soul of song, and its lines sparkle with reflections from classic ages. Even a teetotaller might (under protest) own himself bewitched by its beauty.

"If one bright drop is like the gem
That decks a monarch's crown,
One goblet holds a diadem

Of rubies melted down:
A fig for Cæsar's blazing brow!
But, like the Egyptian queen,
Bid each dissolving jewel How
My thirsty lips between.

"Methinks o'er every sparkling glass
Young Eros waves his wings,
And echoes o'er its dimples pass
From dead Anacreon's strings;
And, tossing round its beaded brim
Their locks of floating gold,

With bacchant dance and choral hymn
Return the nymphs of old."

At the dinner where the twelve original contributors of the Atlantic Monthly met, the part which Holmes was to take was a matter of lively anticipation. The magazine had been projected for the purpose of uniting the literary forces of the North in favour of universal freedom; but Holmes had no part in its direction. Lowell prophesied at the time that the doctor would carry off the honours. In the first number there was an article by Motley, a fine poem by Longfellow, one by Whittier, a piece of charming classic comedy by Lowell, a group of four striking poems by Emerson, some short stories, articles on art and finance, and the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." What would not modern publishers give for a similar combination to-day! Still, the enter prise might have failed but for the immediate interest awakened by the original thought and style of Holmes. The sensation was new, like that of a sixth sense. The newspapers quoted from the "Autocrat;" it was everywhere talked about, and in a short time its fame went through the nation.

The "Autocrat" was succeeded by the "Professor" and the "Poet." The talk of the "Professor" was somewhat more abstruse, though equally interesting to cultivated readers. The "Poet" attacked the dogma of the endless duration of future punishment. The "Autocrat" was easily superior in freshness as in popularity.

Two novels also appeared "Elsie Venner" and "The Guardian Angel." They have undoubted merits, showing the keen thought, the descriptive power and the play of fancy which are so characteristic of the author, and each has a subtle motive to which the characters and incidents are made subservient. But Dr. Holmes is not great as a novelist as he is great in other things. The

stories in one aspect are ambulatory psychological problems, rather than fresh studies of characters conceived without favouritism, with blended good and evil, wisdom and weakness-as God creates them. To produce new types, of universal interest, is given to few novelists. There have been scarcely more than a score of such creators since Cadmus.

It was with some surprise that I read lately a lament that Dr. Holmes had not written " a great novel"-a task which would have been as unsuitable to him as to Dr. Johnson or to Montaigne. It is not a question of a greater or less talent, but of a wholly different talent-as distinct as metaphysics and portrait-painting. The same critic complains because Holmes has not been "in earnest" like Carlyle. While the genius of that great writer is indisputable, I submit that one Carlyle in a generation is enough; another is impossible. That rugged Titan did his appointed work with fidelity. But is every author to lay about him with an iron flail? Is there no place for playful satirists of manners, for essayists who dissolve philosophy and science, who teach truth, manliness, and courtesy by epigram, and who make life beautiful with the glow of poetry? The magnolia cannot be the oak, although unhappy critics would have a writer be something which he is not. It is enough that Holmes has charmed myriads of readers who might never have felt his influence if he had been grimly in "earnest," and that he has inculcated high ideals of taste, character, and living.

By the time Holmes had reached his fiftieth year he was nearing the summit of fame. His readers were the cultivated classes of the whole English-speaking world, and he was not merely admired, his genial humour had won for him universal love; his unique personality was as dear as his writings. There is not room in the limits allowed me to dwell upon the style of the "Autocrat ;" fortunately neither analysis nor eulogy is necessary. The variety of topics, the sure, swift touches in treatment, the frequent gleam of imagery, and the lovely vignettes of verse, altogether form an attraction for which there are few parallels in literature.

From the gay and jaunty verse of the poet's youth to his strong and passionate lyrics of the war there was a surprising change, and it will be interesting to trace it in his life and in the course of historic events.

