He did not live the life of a roaring blade, but more like the humming-
bird that darts from one plant to another, and gathers sweetness from
every flower in the garden. Finally he was rusticated, just after he had
been elected poet of his class, with directions not to return until
commencement. We recognize the Puritanic severity of President Quincy in
this sentence, which robbed young Lowell of the pleasantest term of
college life, as well as the honor of appearing on the stage on Class
Day. That his poem should have been read by another to the assembled
families of his classmates, served to make his absence more conspicuous.
Nor can we discover any sufficient reason for such hard statement.

At the same age that Longfellow was writing for the _United States
Literary Gazette_, Lowell was scribbling verses for an undergraduates'
periodical called _Harvardiana_. They were not very serious
productions, and might all be included under the head of bric-a-brac; but
there was a-plenty of them. While Longfellow's verse at nineteen was
remarkable for its perfection of form, Lowell's suffered chiefly from a
lack of this. He had an idea that poetry ought to be an inspiration of
the moment; a good foundation to begin with, but which he found
afterwards it was necessary to modify.

In the preface to one of his Biglow Papers he speaks of his life in
Concord as being

"As lazy as the bream
Which only thinks to head up stream."

The men whom he chiefly associated with there were named Barziliai and
Ebenezer, and the hoar frost of the Concord meadows would seem to have