Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Olde Cambridge

The Class Poem was afterward printed anonymously, to which fact, perhaps, may be partly due its present scarcity and high price. It will always have an interest, not merely as Lowell's first serious poetic effort, but as indicating that curious conservatism of his mind — far beyond his father's — which led him to speak with aversion both of Emerson and of the abolitionists, afterward his friends. It gave him, however, a distinct feeling of having tried his wings in song, and of being destined thenceforth to that realm. It was a year or two after this that my elder brother, having lately returned from Calcutta, and having gone promptly to spend an evening with his old friend, came home with an astounding bit of information. “Jimmie Lowell,” he said,--this being his friend's usual appellation in those days,--“thinks he is going to be a poet.” The announcement was received by my elders in the family with some disapproval. Cambridge had produced one poet in Oliver Wendell Holmes, but he was also a reputable physician, and relied at that time far more upon his medical than his literary reputation; but Lowell was