Avenues to Success for 03/21/09

Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
     - James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891, American poet, editor, and diplomat

Image source: Virtual American Biographies

Text: Edgar Allan Poe, "James Russell Lowell" (B), The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe, 1850, 3:275-282 - The Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore

..."The Fable for the Critics," just issued, has not the name of its author on the title-page; and but for some slight fore-knowledge of the literary opinions, likes, dislikes, whims, prejudices and crotchets of Mr. James Russell Lowell, we should have had much difficulty in attributing so very loose a brochure to him. The "Fable" is essentially "loose" — ill-conceived and feebly executed, as well in detail as in general. Some good hints and some sparkling witticisms do not serve to compensate us for its rambling plot (if plot it can be called) and for the want of artistic finish so particularly noticeable throughout the work — especially in its versification. In Mr. Lowell's prose efforts we have before observed a certain disjointedness, but never, until now, in his verse — and we confess some surprise at his putting forth so unpolished a performance. ...

The Atlantic's Founding - The Atlantic, November, 1997

THE Atlantic Monthly began publication 140 years ago, in November of 1857. Edward Sorel's drawing commemorates a dinner gathering not long afterward of three of the magazine's founders—Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell (the first editor), and James T. Fields (the second editor)—with the young William Dean Howells (the third editor). A reader looking back at the magazine's past, as we here have been doing in recent weeks, would identify many shifting preoccupations and many evolving emphases, but that reader would also notice a pair of durable questions braided through the length of the magazine's life: Into what kind of world are we headed? How should we steer our course?
Everyone remembers the famous line by Pogo Possum, the character in Walt Kelly's comic strip, "Pogo": "We have met the enemy and he is us." But only the aficionados remember that every year on June 1, Pogo would say to someone, "What is so rare as a day in June?" ...

Modern History Sourcebook: James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): On Democracy, 1868 - Fordham University

Introductory Note
    James Russell Lowell, poet, essayist, diplomatist, and scholar, was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on February 22, 1819, the son of a Unitarian minister. Educated at Harvard College, he tried the law, but soon gave it up for literature. His poem on "The Present Crisis," written in 1844, was his first really notable production, and one that made a deep impression on the public mind. In the twenty years of troubled politics that followed, one finds it constantly quoted. The year 1848 saw four volumes from Lowell's pen - a book of "Poems," the "Fable for Critics," "The Biglow Papers," and the "Vision of Sir Launfal." The second of these exhibited the author as wit and critic, the third as political reformer, the fourth as poet and mystic; and these various sides of his personality continue to appear with varying prominence throughout his career. ...

This is the Avenue to Success for 03/21/09

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