virtues? Is Lowell willing to have him in his garden? The lines from Emerson's Titmouse read,

For well the soul, if stout within,

Can arm impregnably the skin.

- Robert Bloomfield was a shoemaker-poet, not ranked very high. The Poor Richard ethics were of the thrifty, utilitarian sort, not idealistic nor spiritual; the robin, unlike his "cousins," has nothing inspired about him. —Notice the echo of Burns's "for a' that and a' that." Dr. Samuel Johnson was noted for his bad table manners. - Explain "right of eminent domain." For the allusion to the Jewish spies see Numbers 13. - The Duke of Wellington fought Napoleon's forces in Spain before he did at Waterloo. The "fair Fidele" is evidently Mrs. Lowell. Observe the pun with which paragraph 7 ends. Why does Lowell compare the robins to fire-worshippers? The second sentence of paragraph 8 is an echo of Wordsworth's

There are a thousand feeding like one,

from Written in March. In the third perhaps there is a reminiscence of Shelley's Skylark,

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not.

Pecksniff was a hypocrite in Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit. The robin pretends to be as ascetic as a hermit, whose vows forbid him to use flesh foods. Explain "lobby member." Paragraph 10. The familiar stanza,

Birds in their little nests agree,

And 'tis a shameful sight

When children of one family

Fall out and chide and fight,

is from Dr. Watt's poem on Love between Brothers and Sisters. Explain "armed neutrality."-The quotation is from Shakespeare's King Henry V, 1, 2.

Paragraph 11. What sort of people is Lowell making sport of in the sentence about "the famous Battle of the Pines"? What would be the moral of Æsop's fable about the jays? Compose the fable, using the material Lowell supplies here. The last sentence parodies and puns on Goldsmith's

And fools who came to scoff remained to pray,

in The Deserted Village,

Paragraph 12. Shady Hill was the home of Lowell's friend Charles Eliot Norton, at this time in Europe.

Paragraph 13. Saint Preux was the lover of Julie, heroine of Rousseau's La Nouvelle Heloise a very pattern of a lover. What is the point of comparison between the crow trying to be tenderly sentimental and a Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson? — The Kanakas were the aborigines of the Hawaiian Islands.

Paragraph 14. Edward E. Hale was a Boston clergyman, author of The Man without a Country.

Paragraph 15. Figaro is a character in the plays of Beaumarchais. He is gay, lively, talkative, and full of stratagems. Mr. H. Dixon wrote a book of travels called New America. The Oneida Community in Central New York, like the Mormons of Salt Lake City, held peculiar views on marriage. What feeling does Lowell express in the sentence, "An intelligent matters"? - Chateaubriand was a French essayist. The quotation from his letters (written in America) means, "my horses grazing at some distance." Notice the pun in "mount the high horse."

Paragraph 18. The truce of God was established by the Church in that part of the Middle Ages when secular governments were weak and miscellaneous warfare common. It was a suspension of feuds and hostilities over holy days, including Sunday.

Paragraph 19. Mount Auburn is a cemetery in Cambridge, not far from Elmwood. "Sweet" is a reminiscence of Goldsmith's Deserted Village,

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain.

-Eheu fugaces! is, being translated, "Alas, transitory things!" Fresh Pond is near Cambridge. - Ellengowan is a ruined gypsy village in Scott's Guy Mannering.

Paragraph 20. Trouvaille means "a find." Captain Kidd was a famous pirate, whose treasure, though supposedly buried somewhere on our Atlantic coast, has never been found. By "the most poetic of ornithologists" Lowell means the Wilson for whom this thrush was named. Lowell coins the verb oölogize; what does it mean? How did the messmates of the Ancient Mariner feel toward him? See Coleridge's poem. The Trastevere is the workingman's quarter in Rome. A woman of this quarter (a "Trasteverina ") not infrequently sits on the doorstep to remove vermin from the head of a child. Eheu means "Alas!" Ovid was a Latin poet; his Metamorphoses is his most famous work, an account of the change of human beings to animals or plants. The plaintive note of this bird would have suggested to Ovid some pathetic tale of transformation.

Paragraph 21. The "involuntary pun" is between the words mansuetude and accustomed. How did Penn treat the Indians? How does Lowell say the Puritans treated

them? Hebraism means the doctrine of the Bible, the Old Testament having been written in Hebrew. Whom does Lowell mean by "featherless bipeds"?

IV. What attitude has Lowell toward the birds and squirrels in his garden? Does he talk of them as if they were human beings? Is this essay interesting to you? Explain your answer. Do you find in it any of the qualities Lowell admired in White's Natural History? Is Lowell's humor unconscious? How does this essay show the writer's scholarship? Is it in any way pedantic?

THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL

I. The old romances tell us that the Holy Grail was the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper (St. Matthew 24: 26ff.), and in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the blood from His side, as He hung on the Cross. Joseph became a missionary to Britain, and carried with him the sacred cup. There it remained many years in charge of his descendants. Finally one of them broke the monastic vows that were upon him, and the Grail disappeared. The young knights of romance often undertook the adventure of finding it, but no one was fit to behold the sacred symbol who was not spotless in heart and life. Their quest, therefore, was usually unsuccessful. Sir Launfal makes the quest of the Holy Grail his first important adventure. The choice of subject throws Lowell's time back into the Middle Ages, and justifies the use of many archaic words. The tale, however, is Lowell's own. There was a Sir Launfal in the old romances, but his story was not at all like this. (See Launfal in Four Lais of Marie de France, in the series called "Arthurian Romances Unrepresented in Malory's Morte d'Arthur,"

published by Nutt, London; sold in America by Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons.) Lowell's moral would hardly have been possible in a mediæval tale; for, in spite of their boasted humility, the knights were full of the pride of rank.

II. The poem is a narrative in two parts, each part preceded by a "prelude." The use of preludes is excellent in this poem, for many years are supposed to elaspe between the first part of the narrative and the second, and the prelude to Part II makes the necessary break in narration. They are also good because the description of nature in each prelude strengthens the atmosphere of the part of the narrative that follows it.

We shall study the entire narrative before we take up either prelude.

III. Read Part I and Part II. Point out the line where Launfal is said to go to sleep; and the one where he is said to wake up. Justify the use of "Vision" in the title. Express the moral thought of the poem in your own words. Do you think the two verses, Matthew 25: 40, 45, summarize morally the two parts of the narrative? You have noticed that the poem is a story about life, and yet that the nature element is very strong in it, and re-enforces the atmosphere. With the story clearly in mind, study the following: —