TOPICS AND PROBLEMS
Read any one of Holmes’s “Breakfast-Table” Series or any one of his novels for evidences of his prevailing belief in the virtues of an intellectual aristocracy.
Do the same thing with any of these seven books for the recurrence of illustrations, allusions, or whole passages which only a physician would have been likely to write.
Note in any of these books or in any selected group of his poems evidences of his respect for the broad contributions of science and scientific thought.
Read poems and passages of broadest jocosity and see if you find any wisdom intermixed with their ingenuity and their good nature.
Compare the “society verse” of Holmes with that of Austin Dobson or Brander Matthews.
Read at least a half-dozen poems of Holmes written in satire on contemporary men or movements and generalize on them as you can.
Read “Poetry,” “Urania,” and “To my Readers” for Holmes’s theory of the content and the purpose of poetry. Compare with the theory of some other American or English poet.
Read “Elsie Venner,” “The Guardian Angel,” or “The Mortal Antipathy” and criticize it for its virtues and defects as a novel.
Read “The Guardian Angel” for the autobiographical material discoverable in the character of Byles Gridley.