"Is thy name Mary, maiden fair?"--
published in the magazine at about the same time, disclose Holmes's
natural melody and his fine instinct for literary form. But his
lyrical fervor finds its most jubilant expression at this time in "Old
Ironsides", written at the turning-point in the poet's life, when he had
renounced the study of the law, and was deciding upon medicine as his
profession. The proposal to destroy the frigate Constitution, fondly and
familiarly known as "Old Ironsides", kindled a patriotic frenzy in the
sensitive Boston boy, which burst forth into the noble lyric,
"Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!"
There had been no American poetry with a truer lilt of song than these
early verses, and there has been none since. Two years later, in 1833,
Holmes went to complete his medical studies in Paris, and the lines to a
grisette--
"Ah, Clemence, when I saw thee last
Trip down the Rue de Seine!"--
published upon his return in his first volume of verse, are a charming
illustration of his lyrical genius. His limpid line never flowed more
clearly than in this poem. It has the pensive tone of all his best poems
of the kind, but it is the half-happy sadness of youth.
All these early verses have an assured literary form. The scope and
strain were new, but their most significant quality was not melody nor
pensive grace, but humor. This was ingrained and genuine. Sometimes it
was rollicking, as in "The Height of the Ridiculous" and "The September
Gale". Sometimes it was drolly meditative, as in "Evening, by a Tailor".
Sometimes it was a tearful smile of the deepest feeling, as in the most
charming and perfect of these poems, "The Last Leaf", in which delicate
and searching pathos is exquisitely fused with tender gayety. The
haunting music and meaning of the lines,
"The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has pressed
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb",
lingered always in the memory of Lincoln, whose simple sincerity and
native melancholy would instinctively have rejected any false note. It
is in such melody as that of the "Last Leaf" that we feel how truly the
grim old Puritan strength has become sweetness.
To this poetic grace and humor and music, which at that time were
unrivalled, although the early notes of a tuneful choir of awakening
songsters were already heard, the young Holmes added the brisk and crisp
and sparkling charm of his prose. From the beginning his coursers were
paired, and with equal pace they have constantly held the road. In the
_New England Magazine_ for November in the same year, 1831, a short
paper was published called the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table". The
tone of placid dogmatism and infallible finality with which the bulls of
the domestic pope are delivered is delightfully familiar. This earliest
one has perhaps more of the cardinal's preliminary scarlet than of the
mature papal white, but in its first note the voice of the Autocrat is
unmistakable:
"Somebody was rigmarolling the other day about the artificial
distinctions of society.
'Madam,' said I, 'society is the same in all large places. I divide
it thus:
1. People of cultivation who live in large houses.
2. People of cultivation who live in small houses.
3. People without cultivation who live in large houses.
4. People without cultivation who live in small houses.
5. Scrubs.'
An individual at the upper end of the table turned pale and left the
room as I finished with the monosyllable."
"'Tis sixty years since", but that drop is of the same characteristic
transparency and sparkle as in the latest Tea-Cup.
The time in which the _New England Magazine_ was published, and these
firstlings of Holmes's muse appeared, was one of prophetic literary
stir in New England. There were other signs than those in letters of
the breaking-up of the long Puritan winter. A more striking and extreme
reaction from the New England tradition could not well be imagined
than that which was offered by Nathaniel Parker Willis, of whom Holmes
himself says "that he was at the time something between a remembrance of
Count D'Orsay and an anticipation of Oscar Wilde". Willis was a kindly
saunterer, the first Boston dandy, who began his literary career with
grotesque propriety as a sentimentalizer of Bible stories, a performance
which Lowell gayly called inspiration and water. In what now seems a
languid, Byronic way, he figured as a Yankee Pelham or Vivian Grey. Yet
in his prose and verse there was a tacit protest against the old order,
and that it was felt is shown by the bitterness of ridicule and taunt
and insult with which, both publicly and privately, this most amiable
youth was attacked, who, at that time, had never said an ill-natured
word of anybody, and who was always most generous in his treatment of
his fellow authors.
