"I have no farewell speech to make, no apologia to give," John L. Lowes, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English and Senior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, told his last class yesterday as he concluded 20 years of teaching at Harvard.

"In one sense I am glad this is my last lecture, since I wish to devote my time to some special work," he continued. "But I shall be very sorry to lose contact with my students and the opportunity to pass on what I think is great in literature."

For three quarters of an hour 50 of his students, past and present, had listened to Professor Lowes lecture on Herrick and read from his poems, when he put down the volume of poetry to say in a few words what a life of teaching had taught his shout the relation of a teacher and his pupils.

To give a lecture he didn't want to give to students who didn't want to listen has often been hard, he said. But both teacher and student later realize that some channel of interpretation is needed to make the works of dead authors live again.

"There is a kind of electric interchange between a teacher and his students.: He raised his arms in a gesture of benediction and farewell; the evation was loud and long.

Allard Also Says Farewell

The curtain fell yesterday on another Harvard teaching career when Louis Allard, professor of French, gave his last lecture in French 7, "Romanticism and Realism in French Literature of the Nineteenth Century." For years Professor Allard has been one of the lecturers in French 6, popular French literature survey course. Yesterday he delivered in French his last remarks as an active teacher.