of tiresome people, and sometimes celestially insensible to vulgarity. In
spite of his reserve, he really wished people to like him; he was keenly
alive to neighborly good-will or ill-will; and when there was a question
of widening Elmwood avenue by taking part of his grounds, he was keenly
hurt by hearing that some one who lived near him had said he hoped the
city would cut down Lowell's elms: his English elms, which his father had
planted, and with which he was himself almost one blood!




VIII.

In the period of which I am speaking, Lowell was constantly writing and
pretty constantly printing, though still the superstition held that he
was an idle man. To this time belongs the publication of some of his
finest poems, if not their inception: there were cases in which their
inception dated far back, even to ten or twenty years. He wrote his
poems at a heat, and the manuscript which came to me for the magazine was
usually the first draft, very little corrected. But if the cold fit took
him quickly it might hold him so fast that he would leave the poem in
abeyance till he could slowly live back to a liking for it.

The most of his best prose belongs to the time between 1866 and 1874, and
to this time we owe the several volumes of essays and criticisms called
'Among My Books' and 'My Study Windows'. He wished to name these more
soberly, but at the urgence of his publishers he gave them titles which
they thought would be attractive to the public, though he felt that they
took from the dignity of his work. He was not a good business man in a
literary way, he submitted to others' judgment in all such matters. I