The epoch of Willis and the _New England Magazine_ is very notable in
the history of American literature. The traditions of that literature
were grave and even sombre. Irving, indeed, in his Knickerbocker and Rip
Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane, and in the general gayety of his literary
touch, had emancipated it from strict allegiance to the solemnity of its
precedents, and had lighted it with a smile. He supplied a quality
of grace and cheerfulness which it had lacked, and without unduly
magnifying his charming genius, it had a natural, fresh, and smiling
spirit, which, amid the funereal, theologic gloom, suggests the
sweetness and brightness of morning. In its effect it is a breath of
Chaucer. When Knickerbocker was published, Joel Barlow's "Hasty-Pudding"
was the chief achievement of American literary humor. Mark Twain and
Charles Dudley Warner were not yet "the wits of Hartford". Those
who bore that name held it by brevet. Indeed, the humor of our early
literature is pathetic. In no State was the ecclesiastical dominance
more absolute than in Connecticut, and nothing shows more truly how
absolute and grim it was than the fact that the performances of the
"wits" in that State were regarded--gravely, it must have been--as
humor.
For a long time there was no vital response in New England to the chord
touched by Irving. Yet Boston was then unquestionably the chief seat of
American letters. Dennie had established his _Portfolio_ in Philadelphia
in 1801, but in 1805 the _Monthly Anthology_, which was subsequently
reproduced in the _North American Review_, appeared in Boston, and
was the organ or illustration of the most important literary and
intellectual life of the country at that time. The opening of the
century saw the revolt against the supremacy of the old Puritan Church
of New England--a revolt within its own pale. This clerical protest
against the austere dogmas of Calvinism in its ancient seat was
coincident with the overthrow in the national government of Federalism
and the political triumph of Jefferson and his party. Simultaneously
also with the religious and political disturbance was felt the new
intellectual and literary impulse of which the _Anthology_ was the
organ. But the religious and literary movements were not in sympathy
with the political revolution, although they were all indications
of emancipation from the dominance of old traditions, the mental
restlessness of a people coming gradually to national consciousness.
Mr. Henry Adams, in remarking upon this situation in his history of
Madison's administration, points out that leaders of the religious
protest which is known as the Unitarian Secession in New England were
also leaders in the intellectual and literary awakening of the time, but
had no sympathy with Jefferson or admiration of France. Bryant's father
was a Federalist; the club that conducted the _Anthology_ and the
_North American Review_ was composed of Federalists; and the youth
whose "Thanatopsis" is the chief distinction of the beginning of that
_Review_, and the morning star of American poetry, was, as a boy of
thirteen, the author of the "Embargo", a performance in which the
valiant Jack gave the giant Jefferson no quarter. The religious
secession took its definite form in Dr. Channing's sermon at the
ordination of Jared Sparks in Baltimore in 1819, which powerfully
arraigned the dominant theology of the time. This was the year in which
Irving's _Sketch Book_ was published. Bryant's first volume followed a
year or two later, and our distinctive literary epoch opened.
Ten years afterwards, when Bryant had left New England, Dr. Channing
was its most dignified and characteristic name in literature. But he was
distinctively a preacher, and his serene and sweet genius never unbent
into a frolicsome mood. As early as 1820 a volume of Robert Burns's
poems fell into Whittier's hands like a spark into tinder, and the
flame that has so long illuminated and cheered began to blaze. It was,
however, a softened ray, not yet the tongue of lyric fire which it
afterwards became. But none of the poets smiled as they sang. The Muse
of New England was staid and stately--or was she, after all, not a true
daughter of Jove, but a tenth Muse, an Anne Bradstreet? The rollicking
laugh of Knickerbocker was a solitary sound in the American air until
the blithe carol of Holmes returned a kindred echo.
