History of American Literature

by Reuben Post Halleck

2. Thomas's ideal Thomas.

3. John's ideal Thomas."

"A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me," says the Autocrat, "via this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the meantime he had eaten the peaches." When John enters the debates with his crushing logic of facts, he never fails to make a ten strike.

A few years after the Autocrat series had been closed, Holmes wrote The Professor at the Breakfast Table; many years later The Poet at the Breakfast Table appeared; and in the evening of life, he brought out Over the Teacups, in which he discoursed at the tea table in a similar vein, but not in quite the same fresh, buoyant, humorous way in which the Autocrat talked over his morning coffee. The decline in these books is gradual, although it is barely perceptible in the Professor. The Autocrat is, however, the brightest, crispest, and most vigorous of the series, while Over the Teacups is the calmest, as well as the soberest and most leisurely.

Holmes wrote three novels, Elsie Venner, The Guardian Angel, and The Mortal Antipathy, which have been called "medicated novels" because his medical knowledge is so apparent in them. These books also have a moral purpose, each in turn considering the question whether an individual is responsible for his acts. The first two of these novels are the strongest, and hold the attention to the end because of the interest aroused by the characters and by the descriptive scenes.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.—Humor is the most characteristic quality of Holmes's writings. He indeed is the only member of the New England group who often wrote with the sole object of entertaining readers. Lowell also was a humorist, but he employed humor either in the cause of reform, as in The Biglow Papers, or in the field of knowledge, in endeavoring to make his literary criticisms more expressive and more certain to impress the mind of his readers.

Whenever Holmes wrote to entertain, he did not aim to be deep or to exercise the thinking powers of his readers. Much of his work skims the surface of things in an amusing and delightful way. Yet he was too much of a New Englander not to write some things in both poetry and prose with a deeper purpose than mere entertainment. The Chambered Nautilus, for instance, was so written, as were all of his novels. His genial humor is thus frequently blended with unlooked-for wisdom or pathos.

Whittier has been called provincial because he takes only the point of view of New England. The province of Holmes is still narrower, being mainly confined to Boston. He expresses in a humorous way his own feelings, as well as those of his fellow townsmen, when he says in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table:—

"Boston State House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar."

Like Irving, Holmes was fond of eighteenth-century English writers, and much of his verse is modeled after the couplets of Pope. Holmes writes fluid and rippling prose, without a trace of effort. His meaning is never left to conjecture, but is stated in pure, exact English. He not only expresses his ideas perfectly, but he seems to achieve this result without premeditation. This apparent artlessness is a great charm. He has left America a new form of prose, which bears the stamp of pure literature, and which is distinguished not so much for philosophy and depth as for grace, versatility, refined humor, bright intellectual flashes, and artistic finish.