Our Great Poets

Mr. Ralph Waldo Emersou has been talking with a correspondent of the Concord Monitor about the habits of his poetical f rienda. "Holmes," said he, " is so f nll that he can -vrite at any time, j Lowell broods over his subject for a i time, and then composes with great swiftneas. He does not Hke to write to i order, though desirous of employing the I stiiulus of great occasions. We asked i lúm to read i poem at Ooncord on the one-hundredth anniversary of the tíght, j but he said Lo could not. His wife, a day or two before, wrote to me saying, 'I cannot speak for James, yet I think yon may expect a poem froni him on the 19th. He has been going about for some time in that peculiar way which is a promiso of something,' aud on the 19th Lowell -was on the ground with his poem - and a grand one it was. Longfellow prepares his poems to be read on any great occasion, as a minister who lives near Boston prepares liis sermons, near! ly a year ahead. He wrote the poem read at Bowdoin College last summer early in the fall of the preceding year, and well it was he did so, for the months iiitervening have beon fruitless au far au literary labor ia oonaernad, owing to physical prrwtratfon. He i, lmppily, better uow."