In his early manhood he took the world

as he found it, and did not trouble himself about reforms or isms. He had only goodhumoured banter for the abolitionists, just as he had for non-resistants and spirit-rappers. When progressive people were in a ferment with the new transcendental philosophy (deduced from the preaching of Channing and the essays of Emerson) and were fascinated with the monologues of Alcott and the sibylline utterances of Margaret Fuller; when young enthusiasts, in their socialistic home at Brook Farm, dreamed of the near reign of human brotherhood; when Lowell was writing "The Present Crisis," a poem glowing with genius as with apostolic zeal; when feebler brethren, blown upon by new winds of doctrine, imagined themselves spiritual and profound, and felt deep thrills in pronouncing the words Soul and Infinite with nasal solemnity, Holmes, fully master of himself, and holding instinctively to his nil admirari, trained his light batteries on the new schools, and hit their eccentricities and foibles with a comic fusillade.

"With uncouth words they tire their tender lungs, The same bald phrases on their hundred tongues; Ever' The Ages' in their page appear, 'Alway' the bedlamite is called a 'Seer.'

And O what questions asked in club-foot rhyme
Of Earth the tongueless, and the deaf-mute Time!
Here babbling Insight' shouts in Nature's ears
His last conundrum on the orbs and spheres;
There Self-inspection sucks its little thumb,
With 'Whence am I?' and 'Wherefore did I come?'
Deluded infants! will they ever know
Some doubts must darken o'er the world below,
Though all the Platos of the nursery trail
Their clouds of glory' at the go-cart's tail?"

Elsewhere in the same poem he mentions:

"Poems that shuffle with superfluous legs
A blindfold minuet over addled eggs,
Where all the syllables that end in éd,

Like old dragoons, have cuts across the head ;-
Essays so dark Champollion might despair
To guess what mummy of a thought was there,
Where our poor English, striped with foreign phrase,
Looks like a zebra in a parson's chaise."

Holmes was a shining mark, and the platform orators did not spare him. The "non-resistants" were specially violent towards opponents, and some one of them drew from our poet one of the most caustic satires printed since Pope. Witness these closing lines of "The Moral Bully: "

"Has every scarecrow, whose cachectic soul
Seems fresh from Bedlam, airing on parole,

The right to stick us with his cut-throat terms.
And bait his homilies with his brother worms?"

From this bellicose time it was nearly forty years to the appearance of Holmes's admiring • From a poem before the B.K. Society, Cambridge, 1843.

and reverent life of Emerson, and in that long and stirring period there was much for him to learn, and something to unlearn. Who does not learn much in forty years? For one thing, the character and mind of the poet-philosopher were at length clearly revealed, and the uneasy swarm of imitators had shrunk out of sight. And as to slavery, the eyes of all men had been opened. Not only Holmes, but the majority of well-meaning men, hitherto standing aloof, were taught by great events. Many who admitted the wrong of slavery had believed themselves bound to inaction by the covenants inserted in the Federal Constitution. Some had felt the weight of party obligations. Some resented the fierce denunciation of the Church for its indifference to a vital question of morals. But I believe more were deterred from siding with the abolitionists by reason of their intimate connection with other causes. They were nearly all believers in "woman's rights," and at that time those "rights were chiefly to wear short hair and loose trousers, and talk indefinitely. Everything established was attacked, from churches and courts to compulsory schools and vaccination. The most vivid of my recollections of forty years ago are the scenes at the antislavery Conventions. There were cadaverous men with long hair and full beards, very unusual ornaments then, with far-away looks in their eyes in repose, but with ferocity when excited, who thought and talked with vigour, but who never knew when to stop. There was one silent and patient brother, I remember, whose silvery hair and beard were never touched by shears, and who in all seasons wore a suit of loose flannel that had once been white. There was a woman with an appalling voice, and yet with a strange eloquence. And there was one who always insisted on speaking out of order, and who always had to be carried out of the hall, struggling and shouting as she was borne along by some suffering brother and a policeman. Not all the moral earnestness of Garrison, the matronly dignity of Lucretia Mott, the lovely voice and refined manners of Lucy Stone, nor the magnificent oratory of Wendell Phillips, could atone for these sights and sounds. Lowell had written:

"Then to side with Truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just."

