation, which is proved,

by the very dread their enemies have of it, to be the way

68
to their victory. Thus they will be sure to triumph, conquering
their right to create their own government, and erect a
free commonwealth on the ruins of the tyranny they have
overthrown. And Kansas, at no distant period, will be
welcomed by her Free Sisters to her place among them, with
no stain of bribes in her hands, and with no soil of mean-
nese upon her garments. And then the 'peace' and 'prosperity'
which President Buchanan saw in vision on the eve of May-day,
will indeed prevail and be established, while the blackness
of infamy will brood forever over the memory of the magistrate
who used the highest office of the Republic to perpetuate
the wrongs of the Slave by the sacrifice of the citizen.‘15

This was the last of Parke Godwin's articles to appear
in the Aglantic during Lowell's editorship. His attacks
had, on the whole, been more direct than Lowell's The
very breadth of Lowell's thinking weakened his plea.
Lowell's talents were better employsd when he was writing
the article on the American Tract Society16 and the two later
ones, “A Pocket Celebration of the Fourth'17and “A Sample
of Consistency."18 In these articles where freedom and
expediency were the issues, Lowell handled his case with
considerable dexterity.

Lowell had, all his life, stood for Freedom. In these

15 Atlantic Eonthl , II, 118.
16 $513., p. 215.
17 b ., p. 374.
18 bid., p. 750.

69

papers he was lashing the politicians and referring again
and again to the eternal principles of Freedom.

'The anti-slavery question is not one which the Tract
Society can exclude by triumphant majorities, nor put to
shame by comparison of respectabilities. Mixed though it
has been with politics, it is in no sense political and
springing naturally from the principles of that religion
which traces its human pedigree to a manger....it can dispense
with numbers and earthly respect."19

“The ethical aspects of slavery,‘I Lowell says, "are not
and cannot be the subject of consideration with any party
which preposes to act under the Constitution of the United
States. Her are they called upon to consider its ethnoIOgical
aspect. Their concern with it is confined to the domain
of politics, and they are not called to the discussion of
abstract principles, but of practical measures. The question
even in its political aspect is one which goes to the very
foundation of our theories and our institutions. It is simply
.shall the course of the Republic be so directed as to
subserve the interests of aristocracy or of democracy?
Shall our territories be occupied by lord and serf or by
intelligent freemen? by laborers who ate owned, or by men

who own themselves?'30

19 Atlantic lionthly, II, 251.
m e, pe 3e

70

In October, 1860, Lowell printed his article, "The
Election in November.“ Douglas was the Democratic candidate.
The seceders nominated J. C. Breckenridge as their candidate.
John Bell was the candidate of the remainder of the Whig and
Know-nothing parties and Lincoln was the Republican candidate.
The supporters of the other three candidates declared that
Lincoln's election meant disunion. This argument Lowell
said was “the old Rumba-Jumbo“ 31 conjured up to frighten
old women and stock speculators. Lowell denied that
discussion of the slave question was dangerous.

“The real danger,“ he says, “will come when the encroach—
ments of the Slave Power and the concessions of the Trade
Power shall have made it a burden instead of a blessing."‘?'3

Lowell saw the real danger, not only in the mass of
ignorant brute force, but in the gradually increasing
consciousness of the non-slaveholding population as to
the real cause of their material impoverishment and political
inferiority. Each slave-holding community was made up of
three classes: the slaves, their owners, and those who
neither were slaves nor owned them. This third class were
white men who labored for bread, yet they were nonefthe
richer for their labor. To multiply such communities is to
multiply weakness.

“The election in November,“ says Lowell, “turns on the

 

71

sinple and single question, Whether we shall consent to the
indefinite multipication of them; and the only party which
stands plainly and unequivocally pledged against such a
policy, nay, which is not either Openly or impliedly in
favor of it, is the Republican party.“33

Lowell states clearly in this article his first
disappointment at Seward's defeat as the party candidate.
Lincoln was not so well known in the East but Lowell came
to accept him and looked forward to the results of his
hoped-for election with great trust.

”We believe that the election of Mr. Lincoln will do
more than anything else to appease the excitement of the
country. He has proved both his ability and his integrity,
he has had experience enough in public affairs to make him
a statesman, and not enough to make him a politician.
He respresents a party who know that true policy is gradual
in its advances, that it is conditional and not absolute,
that it must deal with facts and not with sentiments, but
who know also that it is wiser to stamp out evil in the spark
than to wait till there is no help but in fighting fire
with fire."34

Defining the party principles further, Lowell says:

“They believe that slavery is a wrong morally, a mistake

23 Atlantic Monthl , v1, 498.
24 I§Z§IT‘FT"§6§T‘Z

72

politically, and a misfortune practically wherever it exists;
that it has nullified our influence abroad and forced us

to compromise with our better instincts at home; that it

has perverted our government from its legitimate objects,
weakened the respect for laws by making them the tools of

its purposes, and sapped the faith of men in any higher
political morality than interest or any better statesmanship
than chicane. They mean in every lawful way to hem it within
its present limits."25

Lowell's article, “The Question of the Hour“,
appeared in the Atlantic for January, 1881, when South
Carolina had alread taken steps to withdraw from the Uhion.
The real question of the hour with Lowell, was whether the
Free States, having taken their stand for freedom, would
be able to maintain it. Lowell considered briefly the
possibility of disunion and its result.

“Even if the secessionists could accomplish their
schemes, who would he the losers? Not the Free States,
certainly, with their variety of resources and industry.

The laws of trade cannot be changed, and the same causes
which have built up their agriculture, commerce, and manue
factures will not cease to be Operative. The real wealth

and strength of the states, other things being equal,

35 Atlantic Monthly, v1, 502.

73

depends upon homogeneousness of population and variety of

occupation, with a common interest and common habits of
thought. The cotton-growing states, with their single
staple, are at the mercy of chance."26

In his article a month later, "E Pluribus Unum",

Lowell had become seriously concerned over the state
of affairs.

