Our Autocrat.
John G. Whittier.
His laurels fresh from song and lay,
Romance and art, so young withal
At heart, we scarcely dare to say
We keep his seventieth festival.
His still the keen analysis
Of men and moods, electric wit,
Free play of mirth, and tenderness
To heal the slightest wound from it.
And his the pathos touching all
Life’s sins and sorrows and regrets,
Its hopes and fears, its final call
And rest beneath the violets.
His sparkling surface scarce betrays
The thoughtful tide beneath it rolled;
The wisdom of the latter days
And tender memories of the old.
Though now unnumbered guests surround
The table that he rules at will,
Its autocrat, however crowned,
Is but our friend and comrade still.
Long may he live to sing for us
The songs that stay the flight of time,
And like his Chambered Nautilus,
To holier heights of beauty climb.
Dec. 3, 1879.
I think that none of us can understand the meaning and scope of Dr. Holmes’s writings unless we have observed that the main work of his life has been to study and teach an exact science, the noble science of anatomy. And let us honor him to-day, not forgetting, as they can never be forgotten, his poems, his essays, as a noble representative of the profession of the scientific student and teacher.—Charles W. Eliot.
What one does easily is apt to be his forte, though years may pass before he finds this out. Holmes’s early pieces, mostly college-verse, were better of their kind than those of a better kind written in youth by some of his contemporaries. The humbler the type, the sooner the development. The young poet had the aid of a suitable habitat; life at Harvard was the precise thing to bring out his talent. There was nothing of the hermit-thrush in him; his temper was not of the withdrawing and reflective kind, nor moodily introspective,—it throve on fellowship, and he looked to his mates for an audience as readily as they to him for a toast-master.—Frances H. Underwood.
One finds nowhere in Holmes’s volumes crude and unformed thoughts. He writes as clearly as he thinks. His sentences come from his pen clean-cut. The language of his prose is pure classical English. His style is simple, direct, forcible; affluent, in the sense that it apparently never fails to come spontaneously at need, and in the fittest form; but not exuberant to the obscuring of the thought. Whether he be discussing a medical thesis or reading a lyric to classmates and literary friends at an anniversary dinner, or sketching character in the romance, or playing the autocrat at the breakfast-table, it is sure to be found acting effectively on those who hear or read them.—Rev. Ray Palmer.
It is as a writer of humorous poetry that Holmes excels. His non-humorous poems are full of beautiful passages, as we shall see, but they have not the same unique flavor of originality. In one of the great London papers it was editorially stated, not long since, that no contemporary American writer had so amused and instructed the insular mind as Holmes had done. The one most charming feature of his printed and spoken conversation is that he establishes a relation of sympathy between himself and his listeners, by expressing for them those common, every-day thoughts that we all think but rarely say.—Wm. Sloane Kennedy.
The grace and gayety, the pathos and melody, the wit, the earnestness and shrewd sense of his writings, have given Holmes a place, and a sunny place, in the popular heart. On his happy birthday it was not Boston that sat at table, but the whole country. It was not a town meeting, but a national congress. The Autocrat is not a mayor, but an emperor, and the toast of the day was the toast of appreciative hearts and generous souls far beyond the sound of the Atlantic. “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table; O king, live forever!”—Geo. Wm. Curtis.