But to men of delicate nerves it was not sharing Truth's crust that made the difficulty so much as the other uncongenial company

at her august table. The political antislavery men, who came later, and who won the triumph, had none of these uncomely surroundings, although at the beginning they encountered as much odium.

When the first gun was fired on Fort Sumter the cause of the slave and of the despised abolitionists became the cause of all. Then

could be felt the force of the sentiment which long before had won the pitying muse of Longfellow, which had inspired the strains of Lowell, and which had led the Quaker Whittier-minstrel and prophet at onceinto the thick of the strife. Then it could be seen that the cause of eternal justice was not to be confounded with the vagaries of half-crazed agitators who were bent on curing all human ills by moral suasion and bran

bread. The thunder of cannon cleared the atmosphere. The querulous voices of sectaries were hushed. The hearts of the loyal

North throbbed as one heart. There was but one cry, and it was "Union and Liberty."

In a high sense this was a decisive period in the life of Holmes. From the outbreak of the war he took an enthusiastic part as a patriot for the preservation of the union. His eldest son, now a Justice of the Supreme Court of Mass., went out with the volunteers as a captain, and the father's "Hunt" for him after a battle is well remembered by

readers of the Atlantic. At the time when

the best and bravest of all classes were going forward to form new regiments and to fill up the shattered lines of the older ones, his lyrics came to the souls of loyal men with thrills of exultation. No man in those gloomy days could read them without tears. I have often seen suppressed sobs and eyes glistening in tear-mist when they were sung in public assemblies. The people of these isles have had no such time of heart-ache, of alternate dread and solemn joy, since Waterloo. When the fate of a nation was in suspense, when death had claimed a member from almost every family, and when the bitter struggle was to be fought out, man to man, the phrases we might idly read in time of peace had a new and startling meaning. The words flashed in all eyes and set all hearts on fire. These songs of the war by Holmes will take their place with the grand and touching ode of Lowell, and with the stately and triumphal Laus Deo / of Whittier.

There is no American national hymn, known and accepted as such, but Holmes's "Union and Liberty" is quite frequently sung.

are probably those that appeared in the The most perfect of Holmes's smaller poems

"Autocrat." "The Chambered Nautilus" is a fortunate conception, wrought with exquisite art. Equally striking is "Sun and Shadow," ations, as I saw it while the ink was still wet a poem which brings me delightful associupon the page where it was written.

It is interesting to notice that the chief American poets have all paid heart-felt tributes to the genius of Burns. There are two of these by Holmes which are full of that they do not allow the separation of meaning, but they are so entire in structure stanzas for quotation.

There is no need of dwelling upon his of the "One-Horse Shay," as they are fully comic poems, such as the logical catastrophe appreciated, so much so that they have doubtless led to the undervaluing of his more

serious efforts.

ga

"The Iron Gate" (1880) shows that the thering shadows of age have scarcely dimmed the pieces in this volume is "My Aviary," our poet's faculties. Among the brightest of upon the river, seen through the north wina picture of the frolics of ducks and gulls dow of his library. "The Silent Melody" is a most touching dream of "the voiceless melody of age."

"Sweet are the lips of all that sing

When Nature's music breathes unsought,
But never yet could voice or string
So truly shape our tenderest thought
As when by life's decaying fire

Our fingers sweep the stringless lyre!"

"The School Boy" is a reminiscence of his own boyhood, reminding us of Goldsmith's tranquil manner. The verses "For Whittier's Seventieth Birthday" contain charming portraits of Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, and Whittier. This is a good specimen of his witty, tender, graphic, and affectionate style of after-dinner poem, a species of verse which no man (certainly of this generation) has equalled.

