that there was a subconsciousness which gave a force to certain passages, and that Lowell’s interest in his subject was heightened by the plucking at his sleeve of his own memories and ambitions. In writing for the _North American_ the articles on great literature which were afterward reproduced in his books, Lowell was not only drawing upon a liberal familiarity with most of the subjects from repeated readings, but he was sometimes availing himself of earlier treatment in the form of lectures which he had given in connection with his college work. He complains, when preparing his article on Rousseau, that he is always bothered when he tries to do anything with old material, as he was in this case, inserting in his paper patches from college lectures; and any one who has had the experience appreciates the difficulty of turning the _oratio directa_ of the lecture into the _oratio obliqua_ of the essay,--to mention but one of the “bothers” of such work. But a comparison of the manuscript of Lowell’s college lecture with the text of the printed article shows two things: first, that in going back to his old lecture, Lowell easily took fire from his own words and, in copying a sentence, ran on into a fuller, more finished conclusion. For example, in comparing the sonnets of Petrarch with those of Michelangelo, he says alike in lecture and in article: “In them (i. e. in Michelangelo’s) the airiest pinnacles of sentiment and speculation are buttressed with solid mason-work of thought, of an actual, not fancied experience.” In the lecture, he goes on: “You seem to feel the great architect in them. Petrarch’s in comparison are like the sugared frostwork upon cake.” In the article, however, he adds to “fancied experience,” “and the depth of feeling is measured by the sobriety and reserve of expression, while in Petrarch’s all ingenuousness is frittered away into ingenuity. Both are cold, but the coldness of the one is self-restraint, while the other chills with pretence of warmth. In Michelangelo’s you feel the great architect: in Petrarch’s the artist who can best realize his conception in the limits of a cherry-stone.”[31]