Give mood and tense unto the well-thewed arm,
And turn these ignorant Ahabs into bards!
From Diversions of the Echo Club, by Bayard Taylor.
These somewhat ponderous lines are written in imitation of Lowell’s serious poems, such as “The Cathedral.”
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.
An English edition of The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table was published some years ago by Messrs. Chatto and Windus, with an Introduction by Mr. George Augustus Sala. Holmes was not then well known, or understood, in this country, yet surely such a veteran litérateur as Sala might have found some more appropriate opening sentence for his Introduction than this:—“Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes is essentially what is termed a ‘funny fellow.’”
Written of Artemus Ward, Bret Harte, or Mark Twain, the assertion might have been true, though not new, as applied to Holmes it is neither the one, nor the other.
Pathos there is in plenty, with dry humour and playful wit, which occasionally tempt a smile, as in the following poem, though most assuredly it cannot be termed “funny” in the ordinary acceptation of the word.