Willis was the sign of the breaking spell. But his light touch could not
avail. The Puritan spell could be broken only by Puritan force, and
it is the lineal descendants of Puritanism, often the sons of
clergymen--Emerson and Holmes and Longfellow and Hawthorne and
Whittier--who emancipated our literature from its Puritan subjection.
In 1829 Willis, as editor of _Peter Parley's Token_ and the _American
Monthly Magazine_, was aided by Longfellow and Hawthorne and Motley and
Hildreth and Mrs. Child and Mrs. Sigourney, and the elder Bishop Doane,
Park Benjamin and George B. Cheever, Albert Pike and Rufus Dawes, as
contributors. Willis himself was a copious writer, and in the _American
Monthly_ first appeared the titles of "Inkling of Adventure" and
"Pencillings by the Way", which he afterwards reproduced for some of his
best literary work. The _Monthly_ failed, and in 1831, the year that the
_New England Magazine_ began, it was merged in the New York _Mirror_, of
which Willis became associate editor, leaving his native city forever,
and never forgiving its injustice towards him. In the heyday of his
happy social career in England he wrote to his mother, "The mines of
Golconda would not tempt me to return and live in Boston."
This was the literary situation when Holmes was preluding in the
magazine. The acknowledged poets in Boston were Dana, Sprague, and
Pierpont. Are these names familiar to the readers of this essay? How
much of their poetry can those readers repeat? No one knows more surely
than he who writes of a living author how hard it is to forecast fame,
and how dangerous is prophecy. When Edward Everett saluted Percival's
early volume as the harbinger of literary triumphs, and Emerson greeted
Walt Whitman at "the opening of a great career", they generalized a
strong personal impression. They identified their own preference with
the public taste. On the other hand, Hawthorne says truly of himself
that he was long the most obscure man of letters in America. Yet he had
already published the _Twice-told Tales_ and the _Mosses from an Old
Manse_, the two series of stories in which the character and quality
of his genius are fully disclosed. But although Longfellow hailed the
publication of the first collection as the rising of a new star, the
tone of his comment is not that of the discoverer of a planet shining
for all, but of an individual poetic pleasure. The prescience of fame is
very infrequent. The village gazes in wonder at the return of the famous
man who was born on the farm under the hill, and whose latent greatness
nobody suspected; while the youth who printed verses in the corner of
the county paper, and drew the fascinated glances of palpitating maidens
in the meetinghouse, and seemed to the farmers to have associated
himself at once with Shakespeare and Tupper and the great literary or
"littery folks", never emerges from the poet's department in the paper
in which unconsciously and forever he has been cornered. It would be a
grim Puritan jest if that department had been named from the corner of
the famous dead in Westminster Abbey.
If the Boston of sixty years ago had ventured to prophesy for itself
literary renown, it is easy to see upon what reputations of the time
it would have rested its claims. But if the most familiar names of
that time are familiar no longer, if Kettell and poems from the _United
States Gazette_ seem to be cemeteries of departed reputations, the fate
of the singers need not be deplored as if Fame had forgotten them. Fame
never knew them. Fame does not retain the name of every minstrel
who passes singing. But to say that Fame does not know them is not
dispraise. They sang for the hearers of their day, as the players
played. Is it nothing to please those who listen, because those who
are out of hearing do not stop and applaud? If we recall the names most
eminent in our literature, whether they were destined for a longer or
shorter date, we shall see that they are undeniably illustrations of the
survival of the fittest. Turning over the noble volumes of Stedman
and Miss Hutchinson, in which, as on a vast plain, the whole line of
American literature is drawn up for inspection and review, and marches
past like the ghostly midnight columns of Napoleon's grand army, we
cannot quarrel with the verdict of time, nor feel that injustice has
been done to Thamis or to Cawdor. There are singers of a day, but not
less singers because they are of a day. The insect that flashes in the
sunbeam does not survive like the elephant. The splendor of the most
gorgeous butterfly does not endure with the faint hue of the hills that
gives Athens its Pindaric name. And there are singers who do not sing.
