James Russell Lowell

I may appear to speak too much of this phase of his life as the most memorable part of it---especially considering how short a time it occupied in regard to the whole; but in addition to it's being the only long phase of which I can speak at all closely from personal observation, it is just to remember that these were the years in which all the other years were made most evident. "We knew him and valued him ages before, and never stinted our appreciation, never waited to care for him till he had become the fashion," his American readers and listeners, his pupils and colleagues, might say; to which the answer is that those who admired him most were just those who might naturally rejoice in the multiplication of his opportunities.