Lowell was now in his thirty-ninth year. As a scholar, in his
professional work, he had acquired a versatile knowledge of the
Romance languages, and was an adept in old French and Provençal
poetry; he had given a course of twelve lectures on English poetry
before the Lowell Institute in Boston, which had made a strong
impression on the community, and his work on the series of _British
Poets_ in connection with Professor Child, especially his biographical
sketch of Keats, had been recognized as of a high order. In poetry he
had published the volumes already mentioned. In general literature he
had printed in magazines the papers which he afterward collected into
his volume, _Fireside Travels_. Not long after he entered on his
college duties, _The Atlantic Monthly_ was started, and the editorship
given to him. He held the office for a year or two only; but he
continued to write for the magazine, and in 1862 he was associated
with Mr. Charles Eliot Norton in the conduct of _The North American
Review_, and continued in this charge for ten years. Much of his prose
was contributed to this periodical. Any one reading the titles of the
papers which comprise the volumes of his prose writings will readily
see how much literature, and especially poetic literature, occupied
his attention. Shakespeare, Dryden, Lessing, Rousseau, Dante, Spenser,
Wordsworth, Milton, Keats, Carlyle, Percival, Thoreau, Swinburne,
Chaucer, Emerson, Pope, Gray,--these are the principal subjects of his
prose, and the range of topics indicates the catholicity of his
taste.

In these papers, when studying poetry, he was very alive to the
personality of the poets, and it was the strong interest in humanity
which led Lowell, when he was most diligent in the pursuit of
literature, to apply himself also to history and politics. Several of