“But the present question is one altogether transcending
all limits of party and all theories of party-policy. Itt
is a question of national existence; it is a question
whether a disappointed clique shall nullify all government
now, and render a stable government difficult hereafter;
it is a question, not whether we shall have civil war under
certain contingencies, but whether we shall prevent it under
any....27 Slavery is no longer the matter in debate, and
we must beware of being led off upon that side-issue. The
matter now in hand is the reestablishment of order, the
reaffirmation of national unity, and the settling once for
all whether there can be such a thing as a government without
the right to use its power in self-defence.“38

In the article “The Pickens-and-Stealin's Rebellion“
which Lowell wrote just before he gave up the editorship of
the Atlantic, he was impatient at the slow caution Of the

26 Atlantic nontnl , v11, 121.
27 Ibid., p. 3.
28 f_bid., p. 245.

74

administration but he was sure of the outcome of the war.
“We cannot think that the war we are entering on can
end without some radical change in the system of African
slavery. Whether it be doomed to a sudden extinction, or
to a gradual abolition through economical causes, this war
will not leave it where it was before. As a power in the state
its reign is already over. The.ftery*tongues of the
batteries in Charleston harbor accomplished in one day a
conversion which the constancy of Garrison and the eloquence
of Phillips had failed to bring about in thirty years. And
whatever other result this war is destined to produce, it
has already won for us a blessing worth everything to us as

a nation in emancipating the public Opinion of the North.“39

Lowell left his editor's chair just as the real war
was beginning. With Godwin and Quincy, he had battered
against the slavery evil for four years.' Quincy, writing
in the early days of the Atlantic, had led the argument
along the line of slavery's effect upon the non-slaveholding
pOpulation. Godwin had analyzed each situation and pointed
out the inevitable resultfi. He had analyzed the frauds and
deceits of the administration with penetration and
foresight. Lowell had furnished the largest number of

articles and had preached the doctrine of man's inherent

29 Atlantic Monthly, v11, 763.

75
right to freedom. It is impossible to measure the influence
of these articles. However, in view of the keen interest
of the writers, the forcefulness of the presentation, and the
many lines of attack, they were not circulated without ex-
citing considerable thought in the minds of Atlantic readers.

Harriet Beecher Stowe entered the Atlantic campaign
against slavery with her novel “The Minister's Wooing“.

The story concerns Mary Scudder and her mother,

and Dr. HOpkins, a minister who lived with them. In addition
to his theology, Dr. Hopkins preached the doctrine of

freedom which in the beginning, startled his congregation,
many of whom had accumulated fortunes through the slave
trade. Harriet Beecher Stowe was voicing her own atni-
slavery sentiments when Dr. Hopkins said to a member of his
congregation:'

“Did it ever occur to you, my friend, that the enslaving
of the African race is a clear violation of the great law
which commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves,-
and a dishonor upon the Christian religion, more particularly
in us Americans, whom the LLerd hath so marvelously
protected in our recent struggle for our own liberty?“ 30

And again:

“What a shame it is, what a scandal and disgrace to the

Protestant religion, that Christians of America should

30 Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Hgnister's Wooing, p. 158.

76

Openly practice and countenance this enslaving of the
Africans! I have for a long time holden my peace,-may
the Lord forgive me! but I believe the time is come when
I must utter my voice.“31

The attitude of these good, thrifty, pious New Englanders
toward slavery, was described by Mrs. Stowe when she wrote:

“There was not in Newport a more thriving and reputable
business at that time than the slave-trade. Large fortunes
were constantly being turned out in it, and what better
providential witness of its justice could most peOple require?“32

In a sermon from his pulpit on a fine Sunday morning,

Dr. Hopkins lashed his slave-trading and slave—holding members
thus:

“If these things be true,“ he said after a condensed
statement of the facts of the case, “then the following
terrible consequences which may well make all shudder and
tremble who realize them, force themselves upon us, namely:
that all who have had any hand in this iniquitous business,
whether directly or indirectly, or have used their influence
to promote it, or have consented to it, or have no Opposed
it by all prOper exertions of which they are capable,-
all these are, in a greater or less degree, chargable with

the injuries and miseries which millions have suffered and

31 Stowe, The MinisterL§,Wooing, p. 144.
32 Ibid.

77

are suffering, and are guilty of the blood of millions who
have lost their lives by this traffic in the human species.
lot only the merchants who have been engaged in this trade,
and the captains who have been tempted by the love of money
to engage in this cruel work, and the slave-holders of every‘
description, are guilty of shedding rivers of blood, but all
the legislatures who have authorized, encouraged, or even
neglected to suppress it to the utmost of their power, and
all the individuals in private stations who have in any

way aided in this business, consented to it or have not
opposed it to the utmost of their ability, have a share in
this guilt.

“This trade in the human species has been the first
wheel of commerce in Newport, on which every other movement
in business has chiefly depended; this town has been built
up, and flourished in times past, at the expense of the
blood, the liberty, and the happiness of the poor Africans;
and the inhabitants have lived on this and by it have gotten
most of their wealth and riches. If a bitter woe is
pronounced on him “that buildeth his house by unrighteousness-
and his chambers by wrong,“ Jer. XXII, 13,-to “that buildeth
a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity,“
Hab.ll;12,-to “the boody city,“ Ezek. XXIV. 6,-
what a heavy, dreadful woe hangs over the heads of all those
whose hands are defiled by the blood of Africans, especially

78

the inhabitants of this State and this town, who have had
a distinguished share in this unrighteous and bloody
commerce!“33

Harriet Beecher Stowe's attack differed from the others
in the Ajlantig in that it was made entirely from a moral
standpoint. There was no reference to politics, to the ad-
ministration, or to the Kansas difficulty. Because it was
part Of a novel, where plot and character were dominant,
it had not the force of the articles of Lowell, Godwin, and
Quincy. Tet Hrs. Stowe's remarks gained strength from the
fact that they were directed at a New England Puritan
community, the members of which were profiting from

the slave trade.

33 Stowe, 92. cit., pp. 242-243.

79
IV. Fiction

The Atlantic had taken for its sub-title, ”A
Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics.” In regard to
the influence it was to have in political and governmental
questions the Atlantic could scarcely have appeared at a
more cpportune moment. In the field of criticism, likewise,
the Atlantic was to have considerable influence. But in
no field did the magazine and its editor have more influence
than in the field of short fiction.