What says Holmes, with eager sympathy and pity, in one of his most
familiar and most beautiful lyrics?--
"We count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet waiting singers slumber,
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild flowers who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy fame is proud to win them;
Alas, for those that never sing,
And die with all their music in them!"
But as he says also that the capacities of listeners at lectures differ
widely, some holding a gallon, others a quart, and others only a pint or
a gill, so of the singers who are not voiceless, their voices differ in
volume. Some are organs that fill the air with glorious and continuous
music; some are trumpets blowing a ringing peal, then sinking into
silence; some are harps of melancholy but faint vibration; still others
are flutes and pipes, whose sweet or shrill note has a dying fall. Some
are heard as the wind or sea is heard; some like the rustle of leaves;
some like the chirp of birds. Some are heard long and far away; others
across the field; others hardly across the street. Fame is perhaps
but the term of a longer or shorter fight with oblivion; but it is the
warrior who "drinks delight of battle with his peers", and holds his
own in the fray, who finally commands the eye and the heart. There were
poets pleasantly singing to our grandfathers whose songs we do not hear,
but the unheeded voice of the youngest songster of that time is a voice
we heed to-day. Holmes wrote but two "Autocrat" papers in the _New
England Magazine_--one in November, 1831, and the other in February,
1832. The year after the publication of the second paper he went to
Paris, where for three years he studied medicine, not as a poet, but
as a physician, and he returned in 1836 an admirably trained and highly
accomplished professional man. But the Phi Beta Kappa poem of that year,
like the tender lyric to Clemence upon leaving Paris, shows not
only that the poet was not dead, but that he did not even sleep. The
"Metrical Essay" was the serious announcement that the poet was not
lost in the man of science, an announcement which was followed by the
publication in the same year (1836) of his first volume of poems. This
was three years before the publication of Longfellow's first volume of
verses, _The Voices of the Night_.
Holmes's devotion to the two Muses of science and letters was uniform
and untiring, as it was also to the two literary forms of verse and
prose. But although a man of letters, like the other eminent men of
letters in New England, he had no trace of the Bohemian. Willis was the
only noted literary figure that ever mistook Boston for a seaport in
Bohemia, and he early discovered his error. The fraternity which has
given to Boston its literary primacy has been always distinguished
not only for propriety of life and respectability in its true sense
of worthiness and respect, but for the possession of the virtues of
fidelity, industry, and good sense, which have carried so far both
the influence and the renown of New England. Nowhere has the Bohemian
tradition been more happily and completely shattered than in the circle
to which Holmes returned from his European studies to take his place.
American citizenship in its most attractive aspect has been signally
illustrated in that circle, and it is not without reason that
the government has so often selected from it our chief American
representatives in other countries.
Dr. Holmes, as he was now called, and has continued to be called,
practised his profession in Boston; but whether because of some lurking
popular doubt of a poet's probable skill as a physician, or from some
lack of taste on his part for the details of professional practice, like
his kinsman, Wendell Phillips, and innumerable other young beginners, he
sometimes awaited a professional call longer than was agreeable. But he
wrote medical papers, and was summoned to lecture to the medical school
at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and later at Pittsfield in
Massachusetts, while his unfailing charm as an occasional poet gave
him a distinctive name. Holmes's felicity in occasional poems is
extraordinary. The "Metrical Essay" was the first and chief of the long
series of such verses, among which the songs of '29, the poems
addressed year after year to his college classmates of that year, have a
delightful and endless grace, tenderness, wit, and point. Pegasus
draws well in harness the triumphant chariot of '29, in which the lucky
classmates of the poet move to a unique and happy renown.
As a reader, Holmes was the permanent challenge of Mrs. Browning's
sighing regret that poets never read their own verses to their worth.
