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Show James Russell Lowell In person Lowell is of medium height, rather slender, but sinewy and active. His movements are deliberate rather than impulsive, indicating what athletes call staying qualities. His hair at maturity was dark auburn or ruddy chestnut in color, and his full beard rather lighter and more glowing in tint. The eyes of men of genius are seldom to be classified in ordinary terms, thought it is said their prevailing color is gray. Colonel Higginson mentions Hawthorne's gray eyes; while the present writer, who once studied them attentively, found them mottled gray and brown, and at that time indescribably soft and winner. That they were sometimes occipitral ??? we can readily believe, Lowell's eyes in repose have clear blue and gray tones with minute dark mottling. In expression they are strongly indicative of his moods. When fixed upon study, or while listening to serious discourse, they are grave and penetrating; in ordinary conversation they are bright and cheery, in moments of excitement they have a wonderful luster. Nothing could be finer than his facial expression while telling a story or tossing a repartee. The features are alive with intelligence, and eyes, looks, and voice appear to be working up dazzling effects in concert, like the finished artists of the Comedie Francaise. The wit of Ilosea Biglow is the native wit of Lowell - instantaneous as lightning; and Ilosea's common-sense is Lowell's birthright too. When the same man, however, can extemparize chuckling puns, and blow out a breath of poetical reverie as naturally as the smoke from his pipe, the combination becomes startling. Other men may have been as witty, those we recall but three or four in our day; some may have had a similar fund of wisdom mellowed with humor; others have talked the staple of idylls, and let off metaphors like soap bubbles; but Lowell combines in conversation the varied powers of all. His resources are inexhaustible. It is no wonder that he has been admired, for at his best he is one of the most fascinating of men. There is but one compeer - the immortal "Autocrat" -and it would be difficult, and perhaps impossible, to draw a parallel between them. Steel said of a lady that to have know and loved her was a liberal education. More than one man who enjoyed Lowell's society found the wise and witty converse of years did much to supply lamented defects in his own study and training, and perhaps warmed over late-flowering plants into blossom and fruitage. This also should be said, that every man who has known Lowell well considers him much greater that the aggregate of his works. He always give the impression of power in reserve. He used to enter upon the long walks which have aided in making him one of the poets of nature with the keenest of zest. There was no quicker eye for a bird or squirrel, a rare flower or bush, and no more accurate ear for the songs or the commoner sounds of the forest. Evidences of this the reader will find in the "Window Study," But those who have visited Fresh Pond, Clematis Brook, Love Lane, or the Waverly Oaks in his company remember and acuteness of vision and a delight in every form of beauty of which the essay gives no conception. His habits were scarcely methodical- reading, correspondence, composition, exercise, and social converse coming often hap-hazard; yet being incapable of idleness, he accomplished much. His works show the effective use he has made of the intellectual [line is illegible due to crease in paper] treasures of the world. - F. H. Underwood, in Harpers. |