"He poured the fiery Hollands in,—the man that never feared,—
He took a long and solemn draught, and wiped his yellow beard;
And one by one the musketeers—the men that fought and prayed—
All drank as 't were their mother's milk, and not a man afraid.
"That night, affrighted from his nest, the screaming eagle flew,
He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the soldier's wild halloo;
And there the sachem learned the rule he taught to kith and kin,
'Run from the white man when you find he smells of Hollands gin!'"
In his Nux Postcoenatica he gives us his reflections on being invited to a dinner-party, where he was expected to "set the table in a roar" by reading funny verses. He submits it to the judgment and common sense of the importunate bearer of the invitation, that this dinner-going, ballad- making, mirth-provoking habit is not likely to benefit his reputation as a medical professor.
"Besides, my prospects. Don't you know that people won't employ
A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy,
And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot,
As if Wisdom's oldpotato could not flourish at its root?
"It's a very fine reflection, when you're etching out a smile
On a copperplate of faces that would stretch into a mile.
That, what with sneers from enemies and cheapening shrugs from friends,
It will cost you all the earnings that a month of labor lends."
There are, as might be expected, some commonplace pieces in the volume,— a few failures in the line of humor. The Spectre Pig, the Dorchester Giant, the Height of the Ridiculous, and one or two others might be omitted in the next edition without detriment. They would do well enough for an amateur humorist, but are scarcely worthy of one who stands at the head of the profession.
It was said of James Smith, of the Rejected Addresses, that "if he had not been a witty man, he would have been a great man." Hood's humor and drollery kept in the background the pathos and beauty of his sober productions; and Dr. Holmes, we suspect, might have ranked higher among a large class of readers than he now does had he never written his Ballad of the Oysterman, his Comet, and his September Gale. Such lyrics as La Grisette, the Puritan's Vision, and that unique compound of humor and pathos, The Last Leaf; show that he possesses the power of touching the deeper chords of the heart and of calling forth tears as well as smiles. Who does not feel the power of this simple picture of the old man in the last-mentioned poem?
"But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
'They are gone.'
"The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb."
Dr. Holmes has been likened to Thomas Hood; but there is little in common between them save the power of combining fancy and sentiment with grotesque drollery and humor. Hood, under all his whims and oddities, conceals the vehement intensity of a reformer. The iron of the world's wrongs had entered into his soul; there is an undertone of sorrow in his lyrics; his sarcasm, directed against oppression and bigotry, at times betrays the earnestness of one whose own withers have been wrung. Holmes writes simply for the amusement of himself and his readers; he deals only with the vanity, the foibles, and the minor faults of mankind, good naturedly and almost sympathizingly suggesting excuses for the folly which he tosses about on the horns of his ridicule. In this respect he differs widely from his fellow-townsman, Russell Lowell, whose keen wit and scathing sarcasm, in the famous Biglow Papers, and the notes of Parson Wilbur, strike at the great evils of society and deal with the rank offences of church and state. Hosea Biglow, in his way, is as earnest a preacher as Habakkuk Mucklewrath or Obadiah Bind-their-kings- in-chains-and-their-nobles-in-fetters-of-iron. His verse smacks of the old Puritan flavor. Holmes has a gentler mission. His careless, genial humor reminds us of James Smith in his Rejected Addresses and of Horace in London. Long may he live to make broader the face of our care- ridden generation, and to realize for himself the truth of the wise man's declaration that a "merry heart is a continual feast."