[30] Lowell wrote that it would "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 namby-pamby love tales and sketches, which is monthly poured out to them by many of our popular Magazines.

Edgar Allan Poe was referred to as part genius and "two-fifths sheer fudge"; he reviewed the work in the Southern Literary Messenger and called it "'loose'—ill-conceived and feebly executed, as well in detail as in general ... we confess some surprise at his putting forth so unpolished a performance.

"[38] Lowell offered his New York friend Charles Frederick Briggs all the profits from the book's success (which proved relatively small), despite his own financial needs.

[27] Just before her burial, her coffin was opened so that her daughter Mabel could see her face while Lowell "leaned for a long while against a tree weeping", according to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his wife, who were in attendance.

[56] While his series was still in progress, Lowell was offered the Smith Professorship of Modern Languages at Harvard, a post vacated by Longfellow, at an annual salary of $1,200, though he never applied for it.

[58] The job description was changing after Longfellow; instead of teaching languages directly, Lowell would supervise the department and deliver two lecture courses per year on topics of his own choosing.

[62] He focused on teaching literature, rather than etymology, hoping that his students would learn to enjoy the sound, rhythm, and flow of poetry rather than the technique of words.

"[64] Still grieving the loss of his wife, during this time Lowell avoided Elmwood and instead lived on Kirkland Street in Cambridge, an area known as Professors' Row.

[71] Lowell returned to Elmwood by January 1861 but maintained an amicable relationship with the new owners of the journal, continuing to submit his poetry and prose for the rest of his life.

"[77] His interest in the Civil War inspired him to write a second series of The Biglow Papers,[70] including one specifically dedicated to the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation called "Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line" in 1862.

[80] Lowell had high hopes for his performance but was overshadowed by the other notables presenting works that day, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

"I did not make the hit I expected", he wrote, "and am ashamed at having been tempted again to think I could write poetry, a delusion from which I have been tolerably free these dozen years.

[80] In the 1860s, Lowell's friend Longfellow spent several years translating Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and regularly invited others to help him on Wednesday evenings.

[83] Lowell was one of the main members of the so-called "Dante Club", along with William Dean Howells, Charles Eliot Norton and other occasional guests.

[84] Shortly after serving as a pallbearer at the funeral of friend and publisher Nathaniel Parker Willis on January 24, 1867,[85] Lowell decided to produce another collection of his poetry.

To finance it, he sold off more of Elmwood's acres and rented the house to Thomas Bailey Aldrich; Lowell's daughter Mabel, by this time, had moved into a new home with her husband Edward Burnett, the son of a successful businessman-farmer from Southborough, Massachusetts.

[90] Lowell sailed from Boston on July 14, 1877, and, though he expected he would be away for a year or two, did not return to the United States until 1885, with the violinist Ole Bull renting Elmwood for a portion of that time.

[95] While serving in this capacity, he addressed an importation of allegedly diseased cattle and made recommendations that predated the Pure Food and Drug Act.

Also that year, the Boston Critic dedicated a special issue to Lowell on his seventieth birthday to recollections and reminiscences by his friends, including former presidents Hayes and Benjamin Harrison and British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone as well as Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Francis Parkman.

Though not officially affiliated with them, he shared some of their ideals, including the belief that writers have an inherent insight into the moral nature of humanity and have an obligation for literary action along with their aesthetic function.

In using this vernacular, Lowell intended to get closer to the common man's experience and was rebelling against more formal and, as he thought, unnatural representations of Americans in literature.

As he wrote in his introduction to The Biglow Papers, "few American writers or speakers wield their native language with the directness, precision, and force that are common as the day in the mother country" (i.e.

[122] For example, Lowell's character Hosea Biglow says in verse: Ef you take a sword an' dror it, An go stick a feller thru, Guv'ment aint to answer to it, God'll send the bill to you.

[123] Lowell is considered one of the fireside poets, a group of writers from New England in the 1840s who all had a substantial national following and whose work was often read aloud by the family fireplace.

Even so, he wrote, "We believe the white race, by their intellectual and traditional superiority, will retain sufficient ascendancy to prevent any serious mischief from the new order of things.

[128] The couple often gave money to fugitive slaves, even when their own financial situation was not strong, especially if they were asked to free a spouse or child.

[137] Contemporary critic and editor Margaret Fuller wrote, "his verse is stereotyped; his thought sounds no depth, and posterity will not remember him.

[139] Ralph Waldo Emerson noted that, though Lowell had significant technical skill, his poetry "rather expresses his wish, his ambition, than the uncontrollable interior impulse which is the authentic mark of a new poem ... and which is felt in the pervading tone, rather than in brilliant parts or lines.

"[140] Even his friend Richard Henry Dana Jr. questioned Lowell's abilities, calling him "very clever, entertaining & good humored ... but he is rather a trifler, after all.

[143] Modern literary critic Van Wyck Brooks wrote that Lowell's poetry was forgettable: "one read them five times over and still forgot them, as if this excellent verse had been written in water.