Lowell, James Russell, birth and death of, i. 1; his appreciation of his birthplace, 1; his ancestry, 6; his father, 6-10; his mother, 11, 12; his brothers and sisters, 13-15; his recollections of childhood, 15-18; hears of John Adams’s death, 19; visits Portsmouth and Washington, 19; drives with his father on his parochial journeys, 20; so gets acquainted with pristine New England, 20; his first schooling, 21; his companions, 21, 22; attends William Wells’s school, 22-24; tells stories and reads Scott, 24; enters Harvard, 26; his immaturity in college, 30; his browsings among books, 30-33; his intimacy with W. H. Shackford, 33; his letters to Shackford, 34-38; change in handwriting, 37; his friendship with G. B. Loring, 38, 39; letters to Loring, 39-42; becomes editor of _Harvardiana_, 44; is suspended from college, 47; goes to Concord in consequence, 48; meets Emerson there, 49; makes a friend in E. R. Hoar, 50; letters to Loring, 51-56; defends himself against the charge of indolence, 52; works at _Class Poem_, 51, 53, 54, 56; writes an exculpatory letter to Emerson, 58; wishes to go abroad, 62; weighs the professions of ministry and law, 62; his attitude toward the ministry, 63; his need of a livelihood, 65; takes up and abandons law, 65; thinks of going into a store, 66; takes his brother Robert’s place, 67; studies the art of poetry, 67; delivers a lecture, 67; is in miserable dubiety, 68; resumes the study of law, 69; enters Mr. Loring’s office, 70; his disappointment in love an explanation of his vacillation, 71; finds expression in verse, 73-75; meets Maria White, 76; translation of experience in verse, 82-85; is introduced by her to the Band, 89; takes up writing as a means of support, 91; writes for _Southern Literary Messenger_, 92; publishes _A Year’s Life_, 93; proposes a life of Keats, 95; writes to Duyckinck, 95; contributes to the _Boston Miscellany_, 98; reckons his resources, 99; projects the _Pioneer_, 99; associates himself with R. Carter in the issue of the magazine, 100; the spirit that prompted him, 102; his principles as displayed in the Introduction to the _Pioneer_, 103-105; whom he drew to his side, 105; his attitude toward Anti-slavery, 105; goes to New York for his eyes, 107; his course of life there, 109; meets N. P. Willis, 111; undergoing operations, 113; forms a friendship with C. F. Briggs, 114; returns to Cambridge, 114; after failure of the _Pioneer_, returns to poetry, 114; painted by Page, 115; his relations to Page and Briggs, 116, 117; publishes a volume of _Poems_, 118; puts his radicalism into poetry, 121; is autobiographic also, 125; introduces wit and humor, 128; works over some old material and new into _Conversations on Some of the Old Poets_, 132; his reference in it to contemporaries, 135; his enquiry in it into the nature of poetry, 137;