ON POETRY AND BELLES-LETTRES

THE FUNCTION OF THE POET
  With note by Charles Eliot Norton.
  Century Magazine, January, 1894

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.