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And, fair in sunset light, discern
Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

(1809-1894)

Holmes's reading made a full man; his sense of responsibility made a man ever ready for the play of ideas which he regarded as inseparable from living; his scientific training made him an exact and formidable opponent; his wit was at once an instrument and a recreation; his sense of humor and love of fun gave a kindly and human dimension to his criticism of life.

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These characteristics of his personality and his writing were a natural reflection of the New England "renaissance," of the highly cultured society into which he was born, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1809. He was graduated from Harvard with the class of 1829, which he later celebrated annually for many years, in the best poems ever lavished upon such a subject. In 1830, while studying law at Harvard, he initiated the effective movement to prevent the scrapping of the gallant ship Constitution, by composing his famous poem "Old Ironsides," written impromptu with the competence of the born writer. In the next two years, magazine readers saw the first two of his Autocrat papers, thereafter not to be resumed for a quarter of a century although he frequently contributed to the periodicals during his busy years of profes

sional activity.

1890

That profession was medicine, which he began to study in 1830 in Boston. In 1833 he went to Paris, where the new emphasis on experimental techniques was revolutionizing medical science. Here Holmes laid the foundations for his later pioneering in microscopy, but his devotion to science was not so great as to prevent him from spending holidays on long rambles about Europe. He returned to Harvard in 1836 to take his degree in medicine, and that year he also published Poems, his first vol

ume.

Although he acknowledged that he had "a right to be grateful to his ancestors," what he inherited was a tradition, not a fortune. He soon found that he was not happy in the practice of medicine, and turned to the teaching of medical science. After serving as professor of anatomy at Dartmouth (18381840), he returned to general practice in Boston upon his marriage in 1840; but in 1847 he found his true vocation in the appointment as Parkman Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in Harvard Medical School. Among his scientific publications, the most notable had been an analysis of the shortcomings of homeopathy, and, in 1843, a

study of "The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever," a contribution to the reduction of the fearful mortality rate then connected with childbirth. However, his professional reputation was won not by research, of which he did his share, but by his high accomplishments as a clinician and a medical educator. He was dean of Harvard Medical School from 1847 to 1853, and until his retirement, as emeritus professor, in 1882, he continued to contribute to the broad development of medical education.

Literature, however, remained his avocation. His periodical contributions were included, along with new poems, in the Poems of 1846 and 1849, the former published in London, where he began to be recognized for his light verse. In 1852 he first collected his Poetical Works. In 1854 he published the Songs of the Class of 1829, to be reissued with additions for many years.

In 1857, he, and other members of the Saturday Club, founded the Atlantic Monthly, which he named. His famous Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table appeared in it serially, beginning with the first number, and established the familiar tone which that justly celebrated magazine preserved for many years. The Autocrat was published as a volume in 1858. Thereafter this wise and whimsical table talk, which ranks with the best "conversations" of literature, continued to appear in the Atlantic, and was collected in The Professor at the Breakfast-Table (1860), The Poet at the Breakfast-Table (1872), and Over the Teacups (1891).

By contrast, the novels of Holmes are unimpressive, especially as narratives. Yet many readers have found compensation in the witty commentary, the sociological criticism, and the psychological explication of Elsie Venner (1861), The Guardian Angel (1867), and A Mortal Antipathy (1885). For all their shortcomings in fictional technique, these were pioneering experiments in the analysis of elements then becoming familiar to the clinicians of mental science, such as prenatal influence, hereditary traits, and mental trauma or fixations, in their relations to the problems of moral responsibility. Here Holmes arrayed the resources of his science against the Calvinistic orthodoxy that he attacked on various levels-including the ridiculous, in "The Deacon's Masterpiece."

Meanwhile many of his poems were published, chiefly in the Atlantic, and later in the volumes of 1862, 1875, 1880, 1883 (a collected Poetical Works), and 1888. In spite of the real merit of some of his reflective lyrics, his recognition as a poet, here and abroad, was based on the unquestioned success of his comic verse, his gracious occasional poems, his urbane and witty light verse and vers de société. By its nature, humorous and light verse must seem casual and easy, and in view of its relative impermanence as compared with serious poetry, the survival of Holmes's work with the best of this genre is evidence of his genius.

