NAMING THE NEW MAGAZINE.
In the year 1857, Mr. Phillips, of the firm of Phillips & Sampson,
undertook the publication in Boston, of a new literary magazine. They
were fortunate in securing James Russell Lowell as editor, and one
condition he made upon accepting the office was, that his friend, Doctor
Holmes, should be one of the chief contributors.
It was the latter, also, who was called upon to name the new magazine.
Thus was the _Atlantic Monthly_ launched upon the great sea of
literature--a periodical that has never lost its first high prestige.
When Doctor Holmes sat down to write his first article for the new
magazine, he remembered that some twenty-five years before, he had begun
a series of papers for a certain _New England Magazine_, published in
Boston, by J. T. & E. Buckingham, with the title of _Autocrat of the
Breakfast-Table_. Curious, as he says, to try the experiment of shaking
the same bough again and finding out if the ripe fruit were better or
worse than the early wind-falls, he took the same title for his new
articles.
"The man is father to the boy that was," he adds, "and I am my own son,
as it seems to me, in those papers of the _New England Magazine_."
To show the reader some family traits of this "young autocrat," we quote
from these earlier articles the following fine extracts:
"When I feel inclined to read poetry, I take down my dictionary. The
poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author
may arrange the gems effectively, but their shape and lustre have been
given by the attrition of ages. Bring me the finest simile from the
whole range of imaginative writing, and I will show you a single word
which conveys a more profound, a more accurate, and a more eloquent
analogy.
"Once on a time, a notion was started that if all the people in the
world would shout at once, it might be heard in the moon. So the
projectors agreed it should be done in just ten years. Some thousand
shiploads of chronometers were distributed to the selectmen and other
great folks of all the different nations. For a year beforehand, nothing
else was talked about but the awful noise that was to be made on the
great occasion. When the time came everybody had their ears so wide open
to hear the universal ejaculation of boo--the word agreed upon--that
nobody spoke except a deaf man in one of the Fejee Islands, and a woman
in Pekin, so that the world was never so still since the creation."
At the close of the year when the twelve numbers of _The Autocrat of the
Breakfast-Table_ were completed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ and published
in book form, the _British Review_ wrote of the illustrious author as
follows:
"Oliver Wendell Holmes has been long known in this country as the author
of some poems written in stately classic verse, abounding in happy
thoughts and bright bird-peeps of fancy, such as this, for example:
The punch-bowl's sounding depths were stirred,
Its silver cherubs smiling as they heard.
And this first glint of spring--
The spendthrift Crocus, bursting through the mould,
Naked and shivering with his cup of gold.
He is also known as the writer of many pieces which wear a serious look
until they break out into a laugh at the end, perhaps in the last line,
as with those on _Lending a Punch Bowl_, a cunning way of the writer's;
just as the knot is tied in the whip cord at the end of the lash to
enhance the smack.
"But neither of these kinds of verse prepared us for anything so good,
so sustained, so national, and yet so akin to our finest humorists, as
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_; a very delightful book--a handy
book for the breakfast table. A book to conjure up a cosey winter
picture of a ruddy fire and singing kettle, soft hearth-rug, warm
slippers, and easy chair; a musical chime of cups and saucers, fragrance
of tea and toast within, and those flowers of frost fading on the
windows without as though old Winter just looked in, but his cold breath
was melted, and so he passed by. A book to possess two copies of; one to
be read and marked, thumbed and dog-eared; and one to stand up in its
pride of place with the rest on the shelves, all ranged in shining
rows, as dear old friends, and not merely as nodding acquaintances.
"Not at all like that ponderous and overbearing autocrat, Doctor
Johnson, is our Yankee friend. He has more of Goldsmith's sweetness and
lovability. He is as true a lover of elegance and high bred grace,
dainty fancies, and all pleasurable things, as was Leigh Hunt; he has
more wordly sense without the moral languor; but there is the same
boy-heart beating in a manly breast, beneath the poet's singing robe.
For he is a poet as well as a humorist. Indeed, although this book is
written in prose, it is full of poetry, with the 'beaded bubbles' of
humor dancing up through the true hippocrene and 'winking at the brim'
with a winning look of invitation shining in their merry eyes.