Park Benjamin, who heard the Phi Beta Kappa poem, said of its delivery:
"A brilliant, airy, and _spirituelle_ manner varied with striking
flexibility to the changing sentiment of the poem, now deeply
impassioned, now gayly joyous and nonchalant, and anon springing up into
almost an actual flight of rhapsody, rendered the delivery of this poem
a rich, nearly a dramatic entertainment." This was no less true in later
years when he read some of his poems in New York at Bishop Potter's,
then rector of Grace Church, or of the reading of the poem at the
doctors' dinner given to him by the physicians of New York a little
later.
Holmes's readings were like improvisations. The poems were expressed and
interpreted by the whole personality of the poet. The most subtle
touch of thought, the melody of fond regret, the brilliant passage
of description, the culmination of latent fun exploding in a keen and
resistless jest, all these were vivified in the sensitive play of manner
and modulation of tone of the reader, so that a poem by Holmes at the
Harvard Commencement dinner was one of the anticipated delights which
never failed. This temperament implied an oratorical power which
naturally drew the poet into the lecture lyceum when it was in its
prime, in the decade between 1850 and 1860. During that time the popular
lecture was a distinct and effective public force, and not the least
of its services was its part in instructing and training the public
conscience for the great contest of the Civil War.
The year 1831, in which Holmes's literary activity began, was also
the year on whose first day the first number of Garrison's _Liberator_
appeared, and the final period of the slavery controversy opened. But
neither this storm of agitation nor the transcendental mist that a few
years later overhung intellectual New England greatly affected the poet.
In the first number of the "Autocrat" there is a passage upon puns,
which, crackling with fun, shows his sensitive scepticism. The
"Autocrat" says: "In a case lately decided before Miller, J., Doe
presented Roe a subscription paper, and urged the claims of suffering
humanity. Roe replied by asking when charity was like a top. It was in
evidence that Doe preserved a dignified silence. Roe then said, 'When
it begins to hum.' There are temperaments of a refined suspiciousness
to which, when the plea of reform is urged, the claims of suffering
humanity at once begin to hum. The very word reform irritates a peculiar
kind of sensibility, as a red flag stirs the fury of a bull. A noted
party leader said, with inexpressible scorn, 'When Dr. Johnson defined
the word patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he had not
learned the infinite possibilities of the word refa-a-r-m.'"
The acridity of this jest is wholly unknown to the "Autocrat", who
has moved always with reform, if not always with reformers, and whose
protest against bigotry is as searching as it is sparkling. Not only has
his ear been quick to detect the hum of Mr. Honeythunder's loud appeal,
but his eye to catch the often ludicrous aspect of honest whimsey.
During all the early years of his literary career he flew his flashing
darts at all the "isms", and he fell under the doubt and censure of
those earnest children of the time whom the gay and clever sceptics
derided as apostles of the newness. When Holmes appeared upon the
lecture platform it was to discourse of literature or science, or to
treat some text of social manners or morals with a crisp Poor Richard
sense and mother wit, and a brilliancy of illustration, epigram, and
humor that fascinated the most obdurate "come-outer". Holmes's lectures
on the English poets at the Lowell Institute were among the most noted
of that distinguished platform, and everywhere the poet was one of
the most popular of "attractions". There were not wanting those who
maintained that his use of the platform was the correct one, and that
the orators who, often by happy but incisive indirection, fought the
good fight of the hour abused their opportunity.