“New England literature during the mid-century had
been uniformly serious. The short story, especially in the
Boston atmosphere, was regarded as a magazine product,
ephemeral stuff, “light reading“, or at best a miniature
novel that might serve as good exercise for young writers
who were pluming their wings for serious flight. Collections
of short stories were seldom mentioned by the reviewers,
even in the lists of “books received“. One may read quite
through the early volumes of the New York Nation, which aimed
to furnish a complete record of the current literary product
and be unaware that such a form existed.“1

Lowell, however, was well aware that the short story
form existed. He had never been a writer of fiction himself
Even his criticism was concentrated chiefly upon other

types of literature. But beginning with the first issue,

1 Fred Lewis Pattee, Qevelogment of the American Short
Story, p. 6 .

80
the Atlantic published short fiction, averaging about three
stories each month.

Lowell had written to Briggs in 1853, “I do abhor
sentimentality from the depth of my soul."8
In his criticisms, Lowell admired that which was fresh and
genuine, the characters which were true to life, and the
incidents which were real. In reviewing “Miss Gilbert's
Career,“3 by J. c. Holland, he wrote:

“Our author has lost nothing of that genuine love of
Nature, of that quick perception of the comic element in
men and things, of that delightful freshness and liveliness
which threw such a charm about the former writings of Timothy
Titcomb. No story can be pronounced a failure which has
vivacity and interest; and the volume before us adds to
vivacity and interest vigorous sketches of character and
scenery, droll conversation and incidents, a frequent and
kindly humor,...“

The tales which Lowell selected for publication at a
time when the feminized fiction which he so despised was
at its full tide, were written by a group of writers “who
threw overboard the old romanticism and introduced the
vulgar world of Dickens at the Opposite extreme.“4

Rose Terry was the leading contributor of short stories

to the Ajlgnyxg during Lowell's editorship. She was born in

2 Pattee, DeveloEment of the American Short Story, p. 168.
3 Atlantic Monthl , I , 5.
P . c t

‘ attee’ @ 1 a, Do 1690

81

Connecticut in 1827 and had, when she began writing for
the Atlantic, already contributed to other magazines.
In her Atlantic tales, Rose Terry turned to the delineation
of actual life. “She dealt more and more with new England
farm and village characters, with common laborers and non-
descript types found in country towns-with tight fisted
farmers and rural deacons and the women they ruled with
patriarchal despotism. She was not the first to do this;
Seba Smith and others had caught glimpses of the field,
but she was the first fully to take possession.“5

Rose Terry's first Atlagtic story turned on the familiar
New England theme of duty, touched with the humor which was
evident in the majority of Miss Terry's stories. In form,
Rose Terry's tales fell short, for she frequently covered
the whole lives of her characters. “But despite their
faulty architectonies, her tales mark a distinct advance
in American short-story art; they used for the first time
consitently and with distinction what later was widely
proclaimed as “local color“, and they tempered the vulgarity
of their material with humor.“6

In the first issue of the Atlantic along with
Rose Terry's “Sally Parson's Duty“, appeared Harriet
Beecher Stowe‘s “The Mourning Veil“. In contrast to

Rose Terry‘s tales, which threw the New England characters

5 Pattee gp. cit. p. 175.
e Ibid.,’p. 175—. ’

83

into cold relief, is this tale of Mrs. Stowe's which is
really a sermon made into a story.

The importance of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Atlantic
writings during Lowell's editorship rests chiefly upon her
serial, “The Minister's Wooing“, which began in the second
volume. She had written into this story her anti~slavery
sentiments, but it is more important for its deliniation
of New England life.

The story turns on a religious theme and offered Mrs.
Stowe and excellent Opportunity for describing the religious
doctrines of Iew England, a thing she was well qualified to
do since her father was a minister. Hrs. Stowe not only
discussed these religious doctrines of New England but
through her characters, Mary and Katy Scudder and Dr. HOpkins,
she described their effect upon New England peOple.

“The rigid theological discipline of New England,“
she says, “is fitted to produce rather strength and purity
than enjoyment. It was not fitted to make a sensitive and
thoughtful nature happy, however it might enoble and
exalt.“7

Hrs. Stowe claimed her right to disagree with the religious
beliefs of her countrymen when she wrote:

“It is not our line to imply the truth or the false.
hood of those systems of philosOphic theology which seem

7 Stowe, The Minister's Wooing, p. 83.

83

for many years to have been the principal outlet for the
proclivities of the New England mind, but as psychological
developments they have an intense interest. He who does
not see a grand side to these strivings of soul cannot
understand one of the noblest capabilities of humanity.“8

Hrs. Stowe constantly referred to her region in
relation to its religion.

“It is impossible to write a story of New England life
and manners for a thoughtless, shallow-minded person. If
we represent things as they are, their intensity, their
depth, their unworldly gravity and earnestness must inevitably
repel lighter spirits, as the reverse pole of the magnet
drives off sticks and straws.

“In no other country were the soul and the spiritual
life ever such intense realities, and everything
contemplated so much... in reference to eternity!“9

She comments again on the somber tones of New England
life when she writes:

“The tone of life in New England, so habitually earnest
and solemn, breathed itself in the grave and plaintive
melodies of the tunes then sung in churches...“10

“New England presents probably the only example of
a successful commonwealth founded on a theory, as a distinct
experiment in the problem of society. It was for this
8 Stowe, pp. g;§., p. 24.

9 Ibid., p. 83.
10 Ibid., p. 125.

84

reason that the minds of its great thinkers dwelt so much
on the final solution of that problem in this world. The
fact of a future milennium was a favorite doctrine of the
great leading theolOgians of New England...“11

Besides these frequent discussions of the religious
life in New England, Hrs. Stowe has given much space to
another phase of New England life: the habits and customs
of its people and their simple manner of living.

“Being asked to tea in our New England in the year
17-- meant something very different than the same invitation
in our more sophisticated days. In those times peOple held
to the singular opinion that the night was made to sleep
in; they inferred it from the general confidence they had
in the wisdom of Mother Nature, supposing that she did
not put out her lights and draw her bed-curtains and hush
all noise in her great world-house without strongly intending
that her children should go to sleep; and the consequence was,
that very soon after sunset the whole community very generally
set their faces bedward, and the tolling of the nine-O'clock
evening bell had an awful solemnity in it, announcing the
end of all respectable proceedings in life for that day.
Good society in New England in those days very generally
took its breakfast at six, its dinner at twelve, and its

tea at six. “Company tea“ however, among thrifty industrious

ll Stowe, 92, 01 ., p. 138.

