Letters of James Russell Lowell Author:James Russell Lowell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IX 1880-1885 IN LONDON. — VACATION TOUR TO GERMANY AND ITALY. DEATH OF MRS. LOWELL.—DEPARTURE FROM ENGLAND. LETTERS TO C. E. NORTON, H. W. LONGFELLOW... more », MRS. W. E. DARWIN, R. W. GILDER, JOHN W. FIELD, T. B. ALDRICH, W. D. HOWELLS, F. J. CHILD, J. B. THAYER, GEORGE PUTNAM, MRS. W. K. CLIFFORD, O. W. HOLMES, MISS GRACE NORTON. TO C. E. NORTON 37 Lowndes St., S. W., Aug. 17, 1880. ... I find that you have been very lenient in your judgment on my poems and have used a far finer sieve than I should have chosen if I had done the sifting. They always make me sad, thinking how much better I might have done if in the early years I had improvised less, and if in the later other avocations and studies had not made my hand more clumsy through want of use, than it might have been had I kept more closely to verse and to the mood which that implies. But it is something that three such friends as you and George Curtis and Child should still retain a certain amount of interest in what I have written. I not only approve, but shall perhaps go further if I once begin. The question was simply one of leaving out anything—for the terrible nianet litera scripta was staring me in the face, and positively made me unwilling to reprint at all. By the way, I spent Sunday with Mr. Leveson Gower (Lord Granville's brother and a charming host), and coming in from out of doors came upon John Bright reading aloud from the " Commemoration Ode." It sounded better than I feared—but when I am asked to read I never can find anything that seems to me good enough. . . . TO H. W. LONGFELLOW 37 Lowndes St., S. W., Oct. 3, 1880. My dear Longfellow,—I have just been reading, with a feeling I will not mar by trying to express it, your "Ultima Thule." You will understand the pang of pleasurable homes...« less