As they were mine, the lives of other men."

In the delightful little poem, _The Nightingale in the Study_, we have
a fanciful expression of the conflict between Lowell's love of books
and love of nature. His friend the catbird calls him "out beneath the
unmastered sky," where the buttercups "brim with wine beyond all
Lesbian juice." But there are ampler skies, he answers, "in Fancy's
land," and the singers though dead so long--

"Give its best sweetness to all song.
To nature's self her better glory."

His love of reading is manifest in all his work, giving to his style a
bookishness that is sometimes excessive and often troublesome. His
expression, though generally direct and clear, and happily colored by
personal frankness, is often burdened with learning. To be able to
read his essays with full appreciation is in itself evidence of a
liberal education. His scholarship was broad and profound, but it was
not scholarship in the German sense, exhaustive and exhausting. He
studied for the joy of knowing, never for the purpose of being known,
and he cared more to know the spirit and meaning of things than to
know their causes and origins. A language he learned for the sake of
its literature rather than its philology. As Mr. Brownell observes, he
shows little interest in the large movements of the world's history.
He seemed to prefer history as sublimated in the poet's song. The
field of _belles-lettres_ was his native province; its atmosphere was
most congenial to his tastes. In book-land it was always June for
him--

"Springtime ne'er denied