85

folks, was often taken an hour earlier, because each of the
invitees had children to put to bed or other domestic cares
at home; and as in those simple times people were invited
because you wanted to see them, a tea-party assembled them-
selves at three and held session till sun-down, when each

matron rolled up her knitting-work and wended soberly home.“13:

Throughout the story are scattered such descriptions
of the simple dignified order of the true New England
home, the spinning and weaving, the early morning baking,
the simple nourishing meals of smoking brown bread and
steaming baked beans.

Hrs. Stowe approached her material from a high literary
level. Her characters represented the best in New England
and she touched them with reverence, but she knew her region
and there was truth in her representation.

As an editor, Lowell wrote to Mrs. Stowe a paragraph
which represented his desire for all his contributors:

“Hy advice is to follow your own instincts, stick to
nature and avoid what people commonly call the ideal; for
that, and beauty, and pathos and success all lie in the
simply natural: There are ten thousand peOple who can
write ideal things for one who can see and feel and

reproduce character.“13

12 Stowe, _p. cit ., p. 15

13 Pattee, The First Century of American Literature, p. 591.

86

Lowell declared his satisfaction with Mrs. Stowe's
story when he wrote:

“We do not believe that there is anyone, who, by birth,
breeding and natural capacity, has had the opportunity to
know New England so well as she, or who has had the peculiar
genius so to profit by the knowledge. Already there have
been scenes in “The Minister's Wooing that, in their lowness
Of tone and quiet truth contrast as charmingly with the
timid vagueness of the modern school of novel writers as
The Vicar of Wakefield.”14

Another New England realist, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,
contributed once during Lowell's editorship. The story
was ““Tenty Scran“, a somber tale of New England life in
which everything is dull and colorless:

“There is but little incident in a New England village
of the Deerfield style and sizs-fu11 of commonplace peOple,
who live commonplace lives, in the same white and brown and
red houses they were born in, and die respectably in their
beds, and are quietly buried among the mulleins and dewb
berry vines in the hillside graveyard. Mary Scarton“s
life and death, though they possessed the elements of a
tragedy, were divested of their tragic interest by this

calm and pensive New England atmosphere.“15

14 Pattee, o . cit., p. 178.
15 Atlantic onthly, VI, 590.

87
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was one of the first of American

story writers to localize her fiction with specially
collected material.16

One of the most depressing of realistic stories which
appeared in the Atlantic during Lowell's editorship was .
Rebecca Harding's “Life in the Iron Mills“, her only contri-
bution. In grim tones she describes the fire, the flame,
and the smoke. The characters are a part of the background,
struggling with forces too powerful for them. The heroine
is limp and wretched, the hero haggard and desperate.

After Lowell gave up the editorship, Rebecca Harding
published other tales in the magazine. A passage in her
second contribution17 indicates the direction of American
fiction:

!My story is very crude and homely,-only a rough
sketch of one or two of those people whom you see every day,
and call “dregs' sometimes-a dull bit of prose; such as
you might pick for yourself out of any of these warehouses
or back streets. I expect you to call it stale or plebian,
for I know the glimpses of life it pleases you best to find
here: New England idyls delightfully tinted; passion-veined
hearts, out bars for curious eyes; prophetic utterances,

concrete and clear; or some word of pathos or fun from the

16 Pattee,,yg. cit., p. 170.
17 Atlantic Monthly, VII, 471.

88

old friends who have indenizened themselves in everybody“s
home. IOu want something, in fact, to lift you out of this
crowded, tobacco—stained commonplace, to kindle and chafe
and glow in you. I want you to dig into this commonplace,
this vulgar American life, and see what is in it.
Sometimes I think it has a new and awful significance we
do not see.“18

This was what Lowell had in mind as he selected his
Atlantic tales. He wanted a true picture of American life.
He printed Mrs. Stowe's and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps“
portrayals of New England. He chose Rebecca Harding's
picture of Pittsburgh roller mblls.

Charles Nordoff“s “Elkanah Brewster's Temptation“
carries the reader to Cape God.

“They are not rich on the Cape—-, in the Wall-Street
sense of the word, that is to say. I doubt if Uncle
Lew Baker, who was a high line out of Dennis last year, and
who, by the same token, had to work himself right smartly
to achieve that honor,-I doubt if this smart and thoroughly
wide-awake fellow took home more than three hundred dollars
to his wife and children when old Obed settled the voyage.
But then the good wife saves while he earns, and, what with

a cow, and a house and a garden spot of his own, and a

18 Pattee, o . cit., pp. 172-173.

89

healthy lot of boys and girls, who, if too young to help,
are not suffered to hinder, this man is more forehanded
and independent, gives more to the poor about him and to
the heathen at the other end of the world, than many a city
man who makes and spend, his tens of thousands.“19

Harriet Prescott“s “Knitting Sale-Socks“ is another
story of simple peOple written partly in dialect. Harriet
Prescott contributed seven tales to the Atlantic during
Lowell's editorship. One of these, “The Amber Gods“ was

to exert some influence upon Elizabeth Stuart Phelps21

because of its very amazing and interesting last sentence:
“I must have died at ten minutes past one.“

Two men who were to win considerable reputation later
as short story writers, John T. Trowbridge and Robert 8.

T. Lowell, made contributions of poetry to the Atlantic
in these early issues.

“My Double and How He Undid Me“, one of the two tales
upon which the fame of Edward Everett Hale rests, appeared
in the fourth volume of the Atlantic. Hale made use of a
different kind of realism. His was a long rambling style
touched with realistic detail. Yet his rambling style left
a singleness of impression and he added humor and vivacity.33

Caroline Chesebro“ contributed three tales, each in

two parts: “The Pure Pearl of Diver's Bay,“ “Her Grace

19 Atlantic Monthly, IV, 711.
20 Ibid., V, 7, 170.
21 Pattee, 22. cit., p. 181.

22 Ibid., p. 185?"

90

the Drummer“s Daughter“, and “Victor and Jacqueline“.
These tales, with Fitz-James 0“Brien“s “The Diamond

Lens“ and J. D. Whelpley“s “The Denslow Palace“, complete
the list of the important Atlantic fiction during Lowell's
editorship.

