Page 76 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

one of his biographers unkindly suggests that this may have been purely
imaginary.

All through his letters we see his ambitious yearning. "George," says he in

one place, "before I die your heart shall be gladdened by seeing your
wayward, vain, and too often selfish friend do something that shall make
his name honored. As Sheridan once said, 'It's in me, and' (we'll skip the

oath) 'it shall come out!'"

His bachelor dreams were soon dissipated, however. He went to visit a
friend of his, W.A. White, and there met the young man's sister Maria. He
thought her a very pleasant and pleasing young lady, and he discovered that

she knew a great deal of poetry. She could repeat more verse than any other
one of his acquaintances, though he laments that she was more familiar

with modern poets than with the "pure wellsprings of English poesy."

The friendship grew apace. In the same fall that he began the pretended

practice of law he became engaged to her, and she caused a fresh and
voluminous outpouring of verse. His productions were printed in various

periodicals, such as the Knickerbocker Magazine, to which Longfellow had
contributed, and the Southern Literary Messenger, which Poe once edited.

Miss White was a most charming and interesting young lady. She was
herself a poet, and had a delicate intellectual sympathy that enabled her to

enter into her lover's ambitions, and assist him even in the minutest details
of his work.

It is fair to suppose that Lowell's friends brought every possible pressure to
bear upon him to make him give up poetry and dig at the law. His father's

financial losses had left him without an inherited income; he was engaged
to a beautiful girl and anxious to be married; in some way he must earn his
living, and if possible do more. Such was not the effect, however. He

devoted himself to poetry with an almost feverish activity. He has made up
his mind that he will do something great; for only so can he hope possibly

to make literature a paying profession.