Chapter Oliver Wendell Holmes of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

last-mentioned classic is something of an allegory; the famous vehicle of ancient pattern which went to pieces all at once,--

"First of November, 'Fifty-five"
. . . . .
All at once, and nothing first,--
Just as bubbles do when they burst,"--

really typifies, in the narrator's mind, the old Calvinistic theology against which he tilts in many a breezy phrase. It was David Holmes, the poet's grandfather, a captain in the French and Indian wars, who built the "One-Hoss Shay." In the pages of this same volume also, we find the poet's choicest lyrics: The Voiceless, The Living Temple, and The Chambered Nautilus.

The success of the Autocrat was so great that a new series of essays under the title The Professor at the Breakfast-Table was given to the Atlantic in 1858-1859, and published in book form in 1860. The Poet at the Breakfast-Table was completed in 1872.

A volume of miscellaneous papers, contributions to the magazines, appeared in 1863 with the title Soundings from the Atlantic. With other papers it included the interesting narrative My Hunt after "The Captain," the author's account of his experiences during the search for his son who had been seriously wounded in one of the great battles of the war.

The Novels.

In 1861, Dr. Holmes made his first experiment in fiction, with a romantic novel, Elsie Venner, which was followed by a second in similar vein, The Guardian Angel, in 1867. Nearly twenty years afterward, he wrote a third novel, A Mortal Antipathy, which was published in 1885. Of these the first two are the best. They are cleverly written and abound in the qualities so characteristic of the Autocrat; but they are the physiological studies of a physician rather than the narratives of an ordinary novelist. Both deal with the subject of prenatal influence and the relation of inherited tendencies to the conduct of individuals and their moral responsibility.

Biographies.

Dr. Holmes was the author of two notable biographies, a life of the historian Motley (1878), and a delightful memoir of Emerson (1884), whose philosophy had had a commanding influence in the intellectual development of Holmes himself.

A Pleasant Life.

The life of Oliver Wendell Holmes was as placid and unclouded as the current of his own vivacious humor. His pleasant home was for many years in what was then the aristocratic residence district of Boston, on Beacon Street, overlooking the Common and almost in the shadow of the historic State House, which the Autocrat declares to be, in the minds of all true Bostonians, "the hub of the solar system." At the monthly dinners of the Saturday Club Holmes was the liveliest of that brilliant company. Indeed, "The Club" was his especial pride. Sadly he wrote to Lowell, in 1883:--

"I go to the Saturday Club quite regularly, but the company is more of ghosts than of flesh and blood for me. I carry a stranger there now and then, introduce him to the members who happen to be there, and then say: There at that end used to sit Agassiz; here at this end Longfellow; Emerson used to be there, and Lowell often next him; on such an occasion Hawthorne was with us, at another time Motley, and Sumner, and smaller constellations, -- nebulae if you will, but luminous more or less in the provincial firmament."

His poem At the Saturday Club (1884) is a noble tribute to this galaxy of friends. There are few events in the poet's later life that call for record. In 1879, a complimentary breakfast in honor of the Autocrat's seventieth birthday was given him by the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly. Together with his daughter, he visited Europe in the summer of 1886, -- just fifty years after his student days in Paris. The major part of this later visit was in England, where he was heartily welcomed and royally entertained. Honorary