No short sketch can do justice to the many-sided activities of this small dynamo. He was sci

expression made acceptable to his time. While laughing at feminism, he supported the admission of women to medical schools. He advocated such un

popular advances in medical practice as anesthesia and antisepsis. He sepsis. He energetically and cheerfully outlived the entire illustrious generation of his contemporary authors, and died in 1894, just past eighty-five.

entist and teacher, poet, essayist, and novelist. He could have had a career as a serious lecturer; he became a favorite afterdinner speaker. He wrote three biographical volumes-Motley (1879); Emerson, for the American Men of Letters series (1885); and Henry Jacob Biglow (1891). He gave numerous professional lectures, assisted in founding the American Medical Association, and wrote his quota of medical articles and books. Retired from his professorship at seventy-three, he at once undertook the three-year task of revising and annotating his works. He turned the observations of a foreign journey into Our Hundred Days in Europe (1887). If he was conservative with respect to the humanitarian cultural tradition, he was also a radical and courageous opponent of all meaningless survivals or current shams. He broke with both the Calvinistic and Unitarian traditions of New England. Within his Brahmin "caste," as he called it, he attacked the snobbish respect for wealth, privilege, and idleness. In his novels he employed a new frankness which only his adroit

The standard text is the Riverside Edition, The Writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 13 vols., 1891-1892, reproduced in the Standard Library Edition, 1892, to which were added in 1896 the two volumes of Morse's Life and Letters (listed below). The poems below are taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Cambridge Edition, 1 vol., edited by H. E. Scudder, 1895, still available, and the best text. The notes by Holmes reproduced in this volume are from his revised Poetical Works of 1883. The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, often Franklin T. Baker, 1928. Oliver Wenreprinted, was critically edited by dell Holmes: Representative Selections, edited by S. I. Hayakawa and H. M. Jones, American Writers Series, 1939, is excellent for its selections, introduc

tion, and bibliography.

For biography and criticism, see J. T. Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 2 vols., 1896; M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Holmes of the BreakfastTable, 1939; Eleanor M. Tilton, Amiable Autocrat, 1947; and the introduction to the volume of Representative Selections edited by Hayakawa and Jones (listed above).

Old Ironsides1

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,

1. In 1830, just graduated from Har-
vard and re-enrolled as a law student,
Holmes saw in the Boston Daily Ad-
vertiser the announcement that the
frigate Constitution was to be de-
molished. "Old Ironsides," then lying
in Boston's Charlestown Navy Yard, a
veteran of Decatur's fleet in the Bar-
bary Wars, had decisively vanquished
the renowned British Guerrière (August
19, 1812) in the last British war, and

was an object of national reverence. Holmes's stirring poem appeared in the Advertiser two days later (September 16, 1830), was widely reprinted, and circulated in broadside form in Washington. The poem is credited with having saved the ship, which was reconditioned; it certainly established young Holmes as a writer, and became part of the literature of the schoolroom for a century. In Poems, 1836, the author's

And many an eye has danced to see

That banner in the sky;

Beneath it rung the battle shout,

And burst the cannon's roar;—
The meteor of the ocean air

Shall sweep the clouds no more.

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread,

Or know the conquered knee;-
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!

Oh, better that her shattered hulk

Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,

Set every threadbare sail,

And give her to the god of storms,

5

10

15

20

The lightning and the gale!

1830, 1836

The Height of the Ridiculous2

I wrote some lines once on a time
In wondrous merry mood,

And thought, as usual, men would say
They were exceeding good.

They were so queer, so very queer,
I laughed as I would die;

Albeit, in the general way,

A sober man am I.

I called my servant, and he came;
How kind it was of him
To mind a slender man like me,
He of the mighty limb!

first collection, the poem appeared as
part of "Poetry: A Metrical Essay,"
which he had just read before the Har-
vard Phi Beta Kappa; after several re-
printings it appeared independently,

5

10

with its present title, in Poems, 1862. 2. Published July, 1830, in the Collegian, a Harvard undergraduate humorous magazine, and collected in Poems. 1836.

"These to the printer," I exclaimed,
And, in my humorous way,

I added (as a trifling jest),

"There'll be the devil to pay."

He took the paper, and I watched,
And saw him peep within;
At the first line he read, his face

Was all upon the grin.

He read the next; the grin grew broad,
And shot from ear to ear;

He read the third; a chuckling noise
I now began to hear.

The fourth; he broke into a roar;

The fifth; his waistband split;

The sixth; he burst five buttons off,
And tumbled in a fit.

Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye,
I watched that wretched man,

And since, I never dare to write
As funny as I can.

15

20

25

30

1830, 1836

My Aunt3

My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!
Long years have o'er her flown;
Yet still she strains the aching clasp
That binds her virgin_zone;1

I know it hurts her, though she looks
As cheerful as she can;

Her waist is ampler than her life,

For life is but a span.

My aunt! my poor deluded aunt!

Her hair is almost gray;

Why will she train that winter curl

In such a spring-like way?

How can she lay her glasses down,
And say she reads as well,

When through a double convex lens
She just makes out to spell?

3. Published in the New England
Magazine for October, 1831; reprinted
in the Harbinger volume of 1833; col-

lected in Poems, 1836.

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4. A broad ornamental girdle or belt..

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