SOURCE: “The Humanitarian,” in American Aristocracy: The Lives and Times of James Russell, Amy, and Robert Lowell, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1980, 71-90.

In the following essay, Heymann details Lowell's life and writings of the 1840s, particularly his works of 1848: Poems, A Fable for Critics, The Biglow Papers, and The Vision of Sir Launfal.

James Russell Lowell's divergent path from “the clan's straight and well-paved highway” was … partially the result of his parents' influence. His father, although not an avid abolitionist, placed the emphasis of his spiritual teaching directly upon the mind-broadening straits of humanitarianism—or in James Russell Lowell's words, upon the need for “a wider and wiser humanity.” In place of the Puritans' “vertical” love of man for God, “a stress on perfecting one's higher self,” the pleasant, cautious minister directed his congregation toward the “horizontal” division of man's love for man. His influence in such worldly concerns...