Seemed a complex Chinese toy O for festal dainties spread, Cheerily, then, my little man, Shall the cool wind kiss the heat: 3 Never on forbidden ground; 1 spotted like the coat of a piper Expand this elliptical expression. 2 grimy labor Happy if they sink not in Quick and treacherous sands of sin. WINTER SHUT in from all the world without, 1 Etymology? See WEBSTER. 22 HOLMES 1809-1894 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, one of the wittiest and wisest of American writers, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1809, and graduated at Harvard University in 1829. He began the study of law; but feeling a stronger bent toward the profession of medicine, applied himself zealously to preparation for its practice. In 1836, having spert several years in study abroad, he received his medical degree; two years later was appointed to a professorship in the Dartmouth Medical School; and in 1847 succeeded Dr. Warren as Professor of Anatomy in Harvard University. His first considerable literary effort was a poem delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard in 1836. It received warm praise from competent critics, and its success undoubtedly confirmed his inclination for literary labors. The first edition of his collected poems was published in the same year, and many editions have followed it in this country and in England. He confined his efforts in earlier years almost exclusively to long poems like Urania " and " Astræa,"-metrical essays, melodious, polished, and glittering with wit; but later he was content to throw off short lyrics and " occasional pieces." He died in Boston, in 1894. The most conspicuous characteristic of Holmes's verse is humor, of indescribable and rarely equaled delicacy and brilliancy. Several of his humorous poems, like the "One-Hoss Shay," have by common consent been elevated to the rank of classics in our American literature. Not less felicitous was he in a few pieces in which a fine pathos relieves the glow of his wit. He was one of the founders of the Atlantic Monthly, and in its first years was a regular contributor to its pages. For it he wrote "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table," and later, "The Professor" and "The Poet at the Breakfast-Table," a series of papers which are unique in our literature, combining the rarest qualities of the light essay, freshness of thought, deftness of touch, keen but good-humored satire, and a pervading atmosphere of wit that keeps the reader in a state of continual exhilaration and expectancy. In his "Fable for Critics" Lowell had these lines upon Holmes: There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit, — A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satiric In so kindly a measure that nobody knows What to do but just join in the laugh, friends and foes." ON AMATEUR WRITERS If I were a literary Pope sending out an Encyclical,1 I would tell inexperienced persons that nothing is so frequent as to mistake an ordinary human gift for a special and extraordinary endowment. The mechanism of breathing and that of swallowing are very wonderful, and if one had seen and studied them in his own person only, he might well think himself a prodigy. Everybody knows these and other bodily faculties are common gifts; but nobody except editors and school-teachers, and here and there a literary man, knows how common is the capacity of rhyming and prattling in readable prose, especially among young women of a certain degree of education. In my character of Pontiff, I should tell these young persons that most of them labored under a delusion. It is very hard to believe it; one feels so full of intelligence and so decidedly superior to one's dull relations and schoolmates; one writes so easily, and the lines sound so prettily to one's self; there are such felicities of expression, just like those we hear quoted from the great poets; and besides, one has been told by so many friends that all one had to do was to print and be famous! Delusion, my poor dear, delusion at least nineteen times out of twenty, yes, ninety-nine times in a hundred. But as private father-confessor, I always allow as much as I can for the one chance in the hundred. I try not to take away all hope, unless the case is clearly desperate, and then to direct the activities into some other channel. Using kind language, I can talk pretty freely. I have counseled more than one aspirant after literary fame to go back to his tailor's board or his lapstone. I have advised the dilettanti,1 whose foolish friends praised their verses or their stories, to give up all their deceptive dreams of making a name by their genius, and go to work in the study of a profession which asked only for the diligent use of average, ordinary talents. It is a very grave responsibility which these unknown correspondents throw upon their chosen counselors. One whom you have never seen, who lives in a community of which you know nothing, sends you specimens more or less painfully voluminous of his writings, which he asks you to read over, think over, and pray over, and send back an answer informing him whether fame and fortune are awaiting him as the possessor of the wonderful gifts his writings manifest, and whether you advise him to leave all, the shop he sweeps out every morning, the ledger he posts, the mortar in which he pounds, the bench at which he urges the reluctant plane, and follow his genius whithersoever it may lead him. The next correspondent wants you to mark out a whole course of 1 Italian; literally, those who delight in the fine arts, — hence, amateurs |