low Papers'] half their charm with the half-educated masses.” -W. W. Story. "They [the speakers in The Biglow Papers'] expressed their opinions upon topics in which they could not but be interested and in words which were habitual with them—in their simple, honest, homely, down right, every dayspeech."— R. H. Stoddard. ILLUSTRATIONS. "It has a good chance of being pretty; but, like most American towns, it is in a hobble-de-hoy age, growing yet; one cannot tell what may happen. A child of great promise of beauty is often spoiled by its second teeth. . . . There is something pokerish about a deserted dwelling even in daylight.”—A Moosehead Journal. "The only event of the journey hither was a boy hawking exhilaratingly the last great railroad smash. Other details of my dreadful ride I will spare you. Suffice it to say that I arrived here in safety, in complexion like an Ethiopian serenader half got-up, and so broiled and peppered that I was more like a devilled kidney than anything else I can think of.”—A Moosehead Journal. "Who has never felt an almost irresistible temptation, and seemingly not self-originated, to let himself go? to let his mind gallop and kick and cavort and roll like a horse turned loose? in short, as we Yankees say, to speak out in meeting?' Who never had it suggested to him by the fiend to break in at a funeral with the real character of the deceased instead of that Mrs. Grundyfied view of him which the clergyman is so painfully elaborating in his prayer?"-Essay on Witchcraft. 66 HOLMES, 1809-1894 Biographical Outline.-Oliver Wendell Holmes, born at Cambridge, Mass., August 29, 1809; father an orthodox. Congregational clergyman, mother descended from Evart Jansen Wendell, who came from Friesland in 1640; ancestors well-to-do; at fifteen Holmes enters Phillips Academy, Andover, where he remains one year; at sixteen he enters Harvard (1825) and is graduated in 1829; while at Andover he makes a spirited translation of a passage in Virgil; studies law one year; begins the study of medicine; goes to Europe in 1833, and spends nearly three years in the medical schools and hospitals of London and Paris; returns in 1836, and takes his M.D. at Harvard at the same commencement when he reads his Metrical Essay " before Phi Beta Kappa; publishes his first volume of poems in 1836, including "Old Ironsides," which dates back to 1830; in 1837-39 aids in establishing the Tremont Medical School; is Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Dartmouth College, 1839-40; returns to Boston in 1840, and practises medicine till 1847, when he accepts the Harvard professorship of Anatomy, which he holds actively till 1882 and as emeritus till his death; marries Amelia Lee Jackson in 1840; publishes "Homœopathy and its Kindred Delusions" in 1842 and successive volumes of poems in 1846, 1849, and 1850; in 1843 his "Boylston Prize Essays" gain him a great medical reputation; in 1849 he builds his summer home in Pittsfield, Mass.; in 1857, with the founding of the Atlantic Monthly, he begins his "Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table," which appeared as a volume in 1858; in 1860 he publishes "The Professor at the Breakfast-Table" and in 1872 "The Poet at the BreakfastTable; dates of publication of other works are as follows: "Currents and Counter-Currents in Medical Science," 1861; "Elsie Venner," 1861; "Songs in Many Keys," 1861; "Soundings from the Atlantic," 1863; "Humorous Poems," 1865; "The Guardian Angel," 1867; "Mechanism in Thought and Morals," 1861; "Songs of Many Seasons," 1874; "A Memoir of Motley," 1878; "The Iron Gate,” 1880; "Pages from an Old Volume of Life," 1883; "Medical Essays," 1883; "Ralph Waldo Emerson," 1884; "A Moral Antipathy," 1885; "Our Hundred Days in Europe," 1887; "Before the Curfew," 1888; and "Over the TeaCups," 1890; Holmes visits Europe in 1886; dies in Boston October 7, 1894. BIBLIOGRAPHY ON HOLMES'S STYLE. Whittier, J. G., "Literary Recreations." Boston, 1872, Osgood, 128 137. Stedman, E. C., "Poets of America." Boston, 1885, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.. 