With the form of the short story, Lowell had been very
little concerned. He was concerned with the content and not
the form. He wished the tales to deal with human life.

After the Civil War, readers became more critical and
the crude work of the mid—century was no longer tolerated.
Lowell himself realized the shortcomings of much of the
material which he admitted into the Atlantic and wrote to
Howell's in 1865:

“The danger of our literature seems to me to be care-
lessness and want of scholarly refinement.“23

Yet the fiction was without doubt better than that which
had preceded it and represented the beginning of a distinctly

finer body of fiction which was to come.

23 Pattee,.gp. c t., p. 193.

91
V. Chief Contributors

Holmes

In the first issue of the Atlantic there appeared an
article which began: “I was just going to say when I was
interrupted-.“ Probably only a very few readers recalled
that the old 113! England Magazine 1 for 1831-1832 had published
two papers of an“autocrat of the breakfast table,“ written
by a young student of medicine? This whimsical continuation
after an interruption of twenty five years puzzled most
of the readers.

Lowell had accepted the editorship of the magazine on
the condition that the others who had met together to
discuss the project were to furnish the materials. He had
especially emphasized his desire to have Holmes as a
contributor. Why Lowell had singled out this oldish physician
was not at first apparent, but Lowell knew his man
and was not disappointed. Holmes“ first series ran through
the first and second volumes of the Atlantic and after
miscellaneous connected articles and some contributions to
the department of Literary Notices, he published his second
series, “The Professor at the Breakfast Table“, in the
third and fourth volumes. The third long series, “The

Professor's Story“ appeared in the fifth, sixth, and

1 Boston, 1831-1835
2 Howe, The Atlantic Monthly and its Makers, p. 25.

82

seventh volumes.

Holmes pithy advice, his compact sensible style, his
comments on language and literature, and his homely observations
which removed him definitely from the feministic, made him
an indespensable contributor. That Lowell valued Holmes
highly is revealed in his letter to Fields in March 1861,
after “Asylum for Decayed Punsters“ had appeared in the
January Atlantic.

“Do see Dr. Holmes at once and assure him how essential
he is to the Atlantic. He is worth all the rest Of us
tOgether and has been nettled a little by not being paid
so much as he thought right for his “Asylum for Decayed
Punsters“. Nettled, perhaps, is not the right word-
but he has conceived a notion that he could carry his wares
to a better market. I assured him that he was altogether
mistaken-that there was probably some mistake, and that
I knew he was valued as he should be by Ticknor and Fields.

“Now you know what ought to be done and I am sure
will do it. An essay from him is a good as a chapter. He
needs only a word said to him by you to set all right.“3

In the “autocrat”, Holmes had created a character to
reveal himself and the life about him. He took up his

abode in a Boston boarding house. There was a nervous

A 3 Howe, New Letters, p. 101.

93

landlady who was anxious to please, an Opinionated old gentle-
man, a poet, a philosOpher, a divinity student, an individual
called John, an angular woman in bombazine and a timid

school mistress. In conversing with these characters and
describing their reactions to his conversation, Holmes
revealed his own ideas and the ideas, customs, and habits

of those about him. He constantly reminded his audience,
“Please remember this is talk; just as easy and just as

formal as I choose to make it.“4

In the fourth installment, the autocrat wrote:

“I am so well pleased with my boarding house that I
intend to remain there, perhaps for years. Of course, I
shall have a great many conversations to report, and they
will necessarily be of different tone and on different
subjects. The talks are like the breakfasts,- sometimes
dipped toast and sometimes dry. You must take them as they
come. How can I do all these letters ask me to?
NO. l wants serious and earnest thought. No. 2 (letter
smells of bad cigars) must have more jokes; wants me tO
tell a good “storey“ that he has COpied out for me. No. 3
(in a female hand)-more poetry. NO. 4 wants something that
would be of use to a practical man. (Prahctical mahn he
probably pronounces it.) No. 5 (gilt-edged, sweet-scented)-
“more sentiment,“-“heart“s outpourings.“-

“My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing but

4 Atlantic Monthly, 1, 312.

94
report such remarks as I have made at our breakfast-»table-—--"5
Holmes kept his promise to report on many subjects.

He had adapted a conversational style and conversation as
an art was of great importance to him. In his first article
he discussed it thus:

"What are the great faults of conversation? Want of
ideas, want of words, want of manners, are the principal
ones I suppose you think. I don't doubt it, but I will tell
you what I have found spoil more good talks than anything
else:-long arguments on special points between peOple who
differ on the fundamental principles upon which these points
depend. No men can have satisfactory relations with each
other until they have agreed on certain ultimata of belief
not to be disturbed in ordinary conversation, and unless
they have sense enough to trace the secondary questions
depending upon these ultimate beliefs to their source.I

“In short, just as a written constitution is essential
to the best social order, so a code of finalities is a necessary
condition of profitable talk between two persons. Talking
is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the
hand on the strings to step their vibrations as in twanging
them to bring out their music-—-Do you mean to say the pun-
question is not clearly settled in your mind? Let me lay

down the law upon the subject. Life and language are

5 Atlantic Monthly, I, 457.

95
alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide--that is, violent
treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate
meaning, which is its lifeo-are alike forbidden.

Manslaughter, which is the meaning of the one, is the same
as man's laughter which is the end of the other. A pun
is a prima facie an insult to the person you are talking
with. It implies utter indifference to or sublime contempt
for his remarks, no matter how serious."6
Again in a later article, Holmes discussed the importance
of speech.
”You see, my friends," he wrote,'what immense conclusions
touching our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor,
may be reached by means of very insignificant premises.
This is eminently true of manners and forms of speech; a
movement or a phrase often tells you all you want to know
about a person. Thus, 'How's your health?’ (commonly
pronounced haalth)-instead of, 'How do you do?‘ or, 'How
are you?‘ Or calling your little dark entry a 'hall'; and
your old rickety one-horse wagon a 'kerridge'. Or
telling a person who has been trying to please you that he
has given you pretty good 'sahtisfahction‘. Or saying that
you 'remember of' such a thing, or that you have been 'stOppin'

at Deacon Somebody's,-and other such expressions."7

Holmes was likely to offer advice to his readers in this

6 Atlantic Monthl , I, 52.
7 ibid., 615.

96

manner:

"Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you
to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary
the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more
necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of
necessity which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant
truths from his enemies. Good breeding never forgets that
amour-propre is universal."8

Some of Holmes' remarks called forth attacks from in-
dividuals and papers, for his ideas made him a suspect in
matters of orthodoxy in religion.9 In his series, ”The
Professor at the Breakfast Table” he attacked religious
intolerance.

