very little of the contents in later editions of his poems.  The book has a special interest, however, from its dedication in veiled phrase to Maria White.  He became engaged to this lady in the fall of 1840, and the next twelve years of his life were profoundly affected by her influence.  Herself a poet of delicate power, she brought into his life an intelligent sympathy with his work; it was, however, her strong moral enthusiasm, her lofty conception of purity and justice, which kindled his spirit and gave force and direction to a character which was ready to respond, and yet might otherwise have delayed active expression.  They were not married until 1844; but they were not far apart in their homes, and during these years Lowell was making those early ventures in literature, and first raids upon political and moral evil, which foretold the direction of his later work, and gave some hint of its abundance.

About the time of his marriage, he published two books which, by their character, show pretty well the divided interest of his life.  His bent from the beginning was more decidedly literary than that of any contemporary American poet.  That is to say, the history and art of literature divided his interest with the production of literature, and he carried the unusual gift of a rare critical power, joined to hearty spontaneous creation.  It may indeed be guessed that the keenness of judgment and incisiveness of wit which characterize his examination of literature sometimes interfered with his poetic power, and made him liable to question his art when he would rather have expressed it unchecked.  One of the two books was a volume of poems; the other was a prose work, Conversations on Some of the Old Poets.  He did not keep this book alive; but it is interesting as marking the enthusiasm of a young scholar treading a way then almost wholly neglected in America, and intimating a line of thought and study in which he afterward made most noteworthy venture.  Another series of poems followed in 1848, and in the same year The Vision of Sir Launfal.  Perhaps it was in reaction from the marked sentiment of his poetry that he issued now a jeu d’esprit, A Fable for Critics, in which he hit off, with a rough and ready wit, the characteristics of the writers of the day, not forgetting himself in these lines: 

    There is Lowell, who’s striving Parnassus to climb
    With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme;
    He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders,
    But he can’t with that bundle he has on his shoulders;
    The top of the hill he will ne’er come nigh reaching
    Till he learns the distinction ’twixt singing and preaching;
    His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well,
    But he’d rather by half make a drum of the shell,
    And rattle away till he’s old as Methusalem,
    At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem.