History of American Literature Part 26

show rare genuineness of feeling. No one not enthusiastic about nature would ever have heard her calling to him:--

"To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take The winds into his pulses."

He invites us in March to watch:--

"The bluebird, shifting his light load of song From post to post along the cheerless fence,"

and in June to lie under the willows and rejoice with

"The thin-winged swallow, skating on the air."

Another p.r.o.nounced characteristic which he has in common with the New England group is n.o.bility of ideals. His poem ent.i.tled _For an Autograph_, voices in one line the settled conviction of his life:--

"Not failure, but low aim, is crime."

He is America's greatest humorist in verse. _The Biglow Papers_ and _A Fable for Critics_ are ample justification for such an estimate.

As Lowell grew older, his poetry, dominated too much by his acute intellect, became more and more abstract. In _Under the Old Elm_, for example, he speaks of Washington as:--

"The equestrian shape with unimpa.s.sioned brow That paces silent on through vistas of acclaim."

It is possible to read fifty consecutive lines of his _Commemoration Ode_ without finding any but abstract or general terms, which are rarely the warp and woof out of which the best poetry is spun. This criticism explains why repeated readings of some of his poems leave so little impression on the mind. Some of the poetry of his later life is, however, concrete and sensuous, as the following lines from his poem _Aga.s.siz_ (1874) show:--

"To lie in b.u.t.tercups and clover-bloom, Tenants in common with the bees, And watch the white clouds drift through gulfs of trees, Is better than long waiting in the tomb."

In prose literary criticism, he keeps his place with Poe at the head of American writers. Lowell's sentences are usually simple in form and easily understood; they are frequently enlivened by illuminating figures of rhetoric and by humor, or rendered impressive by the striking way in which they express thought, _e.g._ "The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion." A pun, digression, or out-of-the-way allusion may occasionally provoke readers, but onlookers have frequently noticed that few wrinkle their brows while reading his critical essays, and that a pleased expression, such as photographers like, is almost certain to appear. He has the rare faculty of making his readers think hard enough for agreeable exercise, and yet he spares them undue fatigue and rarely takes them among miry bogs or through sandy deserts.

Lowell's versatility is a striking characteristic. He was a poet, reformer, college professor, editor, literary critic, diplomatist, speaker, and writer on political subjects. We feel that he sometimes narrowly escaped being a genius, and that he might have crossed the boundary line into genius-land, if he had confined his attention to one department of literature and had been willing to write at less breakneck speed, taking time and thought to prune, revise, and suppress more of his productions.

Not a few, however, think that Lowell, in spite of his defects, has left the impress of genius on some of his work. When his sonnet, _Our Love is not a Fading Earthly Flower_, was read to a cultured group, some who did not recognize the authorship of the verses thought that they were Shakespeare's.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 1809-1894

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES]

LIFE.--The year 1809 was prolific in the birth of great men, producing Holmes, Poe, Lincoln, Tennyson, and Darwin. Holmes was descended from Anne Bradstreet, New England's "Tenth Muse" (p. 39) His father was a Congregational clergyman, preaching at Cambridge when Oliver was born. The family was in comfortable circ.u.mstances, and the boy was reared in a cultured atmosphere. In middle age Holmes wrote, "I like books,--I was born and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get into their presence, that a stable boy has among horses."

He graduated from Harvard in the famous cla.s.s of 1829, for which he afterward wrote many anniversary poems. He went to Paris to study medicine, a science that held his interest through life. For thirty-five years he was professor of anatomy in the Harvard Medical School, where he was the only member of the faculty who could at the end of the day take the cla.s.s, f.a.gged and wearied, and by his wit, stories, and lively ill.u.s.trations both instruct and interest the students.

His announcement, "small fevers gratefully received," his humor in general, and his poetry especially, did not aid him in securing patients. His biographer says that Holmes learned at his cost as a doctor that the world had made up its mind "that he who writes rhymes must not write prescriptions, and he who makes jests should not escort people to their graves." He later warned his students that if they would succeed in any one calling they must not let the world find out that they were interested in anything else. From his own point of view, he wrote:--

"It's a vastly pleasing prospect, when you're s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g out a laugh, That your very next year's income is diminished by a half, And a little boy trips barefoot that your Pegasus may go, And the baby's milk is watered that your Helicon may flow."

He was driven, like Emerson and Lowell, to supplement his modest income by what he called "lecture peddling." Although Holmes did not have the platform presence of these two contemporaries, he had the power of reaching his audiences and of quickly gaining their sympathy, so that he was very popular and could always get engagements.