"The great end of being is to harmonize man with the
order of things: and the church has been a good pitch-pipe
and may be so still. But who shall tune the pitch-pipe?....

“The religious currency of mankind, in thought, in
speech, and in print, consists entirely of polarized words.
Borrow one of these from another language and religion,
and you will find it leaves all its magnetism behind it.
Take that famous word, O'm, of the Hindoo mythology. Even
a priest cannot pronounce it without sin; and a holy Pundit
would shut his ears and run away from you in horror, if you

should say it aloud. What do you care for O'm? If you wanted

8 Atlantic Monthl , I, 312.
9 Rows, 92. cit., p. 29.

97
to get the Pundit to look at his religion fairly you must
first depolarize this and all similar words for him.

The argument for and aginst new translations of the Bible
really turns on this. Skepticism is afraid to trust its
truths in depolarized words, and so cries out against a

new translation. I think, myself, if every idea our Book
contains could be shelled out of its old symbol and put into
a new, clean, unmagnetic word, we should have some chance

of reading it as philosOphers, or wisdom-lovers ought to
read it,-which we do not and cannot now, any more than a
Hindoo can read the 'Gayatri' as a fair man and a lover of
truth should do. . .'

As he had attacked religious intolerance and those
who Opposed a liberal translation of the Bible, so now
Holmes attacked the clergy..

“The clergy have played the part of a fly—wheel in our
modern civilization... But the aminspring of the world's onward
religious movement is not in them, nor in any one body of
men let me tell you. It is the people that makes the clergy,
and not the clergy that makes the peOple. Of course, the
profession reacts on its source with variable energy.--But
there never was a guild of dealers or a company of craftsmen
that did not need sharp looking after."10

Commenting upon these attacks, Holmes wrote to Motley

10 Atlantic Monthlx. III, 87-88.

in 1861:

”But oh! such a belaboring as I have had from the
so-called 'Evangelical' press for the last two or three
years, almost without intermission! There must be a great
deal of weakness and rottenness when such extreme bitterness
is called out by such a good-natured person as I can claim
to be in print."11

The Egg'xggk Independent said of “The Professor at the
Breakfast Table“ when it appeared as a book:

”We presume that we do but speak the general conviction,
as it certainly is our own, when we say that that which was
to have been apprehended has not been avoided by the
‘Professor', but has been painfully realized in his new
series of utterances. He has dashed at many things which
he does not understand, has succeeded in irritating and
repelling from the magazine many who had formerly read it
with pleasure, and has neither equaled the spirit and vigorous
vivacity, nor maintained the reputation, shown and vauired
by the preceding papers. It would have been better for all
concerned if the pen of the 'Autocrat' had never been
resumed by a hand wearied with its previous work, and a
mind made almost comically self-sufficient and dogmatical

by an unexpected measure of literary success."la

Speaking of these attacks, nearly twenty five years

later, Dr. Holmes said, "Opinions which do not excite the

11 Howe, g2. cit., p. 30.
12 Ibid., p. 31.

99
faintest show of temper in this time from those who do not
accept them were treated as if they were the utterances of
a Nihilist incendiary.”13

There were those who were searching the pages of the
Atlantic at this time for something objectionable. When
they attacked Holmes, Lowell was loyal to his contributor and

14 There was

gave his support as revealed in his letters.
adequate reason for Lowell's support. Lowell was constantly
making selections for the Atlantic upon the basis of

truth. He looked for the natural, the real in character and
incident, and Holmes supplied it, for he was turning

over the top layer of life and looking beneath. He was
bringing to light some tepics which had lain untouched.

The very things for which he was being criticized made him

Lowell's most valuable contributor.

13 Howe, 22. cit., p. 31.

14 Norton, Letters, I, 288.

lOO

Longfellow and Emerson

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was forty years old in
1857, and had already published Evangeline and Hiawatha,
two of the poems upon which his fame rests.

The ten poems which he contributed to the Atlantic
while Lowell was the editor were, with one exception, printed
later in a volume entitled Birds of Passage.

lThe Golden Mile-Stone(l:174),"Catawba Wine'(l:270),
”Daylight and Moonlight”(l:401), and“Daybreak”(l:445), are
short poems of no great significance. 'Enceladus'(4:380)
is a lyric on Italy, a lament for the woes of the country.
There are two short 1egends,'Sandalphon”(l:744) and"The
Discoverer of the North Cape"(2:357);'9anta Filomenar published
in the first number of the Atlantic, begins with the
frequently quoted lines:

When e'er a noble deed is wrought,

When e'er is spoken a noble thought,

Our hearts in glad surprise,

To higher levels rise.
The poem has reference to Miss Florence Nightingale, who
rendered great service in the hospitals during the Crimean
War.

Probably the best known of Longfellow's Atlantic

contributions are"The Children's Hour? and"Paul Revere's

Ride."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the oldest of the greater New

anland men of letters, was born in Boston in 1903. As

101
an observer of men and of nature, he was quick and accurate.
His contributions to the Atlantic during Lowell's editorship
include ten poems, three essays, and one article on Persian
poetry.

Four of the poems appeared in the first number of the
Atlantic: ”The Romany Girl," IThe Chartist's Complaint”,

'Days”, and "Brahma." These poems with four others, ”Two
Rivers', 'Waldeinsamkeit', "Song of Nature“, and "The Test",
were later published in the collection Hay pg! and chgr
Pieces. The remaining two poems, “Illusions" and ”Culture“,
were reprinted in Elements and Mottoeg.

By 1857, Emerson was well along in his literary career.
These Atlantic poems are too few in number to indicate any
particular trend in his writing. Like his other poems they
are studied and careful in style. His subjects were similar
to those of his essays. Emerson longed to write good verses
and toiled endlessly over them. “In fact, he had deveIOped
a style of his own, as marked in his poems as in his essays,

a lean, spare, quick, intellectual style that could only
have emerged, one felt, from Concord."15

Emerson's essay "Solitude and Society" appeared in the
second issue of the Atlantic.

