“Irene” won the good opinion of many.  The young poet, though but twenty-one, felt that he was beginning to be a lion.  His next definite step was to publish a volume of verses.  Says he, “I shall print my volume.  Maria wishes me to do it, and that is enough.”

So his first volume, “A Year’s Life,” was published, with the motto in German, “I have lived and loved.”

The young poet’s friends were very much opposed to this publication, for the reason that a rising young lawyer is not helped on in his profession at all by being known as a poet.  Who would employ a poet to defend his business in a court room?  No one!  A hard-headed business man is wanted.  Walter Scott was a lawyer of much such a temperament as Lowell’s, and when he put forth a similar volume he suffered as it was certain that Lowell would suffer.  But it is probable that Lowell was now fully determined to give up law altogether.

“I know,” he declares passionately, “that God has given me powers such as are not given to all, and I will not ‘hide my talent in mean clay.’  I do not care what others may think of me or of my book, because if I am worth anything I shall one day show it.  I do not fear criticism as much as I love truth.  Nay, I do not fear it at all.  In short, I am happy.  Maria fills my ideal and I satisfy her.  And I mean to live as one beloved by such a woman should live.  She is every way noble.  People have called ‘Irene’ a beautiful piece of poetry.  And so it is.  It owes all its beauty to her.”

It is very plain that she was on the side of the poet, not of the worldly-minded persons who advocated the law, business, money-making.  She did not dread the prospect of being a poor man’s wife.  To be the wife of a poet, a man of courage and ambition and nobleness of heart, was far more to her.  The turning point in Lowell’s life was past; and he had been led to that turning point by the little woman who was soon to become his wife.

CHAPTER VI

THE UNCERTAIN SEAS OF LITERATURE

As far as is known, Lowell never earned a dollar by the law.  He soon began to pick up a five or a ten dollar bill here and there by writing for current periodicals.  His book brought him some reputation, but not much.  A few hundred copies were sold, and most of the reviews and criticisms were favorable.  He received a slating from the Morning Post in Boston, however, just as an inkling of what a literary man might expect.

Three years of hard literary work now followed.  Lowell wrote assiduously and heroically, getting what happiness he could in the meantime out of his love.  He was young and strong, and life was not a burden.  He tells us of having spent an evening at the house of a friend “where Maria is making sunshine just now,” and he declared that he had been exceedingly funny.  He had in the course of the evening recited “near upon five hundred extempore