Yet in editing the _Atlantic_, Lowell was more or less consciously reënforcing the love of literature which commanded him, and the combined labor of academic study and teaching and the organization of literature undoubtedly enriched his life, and made him more ready for the large enterprises which lay before him. It was a great reënforcement of contentment that he had returned to his old home at Elmwood. There had been some talk of his taking the house which Professor Felton was to give up on getting a new one, but arrangement was made, finally, to go back to Elmwood, and there the new establishment was set up with Dr. Lowell and Miss Rebecca Lowell as joint occupants. This was a few months before Lowell retired from the editorship of the _Atlantic_, and his content appears in a letter which he was writing to Mr. Richard Grant White, 15 March, 1861: “We are having,” he says, “the finest snowstorm of the winter. And what a delight to me to be here in my old garret at Elmwood, no college to go to (it is Saturday), sheltered by the very wings of the storm, and shut in from all the world by this white cloud of peace let down from heaven! The great chimney stacks roar a deep bass like Harlaem organ pipes. The old lightning rod thumps and rattles with every gust, as I used to hear it so long ago when there were no colleges nor magazines, nor any world outside our belt of pines. I am at _home_ again. I like everything and everybody. Presently I shall draw on my Canada leggings and wade down to the post with this. I shall come back full of snow and northwest wind and appetite. I shall sit down at my own table in the old familiar room where I hope to welcome you one of these days.”[134] In his L’Envoi, “To the Muse,” which appears to have been written not far from this time, he has some bright reflections on the elusiveness of the spirit of poetry which beckoned him. In point of fact there was very little poetry written by him while he was at once professor and editor. His “Biglow Papers” had been republished in England, with an Introduction by T. Hughes. His old friend, Mr. Gay, was in England at the time and had a hand in the business. The publication naturally drew fresh attention to Lowell’s satiric verse, and he wrote, a trifle piqued: “I confess I am a little jealous of people who like my humorous poems best. I guess they are right ‘up to date,’ but I feel also as if it were a little unfair to t’other half of me, which has not fairly worked itself free so as to combine--here I was interrupted day before yesterday, and I believe I was going to say--so as to combine the results of life with those of study. However, I grow more and more persuaded that what a man is is of greater consequence than what he _does_, especially than what he writes. The secret is, I suppose, to work oneself out clear so that what he is may be one with what he writes.” END OF VOLUME I