"Solitude,“ says Emerson in this essay, ”is impracticable,

and society fatal. We must keep our head in the one and

15 Brooks, 92, cit., p. 265.

_ 102
our hands in the other. The conditions are met, if we keep
our independence, yet do not lose our sympathy. These
wonderful horses need to be driven by fine hands. We require
such a solitude as shall hold us to its revelations when
we are in the street and in palaces; for most men are cowed
in society, and say good things to you in private, but
will not stand to them in public. But let us not be the
victims of words. Society and solitude are deceptive names.
It is not the circumstance of seeing more or fewer people,
but the readiness of sympathy that imports; and a sound mind
will derive its principles from insight, with ever a purer
accent to the sufficient and absolute right, and will
accept society as the natural element in which they are to
be applied."16

"Books“, the second of Emerson's Atlantic essays, is
a lengthy discussion of books which he considered worth
the time required for their reading. The article on Persian
poetry in April, 1858; represents a scholarly study of the
subject. 'Equuence” is one of the best of his Atlantic
contributions. Here he discusses all the phases of the
subject. One of the best paragraphs in the essay is that in

which he describes the manner of speaking in different regions.17

' 16 Atlantic Honthl , I, 289.
17 “"“pidjf‘lT’, 3‘78 3M

103
Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier, the chief poet of the
anti-slavery movement, was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts,
in 1807. He was a representative of the uncultured rural
class and his ancestors were Quaker farmers. Whittier's
favorite themes aside from those connected with slavery, were
events in the early history of New England, especially the
persecution of Quakers and Witches; Indian legends; the
simple life of rural New England; religious doubt
and belief. These latter, rather than the subject of slavery,
were the themes of Whittier's Atlantic contributions.
“Skipper Ireson's Ride", “The Swan Song of Parson Avery“,
“The Double-Headed Snake of Newbury“, and “Cobbler Keezar's
Vision“, are vigorous ballads of sea coast life. In.
“Telling the Bees“ and “The Playmate” he describes New
England rural life. "The Truce of Piscataqua" has an

Indian theme.

104
Howells

An Atlantic contributor of a later period and a different
region was William Dean Howells. He was born in 1837 in
Ohio and numbered among his ancestors English, Welsh,
Irish, and Germans. His early education was obtained
laregly by hard self-directed study and he devoted himself
intensely to several authors. A few of his early poems won
a place in the Atlantic beginning in the fifth volume:
“Andenken', “The Post's Friends", “Pleasure-Pain“, “Lost
Beliefs“, “The Pilot's Story“, “The Old Homestead“, and
“Bubbles“. Howells was in his twenties when he wrote these
poems. He later made a great many contributions to the
Atlantic, about three hundred in the first thirty eight
volumes.

Lowell indicated his interest in the young contributor
in a letter to Howells:

“Here is a note to Mr. Hawthorne, which you can use
if you have occasion.

“Don't print too much and too soon; don't get
married in a hurry; read what will make you think, not dream;
hold yourself dear, and more power to your elbow."18

Apparently Howells wished to meet Hawthorne and had

asked Lowell to introduce him. In Lowell's letter to

18 Norton, Letters, I, 305.

105
Hawthorne, he expressed the belief that Howells showed
promise.

“I have no masonic claim upon you except community of
tobacco, and the young man who brings this does not smoke.

“But he wants to look at you, which will do you no
harm, and him a great deal of good.

“His name is Howells, and he is a fine young fellow,
and has written several poems in the Atlantic, which of
course you have never read.... .If my judgment is good
for anything this youth has more in him than any of our‘

younger fellows in the way of rhyme_n19

19 Norton, Letters, I, 305.

108

Hawthorne, Whitman, Thoreau

The contributions of Hawthorne, Whitman, and
Thoreau are of interest for their scarcity more than for
any other reason.

Hawthorne's only contribution, “Some of the Haunts Of
Burns“, appeared as the leader in the issue of October, 1860-
Hawthorne had just returned from England in 1860 and his
career as an author was almost finished. He had spent the
years from 1857 to 1860 in Italy and England and most Of
his time there had been spent in writing The Marble Faun.
His occupation and residence abroad together with his age
and failing health probably account for the scarcity of his
writings in the Atlantic.

Thoreau had refused to contribute to the magazine
after Lowell suggested changes in his manuscripts, and there
is but one Of his contributions, “Chesuncook”.20

Whitman contributed “Bardic Symbols“ to the Atlantig
in 1860. Old age or ill health certainly cannot be reasons
for his failure to make further contributions for he was
in his prime, and from 1855 to 1891, he issued ten successively
enlarged volumes under the title Leaye§_gf_fixgss, each
containing his complete poems to the date of publication.

Lowell's Opinion of Whitman, which may possibly have

accounted for failure to include much of his writing in

20 Atlantic Monthly, 11, l, 224, 305.

10?

the Atlantic, is reavealed in his letter to Rev. W. L. Gage
in December, 1863:

“When I was editing the Atlantic Monthly, I was in the
habit Of sending all the new books which came to me as
editor, to the College Library, and I suppose Leaves 9:
9£§§§ must have been one of them. It is a book I never

looked into farther than to satisfy myself that it was solemn

humbug.“21

21 Howe, New Letters, p. 115.

108'
Higginson

Thomas Wentworth Higginson contributed sixteen articles
to the Atlantic during Lowell's editorship. Higginson was
a graduate of Harvard and preached for a time, but he gave
up his pulpit because of his transcendental and anti-slavery
views. His Atlantic articles of controversial nature were:
“Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet“ and “The Murder of the
Innocents“. He voiced his anti-slavery sentiments in “Denmark
Vesey“.

Lowell indicated his regard for Higginson as a contributor
in a letter after he had received the article,“0ught Women
to Learn the Alphabet?“:

"I like your article so much that it is already in
press as leader Of next number. You misunderstood me.

I want no change except the insertion of a qualifying 'perhaps'
where you speak Of the natural equality of the sexes, and

that as much on your own account as mine-because I think

it not yet demonstrated. Even in this, if you prefer it,

have your own way.....

