J. R. Lowell to Edgar Allan Poe — 1844-06-27

J. R. Lowell to Edgar Allan Poe — 1844-06-27 Historical printed text from James A. Harrison, The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, volume XVII (1902). Catalog identity: RCL-489. The heading uses the checklist date; the transcription retains the historical edition’s dateline and wording. The edition may contain older readings, omissions or date assignments. This is a printed transcription, not a manuscript facsimile. Modern website corrections in double brackets and navigation are omitted. Independent word-by-word proofreading has not been completed. LOWELL TO POE. [Scribner's Monthly, August, 1894.] ELMWOOD, June 27, 1844. MY DEAR FRIEND, — I have been stealing a kind of vacation from the pen during the last month, & I hope that my lying fallow for a time will increase my future crops, though, I cannot bring myself to use the farmer's phrase & wish them to be ‘heavier.’ Now I ought by this time to have finished the article to accompany your head in Graham, but I have been unable to write anything. I have fits of this kind too often owing to a Constitutional indolence which was not counteracted by proper training in my childhood. You may be sure I am not one of those who follow a fashion which is hardly yet extinct, & call upon the good, easy world to accept my faults in proof of my genius. I can only mention it to ask forgiveness for my dilatoriness which springs from no want of interest but from sheer indolence — a fault — which your acquaintance with Life & Biography must have convinced you is one of the most incurable. However, I am resolved to set about it now in good earnest — & I have one or two preliminary requests to make. I wish you would (if you can) write me a letter giving me in some sort a spiritual autobiography of yourself. The newspaper(1) you sent me will give me enough outward facts — but I want your own estimate of your life. Of course you need not write it as if for my use merely in the writing of this article — but as to a friend. I believe that the opinion a man has of himself (if he be accustomed to self analysis) is of more worth than that of all the rest of the world. If you have a copy of your first volume (of poems) will you send it to me by Harnden, directing it to be kept till called for & writing me a line by mail to warn me of its being on the way. I will return it to you by the same conveyance — as it must be valuable to you & as you have not probably more than one copy. I never saw it, nor can I get it. If you would send at the same time any other of your writings which I could not readily get you will oblige me very much & they shall be safely returned to you. I agree with you that the article on Griswold's book in the Foreign Quarterly Review was fair enough as far as the Conclusions the author came to were concerned — though at the same time I think him as ignorant in political matters as a man can well be — in short ignorant to the full to be a Reviewer — But you are mistaken as to the authorship of it. It was not I am quite sure written by Dickens, but by a friend of his named Forster (or Foster) — the author of a book named “Statesmen of the time of Cromwell.” Dickens may have given him hints. ... I shall send you my sketch of course before it is printed, so that you may make any suggestions you like or suppress it altogether. I wish it to please you rather than the public. Affectionately your friend J. R. L.