I had the pleasure of hearing him read his poem for the Centennial Celebration of Moore. There was a large company, and naturally most of them were Irishmen. He was in great spirits and read the musical stanzas with singular impressiveness. The

effect upon the generous and excitable convives was something to be remembered. They greeted every point with applause, and at the end everybody rose and gave a round of cheers-three times three. It is difficult to cull, but these stanzas are the ones that have dwelt in memory :—

"Ah, passion can glow mid a palace's splendour;
The cage does not alter the song of the bird;
And the curtain of silk has known whispers as tender
As ever the blossoming hawthorn has heard.

"No fear lest the step of the soft-slippered Graces
Should fright the young Loves from their warm little nest,
For the heart of a queen, under jewels and laces,
Beats time with the pulse in the peasant girl's breast!"

At the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Harvard College in November last, Dr. Holmes read a poem of considerable length, in deliberate and stately measure, and containing many brilliant passages. His reference to Jonathan Edwards was scarcely calculated to please ultra-Calvinists; but the religious world has moved since Edwards's time, and the serenity of few guests was disturbed. The two bêtes noires of Holmes are Homœopathy and Endless Punishment, and he never lets an opportunity pass of giving a thrust to either.

He has never been under the influence of the school of Wordsworth; and as regards form and method, has remained loyal to eighteenth-century models. Perhaps this is not to be regretted, as there are others to give us landscapes in verse who cannot give us men. This very conservatism in regard to models may be a guaranty of enduring fame, especially when their charm is still fresh after the changes of a century.

Holmes has not produced a great number of highly-wrought poems, but upon how many rests the fame of Gray, or Collins, or Goldsmith? It is rash to prophesy, but I cannot believe that poetry which sometimes suggests the compact and rounded elegance of Horace, and sometimes the frank and joyous movement of Béranger; which has points of resemblance to the best art of Campbell, and which breathes the spirit of a great and proud people, is likely soon to fade out of memory.

Mr. Appleton, a Boston wit, said that "good Bostonians when they die go to Paris;" but an exception must be made for good authors they will want to go to London. For a successful author, full of years and of honours, a pilgrimage to the ancient capital of his race, followed by an almost royal progress through the realm, with the homage of universities, the applause of the

press, the attentions of the great, and the incense of turtle soup, must be like anticipatory glimpses of a superlative epitaph The recent welcome given to Holmes, however, was only natural. It was instant and hearty, for the reason that his works, besides giving keen intellectual enjoyment, have put him in intimate personal relations with all readers of refined feeling. A Newton, Spinoza, or Laplace, or a grand, cold, and reserved poet, might attract the homage of the learned and the vague admiration of the multitude, but he would stir the hearts of few. It would be difficult to name another author now living whose presence would awaken such vivid and grateful recollections and call forth such a spontaneous welcome. The rare combination of qualities in Holmes makes him a distinct if not a unique figure in the world of letters. There have been men as witty-though not many-and others as acute, or as gay, pathetic, humorous, graceful, fiery, reflective, or trenchant; but who, in our time at least, has united all these attributes-has made them all effective in charming verse and brilliant prose, and based all upon an understanding that might have served a sage? What a marvellous intellect, with a faculty for every form of use, and resources for every contingency! This facile and changeful movement gives the charm of surprise to whatever he does. In his open and frank merriment there comes some wise reflection; in his poetic fancies there are hints of the highest knowledge; and in his gravest discourse there are sudden gleams of wit. One may take the dimensions and gauge the force of most minds, but in that of Holmes there is always an unknown plus that holds the observer in delighted expectation.

It will be a pleasure to read the author's account of his trip in this country which he is writing for the Atlantic Monthly.

His

Holmes lives in Beacon Street, in Boston, somewhat west of the State House. house fronts the new and fashionable "Back Bay" district, while in the rear it commands a fine view of Charles River. As you enter you find the vestibule, reception-rooms, and walls of the staircase hung with pictures and engravings. There is a prevailing simplicity, and you feel that the house is a home, filled with souvenirs of affection, and not a mere literary workshop. The library at the head of the staircase is an ample room with bookshelves; a writing-table with papers in perfect order, an open fireplace, and a deep bow window, mentioned in "My Aviary:"