It is possible that Lowell took a little alarm when he read over the prose introduction to his second paper, for thereafter there is a studied care to make Mr. Wilbur speak in his own measured tones, even to an indulgence in the introduction to the fifth paper in a piece of most elaborate nonsense mocking the antiquary’s enthusiasm. The manner, at last, in which Mr. Wilbur’s death is announced, the bringing upon the scenes for obituary purposes of his colleague the Reverend Jeduthun Hitchcock, who is deliciously discriminated from his senior yet shown to have been formed out of the same clay, the posthumous sayings from Mr. Wilbur’s Table Talk,--all this is conceived in a most sympathetic and genuine spirit of art. The delineation of old age, indeed, in this character was, one may guess, something more than artistic imagining. There is a bit of nonsense which Lowell wrote to Miss Norton in 1864, which for its full effect ought to be reproduced in facsimile, for he took the most elaborate pains to transform his hand into that of a poor trembling old nonagenarian: “Since I lost my last tooth, I am a great deal more comfortable, I thank you. The new sett maide for me Doctor Tucker’s great granson works well and I eat comfortable. Let me recommend Tinto’s hair dyes. It makes all black to be sure, and you look like your fotograms. My palsy hardly troubles me at all now. My memory is as good as it ever was, and my hand-writing as good as in my earliest years. I wrote a little poem last week which Fanny thinks as good as anything I ever did. It begins Let dogs delight to bark and bite For ’tis _their_ nature, too. But I don’t think she hears very well with her new trumpet. “Certainly I will dine with you on Sunday and shall expect you on Thursday if Tuesday should be a fair day. The death of Holmes is an awful warning, but one can’t expect to be very strong at ninety nine. I remember his mother who died near fifty years ago.”