It was while Holmes was still a professor, but still also touching the
lyre and writing scientific essays and charming the great audiences of
the lecture lyceum, that in the first number of the _Atlantic Monthly_,
in November, 1857, the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" remarked,
"I was just going to say, when I was interrupted," and resumed the
colloquies of the _New England Magazine_. He had been interrupted
twenty-two years before. But as he began again it was plain that it was
the same voice, yet fuller, stronger, richer, and that we were listening
to one of the wisest of wits and sharpest of observers. Emerson warns us
that superlatives are to be avoided. But it will not be denied that the
"Autocrat" belongs in the highest rank of modern magazine or periodical
literature, of which the essays of "Elia" are the type. The form of the
"Autocrat"--a semi-dramatic, conversational, descriptive monologue--is
not peculiar to Holmes's work, but the treatment of it is absolutely
original. The manner is as individual and unmistakable as that of Elia
himself. It would be everywhere recognized as the Autocrat's. During
the intermission of the papers the more noted Macaulay flowers of
literature, as the Autocrat calls them, had bloomed; Carlyle's _Sartor
Resartus_ and reviews, Christopher North's _Noctes_ (now fallen into
ancient night), Thackeray's _Roundabout Papers_, Lowell's _Hosea
Biglow_--a whole library of magazine and periodical literature of the
first importance had appeared. But the Autocrat began again, after a
quarter of a century, musical with so rich a chorus, and his voice was
clear, penetrating, masterful, and distinctively his own.
The cadet branch of English literature--the familiar colloquial
periodical essay, a comment upon men and manners and life--is a
delightful branch of the family, and traces itself back to Dick Steele
and Addison. Hazlitt, who belonged to it, said that he preferred the
_Tatler_ to the _Spectator_; and Thackeray, who consorted with it
proudly, although he was of the elder branch, restored Sir Richard,
whose habits had cost him a great deal of his reputation, to general
favor. The familiar essay is susceptible, as the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries show, of great variety and charm of treatment. What
would the Christian Hero, writing to his Prue that he would be with her
in a pint of wine's time, have said to "Blakesmoor" and "Oxford in the
Vacation"? Yet Lamb and Steele are both consummate masters of the essay,
and Holmes, in the "Autocrat", has given it a new charm. The little
realm of the Autocrat, his lieges of the table, the persons of
the drama, are at once as definitely outlined as Sir Roger's club.
Unconsciously and resistlessly we are drawn within the circle; we are
admitted _ad eundem_, and become the targets of the wit, the irony,
the shrewd and sharp epigram, the airy whim, the sparkling fancy,
the curious and recondite thought, the happy allusion, the felicitous
analogy, of the sovereign master of the feast.
The index of the _Autocrat_ is in itself a unique work. It reveals the
whimsical discursiveness of the book; the restless hovering of that
brilliant talk over every topic, fancy, feeling, fact; a humming-bird
sipping the one honeyed drop from every flower; or a huma, to use its
own droll and capital symbol of the lyceum lecturer, the bird that never
lights. There are few books that leave more distinctly the impression of
a mind teeming with riches of many kinds. It is, in the Yankee phrase,
thoroughly wideawake. There is no languor, and it permits none in the
reader, who must move along the page warily, lest in the gay profusion
of the grove, unwittingly defrauding himself of delight, he miss
some flower half hidden, some gem chance-dropped, some darting bird.
Howells's _Letters_ was called a chamber-window book, a book supplying
in solitude the charm of the best society. We could all name a few such
in our own literature. Would any of them, or many, take precedence of
the _Autocrat of the Breakfast Table?_
It is in this book that the value of the scientific training to the
man of letters is illustrated, not only in furnishing noble and strong
analogies, but in precision of observation and accuracy of statement. In
Holmes's style, the definiteness of form and the clearness of expression
are graces and virtues which are due to his exact scientific study, as
well as to the daylight quality of his mind.
The delicate apprehension of the finer and tenderer feelings which
is disclosed in the little passages of narrative in the record of the
Autocrat and of his legitimate brothers, the Professor and the Poet,
at the Breakfast Table, gives a grace and a sweetness to the work which
naturally flow into the music of the poems with which the diary of a
conversation often ends. These traits in the Autocrat suggested that he
would yet tell a distinct story, which indeed came while the trilogy
of the Breakfast Table was yet proceeding. _Elsie_ _Venner_ and the
_Guardian Angel_, the two novels of Holmes's, are full of the same
briskness and acuteness of observation, the same effusiveness of humor
and characteristic Americanism, as the _Autocrat_. Certain aspects
of New England life and character are treated in these stories with
incomparable vivacity and insight. Holmes's picture is of a later New
England than Hawthorne's, but it is its lineal descendant. It is another
facet of the Puritan diamond which flashes with different light in the
genius of Hawthorne, Emerson, Lowell, Whittier, Longfellow, Holmes, and
Judd in _Margaret_. For, with all his lyrical instinct and rollicking
humor, Holmes is essentially a New-Englander, and one of the most
faithful and shrewd interpreters of New England.
