How affectionately Lowell regarded Page and what admiration he had for his genius may be read in the dedication to him which was prefixed to his “Poems” issued in 1843 and retained in later collections. The frankness with which he avows his love for his friend is a witness to that openness of Lowell’s nature which we have already noticed, and the terms in which he speaks of Page’s art and of the artistic faith which they held in common give a hint of the basis of their comradery. Lowell disclaimed any special knowledge of painting, and always brought to bear, in his discussions on art, the principles which he had learned through his devotion to the art of poetry. In the relation of the two men to each other one is half tempted to recall the friendship of Keats and Haydon. In each case the poet believed in the painter less by reason of the work done than because of the ideals [Illustration: _Mr. Lowell in 1843_] held and aimed at. Page was an enthusiast, and a man of mingled imaginative and speculative powers. As Haydon preached the Elgin marbles to Keats, so Page discoursed on the old masters to Lowell. But the reciprocal admiration of Lowell and Page was really for the man behind the art. “I am glad you like my poems,” Lowell wrote to Mrs. Shaw; “Page is wiser than you and likes them because he knows I am better than they;” and to Mr. Briggs he had written shortly before: “You are a great deal better than anything you write, and Page than anything he paints, and I always think of you without your pen, and of him without his brushes.” The admiration and affection with which Page and Briggs regarded Lowell were only more intimate than the feelings which were generally aroused. He had come to be looked on as a new poet. So Hawthorne, in his “Hall of Fantasy,” as first published, characterized him as “the poet of the generation that now enters upon the stage.” When the _Pioneer_ was started Lowell’s was a name to conjure with. “The principal editor,” says the _Tribune_, “is well and widely known as one of the most gifted and promising poets in America;” and a Philadelphia paper speaks of the journal as “edited by a man whose genius and originality is at once the praise and wonder of his countrymen.” To be sure, newspaper praise is apt to be pitched in a high key, and the army of independent admirers on closer examination turns out to be a company of the author’s enthusiastic friends marching and countermarching across the stage, disappearing in one wing only to come out from another. But after all allowance has been made, it is clear that in a community which was eagerly expecting great things in literature, Lowell, though he had published little and much of that anonymously, was already one of the candidates for fame. He himself did not need this incentive. He had the consciousness of power and that audience of one which stimulated him to the exercise of his power.