“As for your Own contributions, I may say to you as I
always have to Mr. Underwood, that they are just to my
liking-scholar1y, picturesque, and, above all, earnest- I
think the most telling essays we have printed.“32

The following is a list of Higginson's contributions:

Saints and their Bodies 1:582
Hademoiselle's Campaigns 2:193

22. Norton, Letters, I, 287-288.

109
Water-Lilies 2:465
Physical Courage 2:728
Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet 3:13?
A Letter to a Dyspeptic 3:464
A Charge with Prince Rupert 3:725
The Murder Of the Innocents 4:345
The Haroons of Jamaica 5:213
The Maroons Of Surinam 5:549
Theodore Parker 6:449
Fayal and the Portugeuse 6:526
Barbarism and Civilization 7:51
Gymnastics 7:283
April Days 7:385
Denmark Vesey 7:728

These chapters have not covered completely the list of
contributors; however, an attempt has been made to discuss
those writers and those writings which were of greatest
importance in making the Atlantic and influence during Lowell's
editorship.

In the foregoing chapters, names of authors were
attached to contributions by consulting the index published
in 1877, by H. O. Houghton Company, New York. It was not
possible, however, to get a complete list of the authors,
for the articles were not signed nor were the names of the
authors included in the table of contents. Lowell himself was
Opposed to the publication of the authors' names, and the
contributors were Often glad of the greater privacy. Slips
revealing the authorship of articles were at the service Of
newspapers and friends, but the anonymous character of the
early volumes has served to busy the authorship in some cases
past resurrection.23 There are about thirty articles, mainly

in the first four volumes, the authorship Of which is still unknown.

23 Scudder, gp. cit., I, 422.

110

VI. Conclusion

As editor of the.A11nn119, Lowell exerted force in
two directions.

He was unquestionably an uplifting force at a critical
period in the history of American literature. He stood
on the border between two periods: the period of sentimentalism
and Old prejudices, and the new period which was to follow
the Civil War.

Lowell's own contributions were mainly to the department
Of Literary Notices, and so important did he consider this
department that he trusted only a few critics to write for
it. He believed that criticism was of great importance in
encouraging the growth and deveIOpment of a national literature.
However, it is chiefly in his selections for the Atlantic,
rather than in his own writing, that Lowell shows standards
slightly in advance Of his times, a leaning toward the new
which was to come with force after the Civil War.

In the field of fiction even more than in the field Of
criticism, Lowell's influence was felt. There were
practically no magazines which maintained high standards
and from the beginning the Atlantic was able to select
the best that American writers could produce. Lowell had
very positive standards in regard to fiction and he made
his selections accordingly. Though he loved the Old poets

and was heavily weighted with the conventionalism of his

111
early education, he was able to print a story in the
Atlantic by Rose Terry Cooke beginning:

”Mrs Griswold was paring apples and Lizzy straining
squash.“

The launching of the Atlantic definitely marked a turn
toward the new realism and Lowell was the leader. ”Distinctly
he was a transition figure between two epochs: he was the
youngest of the Emerson group and he was the oldest of the
Harte-Twain—Howells group that followed."1

There is no doubt that the magazine had some
influence in politics. Joined with Lowell in the campaign
against slavery were some of the ablest writers of the time.
They were well informed and their interest in the cause made
their writings powerful. These political articles have some
literary value as well, and they, along with almost everything
else which the Atlantic printed, had some measure of permanent
interest.

The Atlantic was a breath of freshness in the feminine
fifties. It combined the depth of Emerson, the originality
and truth of Holmes, the realism of Rose Terry Cooke and
others in the field of fiction, the charm of Whittier's
poetry, Longfellow's poetical talents, the scholarship of
Charles Eliot Horton, the fiery anti-slavery writings of
Lowell, Quincy and Godwin, and the talents of a whole group

of writers, both famous and obscure.

l Pattee, 42. cit., p. 187.

118.
Lowell desired greatly to be the means of bringing
together a body of first-rate literature. His editorship
powerfully affected the later issues of the magazine, for he
had put his own stamp upon it.

113
Bibliography

Atlantic Monthly, vols. I-VII, (Nov. 1857-June 1861)
Atlantic Monthly Index, 1857-1876, New York, 1877.

Brooks, Van Wyck, The Flowering of New England, New York, 1936.

Cairns, William B., A History gfiAmerican Literature,
New York, 1930.

Cambridge History of American Literature, 4 vols., New York,
1917.

Crothers, Samuel McChord, Qliver Wendell Holmes, Boston and
New York, 1909.

De Mille, George E., Literary Criticism in America, New York
and Toronto, 1931.

Foerster, Norman, American Criticism, Boston and New Ybrk, 1928.

Holmes, John, Letters, Boston and New York, 1917.

Howe, H. A. DeWolfe, The Atlantic Monthly and itg Makers,
Boston, 1919.

Howe, M. A. DeWolfe, NeE_Letters of games Bassgll ngell,
New York, 1932.

Leisy, Ernest Erwin, American Literature, New Yerk, 1929.

Mott, Frank Luther, A History of American Magazines, New York
and London, 1930.

 

Norton, Charles Eliot, I'The Launching of the Magazine '
Atlantic Monthly, vol. 100, 579. (November 1907

Norton, Charles Eliot, Letters of James Russell Lowell, 2 vols.
“iF€W‘YUFET 1894.

Pattee, Fred Lewis, The Development of the American Short
story, New York and Landon, 1933.

Pattee, Fred Lewis, Ihg_Eirst Century of American Literature,
New‘YOrk, 1935.

story of American Literature since

Pattee, Fred Lewis, A_Hi
18.

1870, New York, 19

114

Reilly, Joseph John, James-Russe11 Lowell as a Critic,
New York and London, 1915.

Scudder, Horace Elisha, James Russell Lowell: a biography,
2 vols., Boston and New York, 1901.

Stowe, Charles Edward, Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Boston and New York, 1891.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, The Minister's Wooing, Boston, 1883.
Tassin, Algernon, The Magazine in America, New York, 1916.

Trowbridge, John Townsend, "An Early Contributor' s Recollection, "
Atlantic Monthly, V, 582. (November, 1907)

Turner, Lorenzo Dow, Anti-slayer sentiment in American
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Underwood, Francis Henry, The Poet and the Man, Boston, 1893.

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