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[159] not yet even a lawyer; and for a poet pure and simple the world of our small academic village seemed to hold no opening. Nevertheless the announcement was heard with delight by one faithful and trusting auditor, who took the young bard at his own valuation. It never seems improbable to a boy that any one of his elder schoolmates should turn out a phoenix. That this purpose of a poetic career was then distinctly formed, I learned from Lowell himself, who told me that he planned at that time a regular study of the laws of English verse, mentioning to me several of his favorite manuals, as Sidney's “Defence of Poesie,” and Puttenham's “Art of English Poesie.” For some reason not known to me, Lowell was accredited to Boston in the Harvard catalogues during his senior year and his three years of study in the Law School, but it is probable that his father then resided in Boston, while his elder brother, Charles Russell Lowell, occupied Elmwood.

The great and even controlling influence exercised upon Lowell from this time by his betrothed, Maria White, who afterward became his wife, is well known, and the simplicity of

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