HUMOR, WIT, FUN, AND SATIRE With note by Charles Eliot Norton. _Century Magazine_, November, 1893 THE FIVE INDISPENSABLE AUTHORS (HOMER, DANTE, CERVANTES, GOETHE, SHAKESPEARE) _Century Magazine_, December, 1893 THE IMAGINATION _Century Magazine_, March, 1894 CRITICAL FRAGMENTS _Century Magazine_, May, 1894 I. Life in Literature and Language II. Style and Manner III. Kalevala REVIEWS OF CONTEMPORARIES HENRY JAMES: JAMES'S TALES AND SKETCHES _The Nation_, June 24, 1875 LONGFELLOW: THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH _Atlantic Monthly_, January, 1859 TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN _North American Review_, January, 1864 WHITTIER: IN WAR TIME, AND OTHER POEMS _North American Review_, January, 1864 HOME BALLADS AND POEMS _Atlantic Monthly_, November, 1860 SNOW-BOUND: A WINTER IDYL _North American Review_, April, 1866 POETRY AND NATIONALITY _North American Review_, October, 1868 W.D. HOWELLS: VENETIAN LIFE _North American Review_, October, 1866 EDGAR A. POE _Graham's Magazine_, February, 1845; R.W. Griswold's edition of Poe's Works (1850) THACKERAY: ROUNDABOUT PAPERS _North American Review_, April, 1864 TWO GREAT AUTHORS SWIFT: FORSTER'S LIFE OF SWIFT _The Nation_, April 13 and 20, 1876 PLUTARCH'S MORALS _North American Review_, April, 1871 A PLEA FOR FREEDOM FROM SPEECH AND FIGURES OF SPEECH-MAKERS _Atlantic Monthly_, December, 1860 ON POETRY AND BELLES-LETTRES THE FUNCTION OF THE POET This was the concluding lecture in the course which Lowell read before the Lowell Institute in the winter of 1855. Doubtless Lowell never printed it because, as his genius matured, he felt that its assertions were too absolute, and that its style bore too many marks of haste in composition, and was too rhetorical for an essay to be read in print. How rapid was the growth of his intellectual judgment, and the broadening of his imaginative view, may be seen by comparing it with his essays on Swinburne, on Percival, and on Rousseau, published in 1866 and 1867--essays in which the topics of this lecture were touched upon anew, though not treated at large. But the spirit of this lecture is so fine, its tone so full of the enthusiasm of youth, its conception of the poet so lofty, and the truths it contains so important, that it may well be prized as the expression of a genius which, if not yet mature, is already powerful, and aquiline alike in vision and in sweep of wing. It is not unworthy to stand with Sidney's and with Shelley's "Defence of Poesy," and it is fitted to warm and inspire the poetic heart of the youth of this generation, no less than of that to which it was first addressed. As a close to the lecture Lowell read his beautiful (then unpublished) poem "To the Muse." _Charles Eliot Norton_ * * * * *