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cramming; and that seems to be what the English like.
He went to twenty-nine dinner parties in the month of June, and made a speech at each one of them.”
In the last years of his life he was greatly infested with imitators who, as he said of Emerson in the “Fable for critics,” stole his fruit and then brought it back to him on their own dishes.
Some of them were too influential to be easily disposed of, and others did not know when they were rebuffed.
An old man, failing in strength and vigor, he had to endure them as best he could.
The story of Lowell's visions rests on a single authority, and if there was any truth in it, it seems probable that he would have confided the fact to more intimate friends.
There are well-authenticated instances of visions seen by persons in a waking condition — this always happens, for instance, in delirium tremens-but they are sure to indicate nervous derangement, and are commonly followed by death.
If there was ever a poet with a sound mind and a sound body, it was James Russell Lowell.
Edwin Arnold considered him the best of American poets, while Matthew Arnold did not like him at all. Emerson, in his last years, preferred him to Longfellow, but it is doubtful if he always did so. The strong point of his poetry is its intelligent manliness,--the absence of affectation
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