OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

INTRODUCTION.

IN the early years of Dr. Holmes's career his literary reputation rested on verse which seemed the playful pastime of a professional man. To students in medicine, indeed, he was known as a keen writer, and his published papers upon professional topics showed how valuable was his literary skill in presenting subjects of a scientific nature. To the general public, however, his prose was known chiefly through the medium of the popular lecture, and the impression was easily created that he was a witty and humorous writer with a turn for satire. It was not until he delivered the as yet unpublished lectures on the English Poets of the Nineteenth Century before the Lowell Institute in Boston, in 1852, that the wider range of his thought and the penetration of his poetic insight were recognized. Five or six years later a better occasion came, and in the first number of The Atlantic Monthly was begun a series of prose writings which, under various names, gave a new and important place in literature to the author. The first of the series was The Autocrat at the Breakfast-Table, the last, The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, and in this the writer distinctly says what the observant reader of the series will be pretty sure to discover for himself: "I have unburdened myself in this book, and in some other pages, of what I was born to say. Many things that I have said in my riper days have been aching in my soul since I was a mere child. I say aching, because they conflicted with many of my

inherited beliefs, or rather traditions. I did not know then that two strains of blood were striving in me for the mastery two! twenty, perhaps — twenty thousand, for aught I know - but represented to me by two-paternal and maternal. But I do know this: I have struck a good many chords, first and last, in the consciousness of other people. I confess to a tender feeling for my little brood of thoughts. When they have been welcomed and praised, it has pleased me; and if at any time they have been rudely handled and despitefully treated, it has cost me a little worry. I don't despise reputation, and I should like to be remembered as having said something worth lasting well enough to last."

This passage briefly presents three very noticeable characteristics of Dr. Holmes's prose as contained in the series of Atlantic papers and stories. They give the mature thought of the writer, held back through many years for want of an adequate occasion, and ripened in his mind during this enforced silence; they illustrate the effect upon his thought of his professional studies, which predisposed him to treat of the natural history of man, and to import into his analysis of the invisible organism of life the terms and methods employed in the science of the visible anatomy and physiology; and finally they are warm with a sympathy for men and women, and singularly felicitous in their expression of many of the indistinct and half-understood experiences of life. For their form it may be said that the impression produced upon the reader of the Autocrat series, which was finally gathered into a volume, is of a growth rather than of a premeditated artistic completeness. The first suggestion is found in the two papers under the title of The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, published in The New England Magazine for November, 1831, and January, 1832. These were written by Dr. Holmes shortly after his graduation from college and before he entered on his medical studies. They consist of brief, epigrammatic observations upon various topics, the desultory talk of a per

son engrossing conversation at a table. The form is monologue with scarcely more than a hint at interruption, and no attempt at characterizing the speaker or his listeners. Twenty-five years later, when The Atlantic Monthly was founded, the author remembering the fancy resumed it, and under the same title began a series of papers which at once had great favor and grew, possibly, beyond the writer's original intention. Twenty-five years had not dulled the wit and gayety of the exuberant young author; rather, they had ripened the early fruit and imparted a richness of flavor which greatly increased the value. The maturity was seen not only in the wider reach and deeper tone of the talk, but in the humanizing of the scheme. Out of the talk at the breakfast-table one began to distinguish characters and faces in the persons about the board, and before the Autocrat was completed, there had appeared a series of portraits, vivid and full of interest. Two characters meanwhile were hinted at by the author rather than described or very palpably introduced, the Professor and the Poet. It is not difficult to see that these are thin disguises for the author himself, who, in the versatility of his nature, appeals to the reader now as a brilliant philosopher, now as a man of science, now as a seer and poet. The Professor at the Breakfast-Table followed, and there was a still stronger dramatic power disclosed; some of the former characters remained and others of even more positive individuality were added; a romance was inwoven and something like a plot sketched, so that while the talk still went on and eddied about greater subjects than before, the book which grew out of the papers had more distinctly the form of a series of sketches from life. It was followed by two novels, Elsie Venner and The Guardian Angel. The talks at the breakfast-table had often gravitated toward the deep themes of destiny and human freedom; the novels wrought the same subjects in dramatic form, and action interpreted the thought, while still there flowed on the wonderful, appar

ently inexhaustible stream of wit, tenderness, passion, and human sympathy. Once more, fourteen years after the appearance of the first of the series, came The Poet at the Breakfast-Table. A new group of characters, with slight reminders of former ones, occupied the pages, again talk and romance blended, and playfulness, satire, sentiment, wise reflection, and sturdy indignation followed in quick

succession.

The Breakfast-Table series forms a group, independent of the intercalated novels, and, with its frequent poems, may be taken as an artistic whole. It is hardly too much to say that it makes a new contribution to the forms of literary art. The elasticity of the scheme rendered possible a cornprehensiveness of material; the exuberance of the author's fancy and the fullness of his thought gave a richness to the fabric; the poetic sense of fitness kept the whole within just bounds. Moreover, the personality of the author was vividly present in all parts. There are few examples of literature in the first person so successful as this.

In 1885 Dr. Holmes published another novel under the title A Mortal Antipathy, and in 1890 Over the Teacups, a series of papers like those in the Breakfast-Table volumes.

It is from The Poet at the Breakfast-Table that the following episode is taken.