The colloquial habit of the Autocrat is not lost in the stories, and it
is so marked generally in Holmes's writings as to be called distinctive.
It is a fascinating gift, when it is so restrained by taste and
instinctive refinement as not to become what is known as bumptiousness.
Thackeray, even in his novels, is apt to drop into this vein, to talk
about the persons of his drama with his reader, instead of leaving them
to play out their part alone. This trait offends some of Thackeray's
audience, to whom it seems like the manager's hand thrust into the
box to help out the play of the puppets. They resent not "the damnable
faces" of the actors, but the damnable sermonizing of the author, and
exhort him to permit the play to begin. Thackeray frankly acknowledged
his tendency to preach, as he called it. But it was part of the man.
Without the private personal touch of the essayist in his stories they
would not be his. This colloquial habit is very winning when governed by
a natural delicacy and an exquisite literary instinct. It is the quality
of all the authors who are distinctly beloved as persons by their
readers, and it is to this class that Holmes especially belongs.
It is not a quality which is easily analyzed, but it blends a power of
sympathetic observation and appreciation both of the thing observed and
the reader to whom the observation is addressed. The Autocrat, as he
converses, brightens with his own clear thought, with the happy quip,
the airy fancy. He is sure of your delight, not only in the thought, but
in its deft expression. He in turn is delighted with your delight. He
warms to the responsive mind and heart, and feels the mutual joy. The
personal relation is established, and the Autocrat's audience become
his friends, to whom he describes with infinite glee the effect of his
remarks upon his lieges at table. No other author takes the reader into
his personal confidence more closely than Holmes, and none reveals his
personal temperament more clearly. This confidential relation becomes
even more simple and intimate as time chastens the eagerness of youth
and matures the keen brilliancy of the blossom into the softer bloom of
the fruit. The colloquies of the Autocrat under the characteristic
title of "Over the Tea-Cups" are full of the same shrewd sense and wise
comment and tender thought. The kindly mentor takes the reader by the
button or lays his hand upon his shoulder, not with the rude familiarity
of the bully or the boor, but with the courtesy of Montaigne, the
friendliness of John Aubrey, or the wise cheer of Selden. The reader
glows with the pleasure of an individual greeting, and a wide diocese
of those whom the Autocrat never saw plume themselves proudly upon his
personal acquaintance.
In this discursive talk about one of the American authors who have
vindicated the position of American letters in the literature of the
language we have not mentioned all his works. It is the quality rather
than the quantity with which we are concerned, the upright, honorable,
pure quality of the poet, the wit, the scholar, for whom the most
devoted reader is called to make no plea, no apology. The versatility of
his power is obvious, but scarcely less so the uniformity of his work.
It is a power which was early mature. For many a year he has dwelt upon
a high table-land where the air is equable and inspiring, yet, as we
have hinted, ever softer and sweeter. The lyric of today glows with the
same ardor as the fervent apostrophe to "Old Ironsides" or the tripping
salutation to the remembered and regretted Clemence; it is only less
eager. The young Autocrat who remarked that the word "scrub" dismissed
from table a fellow-boarder who turned pale, now with the same smiling
acuteness remarks the imprudent politeness which tries to assure him
that it is no matter if he is a little older. Did anybody say so? The
easy agility with which he cleared "the seven-barred gate" has carried
him over the eight bars, and we are all in hot pursuit. For just sixty
years since his first gay and tender note was heard, Holmes has been
fulfilling the promise of his matin song. He has become a patriarch of
our literature, and all his countrymen are his lovers.