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between my cat-bird and me he calling me out of doors, I giving my better reasons for staying within. Of course my nightingale is Calderon. - Letters I, 437 (July 8, 1867).

*

For about a week I could read nothing but Calderon a continual delight, like walking in a wood where there is a general sameness in the scenery, and yet a constant vicissitude of light and shade, an endless variety of growth. He is certainly the most delightful of poets. Such fertility, such a gilding of the surfaces of things with fancy, or infusion of them with the more potent fires of the imagination, such lightsomeness of humor! Even the tragedies are somehow not tragic to me, though terrible enough sometimes, for everybody has such a talent for being consoled, and that out of hand. Life with him is too short and too uncertain for sorrow to last longer than to the end of the scene, if so long. As Ate makes her exit, she hands her torch to Hymen, who dances in brandishing it with an Io! The passions (some of the most unchristian of 'em) are made religious duties, which, once fulfilled, you begin life anew with a clear conscience. †

- Letters II, 167.

II. Read the poem carefully, and observe which part of the "dialogue" belongs to the bird and which to the scholar.

III. Study the poem minutely with the following notes: Line 4: Alcina was a fairy in the poems of the Italian writers, Ariosto and Boiardo. In her garden her guests enjoyed all sorts of delights.

Line 6: Lesbos and Massico are places in Greece and Italy, celebrated for excellent wines.

Line 8: "May not my ode be classic?" i. e. as good as the poems of Greece and Rome.

Line 10: Beaver Brook was a favorite haunt of Lowell's. It is near Cambridge. See the poem Beaver Brook.

Line 17: Boot means "help."

Line 18: Leaves of books.

* Used by permission of Harper Brothers.

From Correspondence of James Russell Lowell. Copyright, 1893, by Harper Brothers.

Lines 21, 22: Contrast with line 18.

Line 27: The cuckoo is called the "rain-crow," because its cries are said to predict rain.

Lines 39, 40: Notice the poet's love for June. Explain the personification of June, and the meaning of the two lines. Line 41: Comparison of the poet Calderon to the bird, as in the title of the poem. Follow the metaphor through the remaining stanzas. Calderon was a Spanish dramatist and poet (1600-1681). Many of his dramas relate to the Moors in Spain. Tichnor (History of Spanish Literature II, 363) says: "Nor is the preservation of national or individual character, except perhaps the Moorish, a matter of any more moment in his eyes.'

Line 44: Calderon, in the seventeenth century, must have fed his imagination on old mediaeval romances.

Line 47: Subjects of Calderon's poems.

Line 48: Doña Clara is the heroine of Calderon's Love Survives Life. Her husband was a Moor.

Lines 49-52: Scenes of which one reads in Calderon.

Line 54: The character of Calderon's plots.

Lines 55, 56: Refer to the note on line 41, and explain these lines.

Lines 57, 58: The adventurous nature of Calderon's plots is referred to.

Lines 59, 60: Explain.

Line 61: Addressed to the cat-bird.

Line 64: Refer to the note on line 41 for explanation.
Line 65: Still addressed to the cat-bird.

IV. Study meter, stanza, and rime; and devices for securing melody.

V. "The Nightingale in the Study, written in the summer of 1867, holds in capital form a genuine confession that there

was an appeal to him from nature in literature, which did not antagonize the appeal made to him by the world of natural beauty, yet sometimes constrained and invited him in tones he could not resist, even though the birds without were calling him." Scudder II, 115.

This poem shows the scholar, the man of letters, resisting for love of his books the call of the out-of-doors. It is interesting to compare with it Al Fresco (i. e. "In the Open Air"), which shows the nature-lover triumphant; in which the scholar throws aside, for a day, his books and studies, and takes a vacation in his garden and orchard. The two poems are in harmony with the mood of the prose sketch called My Garden Acquaintance, in which Lowell tells something of the grounds about Elmwood and of his friendship with the birds. Sonnet XXV also is interesting in this connection, as showing, in a less playful manner, that Lowell felt there is no real conflict between the mind of the scholar and the spirit of the nature-lover.

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE

I. Lowell's home, "Elmwood," was a large, old-fashioned New England house, surrounded by extensive lawns and gardens. In these grounds Lowell loved to work, being by turns a student and a horticulturist. (See The Nightingale in the Study and Al Fresco.) The most delightful literary product of his gardening is My Garden Acquaintance, a charmingly familiar essay, filled with bright humor, genial comment on life, and a pervading atmosphere of refinement and of easy, natural scholarship.

II. The introduction runs through five paragraphs. It is based on a favorite book of Lowell's earlier years. Gilbert White (1720-1793) lived in the parish of Selbourne, bordering

on the county of Surrey, England. He is the "Fellow of Oriel" College, Oxford, mentioned in the first paragraph. Read the five introductory paragraphs, and be prepared to state the notion you get from them of White's book. What characteristics did Lowell find particularly pleasing? If possible, read some of White's Natural History yourself, and see whether you enjoy it as much as Lowell did.

Paragraph 1. Explain the figure in "ambles along on his hobby-horse." - Barrington and Pennant were English naturalists contemporary with White. Walton was the author of The Compleat Angler, a book containing some charming descriptions of English country. Cowper's Task (VI, 560)

contains some famous lines on kindness to animals:

I would not enter on my list of friends,

(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility,) the man

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.

- Refer to the date of White and explain the significance of the allusion to Burgoyne, and its relation to the sentence before it. La Grande Chartreuse was a monastery in France, whose inmates were entirely separated from the world. — What does this paragraph tell you of White's interests?

Paragraph 2. Do you, too, find amusing such serious interest in trivial things? Does Lowell in this paragraph employ consciously the same humorous method? How does he use the pun for humorous effect? Do you get the point of the joke in his wonder "if metaphysicians have no hind toes"? Willoughby and Ray were British scientists. Explain the allusion to Diogenes.

Paragraph 3. This essay was written in 1869. What significance had the word reconstruction then? To what

other questions and debates of the day does Lowell refer here? - Contrast instinct in the second sentence with reason in the fifth. What sarcasm is there in the figure with which the fifth sentence ends? Lowell was born in the Elmwood home and lived there all his life. "Martin" was the manufacturer of White's thermometer. Natural History, Letter LIX: "Martin's, which was absurdly graduated to only 4° above zero, sunk quite into the brass guard of the ball, so that, when the weather became most interesting, this was useless." What puns here on graduation and Mercury? For the quotation, see Marlowe's Jew of Malta, I, 1.

Paragraph 4. Lowell suggests the value of daily reports by a weather bureau, not systematically organized by the government till four years later. What is the writer's feeling about newspaper prophecies and their value? About the economic wisdom of some Members of Congress? Cloaca Maxima means "great sewer."

Paragraph 5. This paragraph is transitional, bridging over from thoughts suggested by White to the observations of the writer.

III. The subject matter of the essay proper has been stated in the transitional paragraph; it had already been suggested in the title.

Paragraph 6. What popular error about animals does Lowell attack? What arguments does he advance to disprove it? What observation has he made on the time of bird migrations? Can he explain their choice of homes? The line of poetry quoted near the middle of the paragraph is from Chaucer's Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, line 11.

Paragraphs 7, 8. What are the faults of the robin? The