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[162] forth much of that quality in him. Their income was small, but by dint of lecturing and writing for the magazines — which then offered a very limited field even for a Lowell -they made shift to live. Mrs. Lowell died in 1853, and only one of her four children survived her. In the meantime Lowell's reputation as a man of letters had become secure, and in 1855 he was appointed Longfellow's successor in the chair of Modern Languages and Belles-Lettres at Harvard. The rest of his career is too well known to be enlarged upon in this narrative. He was one of the founders and the first editor of the Atlantic monthly; Minister to Spain, and, later, to England; and he died, Aug. 12, 1891, the recognized premier of American letters, and not the least of American men of affairs. His standing in literature is probably less easily determinable than that of Holmes; and this for a reason which at first seems strange. As to fertility of mind, abundance of resources, variety of knowledge, there was scarcely any difference in the two persons; the head of water was the same, and why was it that in the case of Holmes the stream
Boston, New York and Chicago. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1903.
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