SOURCE: Reilly, Joseph J. “Lowell: The Critic and His Criticism.” In James Russell Lowell as a Critic, pp. 200-14. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1915.

In the following excerpt, Reilly discusses the flaws of Lowell's critical essays, claiming that they were too impressionistic and subjective to meet a strict definition of scholarly criticism.

Lowell's early critical works have already been discussed. They are worth bearing in mind as eminently characteristic of the mature Lowell. They are discursive, generally vague when the question at issue becomes abstruse, and abound in purple patches. The qualities of the poets discussed are set down without any endeavor to mark their inter-relation or to trace them back to any radical characteristic. Poems are regarded from the standpoint of their effect on the reader, and that effect is translated into figurative language. In his Lectures on the English Poets, Lowell followed the same method...