273-304. Whipple, E. P., "American Literature." Boston, 1887, Ticknor, 76–77. Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor, 1: 66-68. Taylor, B., " Essays and Notes." New York, 1880, Putnam, 301-302. Richardson, C. F., American Literature." New York, 1893, Putnam, 2: 204-219. Kennedy, W. S., "O. W. Holmes." Boston, 1883, Cassino & Co. and 407-411. Haweis, H. R., "American Humorists." Windus, 37-73. London, 1883, Chatto & Lowell, J. R., "Poetical Works." Boston, 1892, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 3: 84-85. Walsh, W. S., "Pen Pictures." New York, 1886, Putnam, 144-150. Whittier, J. G., "Poetical Works." Boston, 1888, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 4: 142-143. Griswold, R. W., "Poets of America." Philadelphia, 1846, Carey & Hart, 341-347. Mitford, Miss M. R., Recollections of a Literary Life." New York, 1851. Blackwood's Magazine, 152: 194-207. Harper's Magazine, 83: 277-385 (G. W. Curtis). Atlantic Monthly, 27: 653 (Howells); 46: 704-705 (G. P. Lathrop); 70: 401-402 (Whittier). Scribner's Magazine, 18: 117-127 (F. H. Underwood); 16: 791. Literary World, 25: 350; 17: 23; 16: 429-431. Review of Reviews, 10: 495-501 (E. E. Hale). Critic, 22: 242-257 and 259; 3: 191 (J. H. Morse); 8: 46 (H. R. Haweis); 6: 1 and 13 (A. W. Rollins); 4: 109 (O. W. Holmes) and 133; 5: 97. Dial (Ch.), 17: 215-217; 12: 209-219 (E. G. Johnson). North American Review, 64: 208-216/(Palfrey); 68: 201-203 (F. Bowen); 159: 669-677 (H. C. Lodge). North British Review, : 476–480. Macmillan's Magazine, 4: 305–309 (J. M. Ludlow). Author, 1: 167–171 (G. P. Lovejoy). Arena, 4: 129-142 (G. Stewart). Good Words, 28: 298-305 (F. H. Underwood). Every Saturday, 14: 466-470. Appleton's Journal, 12: 545-548. Eclectic Magazine, 80: 632-638 (W. H. Bidwell). Saturday Review, 57: 651-654 (E. E. Brown). Irish Quarterly Review, 5: 193–221. Academy, 29: 37-39 (Walter Lewin). Fortnightly Review, 46: 235-246 (De Lille). Athenæum, 1884 (2), 274 (E. W. Gosse); 1888 (1), 787. National Magazine, 3 : 502–508. British Quarterly Review, 52: 324-351. Belgravia, 20: 222-233 (K. Cook). Dublin University Magazine, 159: 401-405; 64: 208-210; 84: 376 383 (H. F. G.). PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. Introductory Note.-What most impresses the reader, after a careful review of the writings of Holmes, is his wonderful versatility. We know not where he most excels, whether as poet, essayist, novelist, monologuist, critic, or close scientific writer. In the words of an English critic: "To borrow a vulgar phrase, we never know where to have him, and his pages are protean in their ever-changing aspects. Pathology, divinity, physiology, the world, the flesh, and the devil, the trotting-track, the prize-ring, society and the musical glasses-all are jumbled up together, and yet with a perceptible intellectual sequence, in which imagination, with some kind of plausibility, can follow the connecting threads. . He might belong to half a dozen schools of philosophy-to the cynical, to the lachrymose, and, above all, to the optimistic, with a strong dash of the epicurean.' It is obviously impossible to illustrate this quality by any short series of detached paragraphs. An idea of Holmes's versatility must be gained from a study of his works as a whole. We therefore begin our systematic analysis with a quality that lends itself to more concise definition and illustration. 1. Buoyancy-Youthfulness--Optimism.-No quality of Holmes's style and character impresses the reader more constantly than his perennial youthfulness—his habit of looking at the things of earth and time through the eyes of an ingenuous boy. "[His longevity] is not, however, without a certain aspect of propriety. If not the youngest in years, he was the youngest of them all in heart.. He never left the cheerful little ghost of his boyhood behind him."-Literary World. "Before his day the sons of the Puritans were hardly ripe for the doctrine that there is a time to laugh, that humor is |