The
firm moral consistency of Puritanism was always his, yet his
playful remark about belonging in a hospital for incurable
children had a measure of truth in it also.
Both his poetry and his prose reveal a nature never quite
integrated into wholeness of structure, into harmony with itself.
His writing, at its best, is noble and delightful, full of human
charm, but it is difficult for him to master a certain
waywardness and to sustain any note steadily. This temperamental
flaw does not affect the winsomeness of his letters, unless to
add to it. It is lost to view, often, in the sincerity and pathos
of his lyrics, but it is felt in most of his longer efforts in
prose, and accounts for a certain dissatisfaction which many
grateful and loyal readers nevertheless feel in his criticism.
Lowell was more richly endowed by nature and by breadth of
reading than Matthew Arnold, for instance, but in the actual
performance of the critical function he was surpassed in method
by Arnold and perhaps in inerrant perception, in a limited field,
by Poe.
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