"The humor and the poetry of the book do not lie in tangible nuggets for
extraction, but they are there; they pervade it from beginning to end.
We cannot spoon out the sparkles of sunshine as they shimmer on the
wavelets of water; but they are there, moving in all their golden life
and evanescent grace.
"Holmes may not be so recognizably national as Lowell; his prominent
characteristics are not so exceptionally Yankee; the traits are not so
peculiar as those delineated in the _Biglow Papers_. But he is national.
One of the most hopeful literary signs of this book is its quiet
nationality. The writer has made no straining and gasping efforts after
that which is striking and peculiar, which has always been the bane of
youth, whether in nations or individuals. He has been content to take
the common, homespun, everyday humanity that he found ready to
hand--people who do congregate around the breakfast table of an American
boarding-house; and out of this material he has wrought with a vivid
touch and truth of portraiture, and won the most legitimate triumph of a
genuine book....
"Holmes has the pleasantest possible way of saying things that many
people don't like to hear. His tonics are bitter and bland. He does not
spare the various foibles and vices of his countrymen and women. But it
is done so good-naturedly, or with a sly puff of diamond dust in the
eyes of the victims, who don't see the joke which is so apparent to us.
As good old Isaak Walton advises respecting the worm, he impales them
tenderly as though he loved them."
* * * * *
How vividly every personage around that delightful "Breakfast-Table" is
photographed upon the reader's mind! Can you not see the dear "Old
Gentleman" just opposite the "Autocrat," as he suddenly surprises the
company by repeating a beautiful hymn he learned in childhood? And the
pale sweet "Schoolmistress" in her modest mourning dress? no wonder the
eyes of the Autocrat frequently wandered to that part of the table and
certain remarks are addressed to her alone! To tell the truth, we can't
help falling in love with her ourselves! What a fine foil to this
"soft-voiced little woman," is the landlady's daughter--that
"tender-eyed blonde, with her long ringlets, cameo pin, gold pencil-case
on a chain, locket, bracelet, album, autograph book, and accordion--who
says 'Yes?' when you tell her anything, and reads Byron, Tupper, and
Sylvanus Cobb Junior, while her mother makes the puddings!" Then there
is the "poor relation" from the country--"a somewhat more than
middle-aged female, with parchment forehead and a dry little frizette
shingling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold beads, and a black
dress too rusty for recent grief." Can you not hear the very tones of
her high-pitched voice as she remarks that "Buckwheat is skerce and
high."
"The Professor" under chloroform--"the young man whom they call John,"
appropriating the three peaches in illustration of the Autocrat's
metaphysics--the boy, Benjamin Franklin, poring over his French
exercises--the Poet, who had to leave town when the anniversaries came
round--and the divinity student whose head the Autocrat tries
occasionally, "as housewives try eggs," all these are so real to the
reader that he can but feel they were something more than imaginary
characters to the writer.
Among the poems that close each number of the _Autocrat_, are some of
the finest in our language. _The Chambered Nautilus_, _The Living
Temple_, _The Voiceless_, and _The Two Armies_, are full of inspiring
thought and deep pathos, while _The Deacon's Masterpiece_, _Parson
Turell's Legacy_, _The Old Man's Dream_, and _Contentment_, sparkle with
the Autocrat's own peculiar humor.
"When we think of the familiar confidences of the Autocrat," says
Underwood, "we might liken him to Montaigne. But when the parallel is
being considered, we come upon passages so full of tingling hits or of
rollicking fun, that we are sure we are mistaken, and that he resembles
no one so much as Sidney Smith. But presently he sounds the depths of
our consciousness, explores the concealed channels of feeling, flashes
the light of genius upon our half-acknowledged thoughts, and we see that
this is what neither the great Gascon nor the hearty and jovial
Englishman could have attempted, ... when the world forgets the sallies
that have set tables in a roar, and even the lyrics that have set a
nation's heart on fire, Holmes' picture of the ship of pearl will
preserve his name forever."