OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

HOLMES was the latest survivor of the remarkable group of writers who may be said to have created American literature. He was not the greatest of the group; but there is scarcely any other whose works are more widely read. Under the present stress of life in America, there are very many persons who would rather be amused than instructed. When an author succeeds in both amusing and instructing, he has a double claim upon the grateful affection of the public. This twofold end Holmes achieved more fully than any of his contemporaries.

He stood aloof, in a remarkable degree, from the great movements in which the other New England writers of his day were more or less engaged. He had but little sympathy with transcendentalism. Instead of depending upon an "inner light," he placed his reliance, with true Baconian spirit, in observation, evidence, investigation. When, as rarely happened, he attempted to be profound in his speculations, he was not notably successful. Conservative in temperament,

he did not aspire to the rôle of a social reformer. His indifference to the abolition movement brought upon him the censure of some of its leaders. Unswayed by external influences, he steadfastly adhered to the path he had marked out for himself.

He was one of the most brilliant and versatile of men. Though far more earnest than is commonly supposed, he was not dominated, as was Emerson, by a profound philosophy. His poetry has not the power that springs from a great moral purpose. He did not concentrate all his energies upon a single department of literature or science. He was a physician,

lecturer, poet, essayist, novelist; and such were his brilliant gifts that he attained eminence in them all.

Right or wrong, most persons distrust the judgment and earnestness of a man of wit. Accustomed to laugh at his play of fancy, they feel more or less injured when he talks in a serious strain. They seek his society for entertainment rather than for counsel. Holmes well understood this popular prejudice; but he was far too faithful to his genius to affect a solemnity he did not feel. In his delightful poem "Nux Postcœnatica," he excuses himself from a public dinner :

"Besides- my prospects - don't you know that people won't employ
A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy?
And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot,
As if wisdom's old potato could not flourish at its root?"

No small part of

Holmes was a firm believer in heredity. his writings is devoted to a discussion or illustration of inherited tendencies. Yet he did not take a special interest in his own ancestry, though they were of the best New England stock. He had, to use his own words, "a right to be grateful for a probable inheritance of good instincts, a good name, and a bringing up in a library where he bumped about among books from the time when he was hardly taller than one of his father's or grandfather's folios." He was born in Cambridge, Aug. 29, 1809; another annus mirabilis, it has been called, as the birthyear also of Lincoln, Darwin, Tennyson, and Gladstone. His father, the Rev. Abiel Holmes, was a Congregational minister of scholarly tastes and attainments. His "Annals of America" is a careful and useful history. Holmes's mother is described as a bright, vivacious woman, of small figure, social tastes, and sprightly manners-characteristics that reappeared in the son.

In his "Autobiographical Notes," only too brief and fragmentary, Holmes has given us glimpses of his childhood. He was a precocious child, thoughtful beyond his years. He made a good record at school, and was fond of reading. Among his

favorite books was Pope's "Homer," which never lost its charm for him. His reading was fragmentary. "I have always read in books," he says, "rather than through them, and always with more profit from the books I read in than the books I read through; for when I set out to read through a book I always felt that I had a task before me; but when I read in a book it was the page or the paragraph that I wanted, and which left its impression, and became a part of my intellectual furniture."

After a preparatory course at Andover, Holmes entered Harvard College in 1825, graduating four years later in what became "the famous class of '29." There are scant records of his college days. Whatever may have been his devotion to study, it is certain that he was not indifferent to convivial pleasures. His talent for rhyming led to his appointment as class poet. The class feeling was stronger in those days than it is now; and, after a time, the "class of '29" held annual dinners in Boston. No one entered into these reunions with greater zest than Holmes. Beginning with the year 1851, he furnished for twenty-six consecutive years one or more poems for each reunion. The best known of these class poems is "Bill and Joe,” which contains, in the poet's happiest manner, mingled humor and pathos:

"Come, dear old comrade, you and I

Will steal an hour from days gone by,
The shining days when life was new,
And all was bright with morning dew,
The lusty days of long ago,

When you were Bill and I was Joe."

After graduation, Holmes began the study of law, and attended lectures for a year. But he found that he was on the wrong track, and gave it up for medicine. He attended two courses of lectures in Boston, and then went abroad to complete his course. He took time to do some sight-seeing, and visited England, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. But he spent most of his two years abroad in Paris, where he gave himself diligently to professional study. He had exalted