MY STUDY WINDOWS BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [Illustration: colophon] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Copyright, 1899, BY MABEL LOWELL BURNETT. _All rights reserved._ PREFATORY NOTE. My former volume of Essays has been so kindly received that I am emboldened to make another and more miscellaneous collection. The papers here gathered have been written at intervals during the last fifteen years, and I knew no way so effectual to rid my mind of them and make ready for a new departure, as this of shutting them between two covers where they can haunt me, at least, no more. I should have preferred a simpler title, but publishers nowadays are inexorable on this point, and I was too much occupied for happiness of choice. That which I have desperately snatched is meant to imply both the books within and the world without, and perhaps may pass muster in the case of one who has always found his most fruitful study in the open air. TO PROFESSOR F. J. CHILD. MY DEAR CHILD,-- You were good enough to like my Essay on Chaucer (about whom you know so much more than I), and I shall accordingly so far presume upon our long friendship as to inscribe the volume containing it with your name. Always heartily yours, J. R. LOWELL. CAMBRIDGE, Christmas, 1870. CONTENTS. PAGE MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 1 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 24 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 54 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER 83 CARLYLE 115 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 150 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL 178 THOREAU 193 SWINBURNE’S TRAGEDIES 210 CHAUCER 227 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS 290 EMERSON, THE LECTURER 375 POPE 385 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.