His scientific training made him intolerant of any philosophical or religious creed which seemed to him to be based merely upon superst.i.tion or tradition. He was thoroughly alert, open-minded, and liberal upon all such questions. On subjects of politics, war, or the abolition of slavery, he was, on the other hand, strongly conservative. He had the aristocratic dread of change. He was distinctly the courtly gentleman, the gifted talker, and the social, genial, refined companion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOLMES'S STUDY]

Holmes was a conscientious worker, but he characteristically treated his mental processes in a joking way, and wrote to a friend: "I like nine tenths of any matter I study, but I do not like to _lick the plate_. If I did, I suppose I should be more of a man of science and find my brain tired oftener than I do." Again he wrote, "my nature is to s.n.a.t.c.h at all the fruits of knowledge and take a good bite out of the sunny side--after that let in the pigs." Despite these statements, Holmes worked steadily every year at his medical lectures. He was very particular about the exactness and finish of all that he wrote, and he was neither careless nor slipshod in anything. His life, while filled with steady, hard work, was a placid one, full of love and friendships, and he pa.s.sed into his eightieth year with a young heart. He died in 1894, at the age of eighty-five, and was buried in Mt. Auburn cemetery not far from Longfellow and Lowell.

POETRY.--In 1836 he published his first volume of verse. This contained his first widely known poem, _Old Ironsides_, a successful plea for saving the old battleship, _Const.i.tution_, which had been ordered destroyed. With the exception of this poem and _The Last Leaf_, the volume is remarkable for little except the rollicking fun which we find in such favorites as _The Ballad of the Oysterman_ and _My Aunt_. This type of humor is shown in this simile from _The Ballad_:--

"Her hair drooped round her pallid cheeks, like seaweed on a clam," and in his description of his aunt:--

"Her waist is ampler than her life, For life is but a span."

He continued to write verses until his death. Among the last poems which he wrote were memorials on the death of Lowell (1891) and Whittier (1892). As we search the three volumes of his verse, we find few serious poems of a high order. The best, and the one by which he himself wished to be remembered, is The _Chambered Nautilus_. No member of the New England group voiced higher ideals than we find in the n.o.ble closing stanza of this poem:--

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, n.o.bler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown sh.e.l.l by life's unresting sea!"

Probably _The Last Leaf_, which was such a favorite with Lincoln, would rank second. This poem is remarkable for preserving the reader's equilibrium between laughter and tears. Some lines from _The Voiceless_ are not likely to be soon forgotten:--

"A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them:-- Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them!"

He wrote no more serious poem than _Homesick in Heaven_, certain stanzas of which appeal strongly to bereaved hearts. It is not easy to forget the song of the spirits who have recently come from earth, of the mother who was torn from her clinging babe, of the bride called away with the kiss of love still burning on her cheek, of the daughter taken from her blind and helpless father:--

"Children of earth, our half-weaned nature clings To earth's fond memories, and her whispered name Untunes our quivering lips, our saddened strings; For there we loved, and where we love is home."

When Holmes went to Oxford in 1886, to receive an honorary degree, it is probable that, as in the case of Irving, the Oxford boys in the gallery voiced the popular verdict. As Holmes stepped on the platform, they called, "Did he come in the One-Hoss Shay?" This humorous poem, first known as _The Deacon's Masterpiece_, has been a universal favorite. _How the Old Hoss Won the Bet_ tells with rollicking humor what the parson's nag did at a race.

_The Boys_, with its mingled humor and pathos, written for the thirtieth reunion of his cla.s.s, is one of the best of the many poems which he was so frequently asked to compose for special celebrations. No other poet of his time could equal him in furnishing to order clever, apt, humorous verses for ever recurring occasions.

PROSE.--He was nearly fifty when he published his first famous prose work.

He had named the _Atlantic Monthly_, and Lowell had agreed to edit it only on condition that Holmes would promise to be a contributor. In the first number appeared _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table._ Holmes had hit upon a style that exactly suited his temperament, and had invented a new prose form. His great conversational gift was now crystallized in these breakfast table talks, which the Autocrat all but monopolizes. However, the other characters at the table of this remarkable boarding house in Boston join in often enough to keep up the interest in their opinions, feelings, and relations to each other. The reader always wants to know the impression that the Autocrat's fine talk makes upon "the young man whom they call 'John.'" John sometimes puts his feelings into action, as when the Autocrat gives a typical ill.u.s.tration of his mixture of reasoning and humor, in explaining that there are always six persons present when two people are talking:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE ]

"Three Johns.

1. The real John; known only to his Maker.

2. John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him.

3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but often very unlike either.

"Three Thomases.

1. The real Thomas.

2. Thomas's ideal Thomas.

3. John's ideal Thomas."

"A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me," says the Autocrat, "_via_ this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the meantime he had eaten the peaches." When John enters the debates with his crushing logic of facts, he never fails to make a ten strike.

A few years after the _Autocrat_ series had been closed, Holmes wrote _The Professor at the Breakfast Table_; many years later _The Poet at the Breakfast Table_ appeared; and in the evening of life, he brought out _Over the Teacups_, in which he discoursed at the tea table in a similar vein, but not in quite the same fresh, buoyant, humorous way in which the Autocrat talked over his morning coffee. The decline in these books is gradual, although it is barely perceptible in the _Professor_. The _Autocrat_ is, however, the brightest, crispest, and most vigorous of the series, while _Over the Teacups_ is the calmest, as well as the soberest and most leisurely.