200. Addison and Steele together wrote the Spectator Papers (1711-1712), which had a great influence on the English reading public. The Sir Roger de Coverley papers are the most widely read of these essays at the present time.
224. New Timon, published in 1846; a satire in which Tennyson among others was severely lampooned.
237. The comparison suggests Bunyan's journey with his bundle of sin.
252. no clipper and meter: no person who could cut short or measure the moods of the poet.
271. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice may be found in any Greek mythology.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1809-1894)
[In 1830] most of our writers were sentimental; a few were profound; and the nation at large began to be deeply agitated over social reforms and political problems. The man who in such a period showed the possibilities of humor, and whose humor was invariably tempered by culture and flavored with kindness, did a service to our literature that can hardly be overestimated."
—WILLIAM J. LONG
Born at Cambridge, Mass., he was brought up under the sternest type of New England theology. He graduated from Harvard College in 1829 after writing much college verse. It was Lowell who stimulated him to his best work. He himself says, "Remembering some crude contributions of mine to an old magazine, it occurred to me that their title might serve for some fresh papers, and so I sat down and wrote off what came into my head under the title, 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.'" He practiced medicine in Boston and taught Anatomy and Physiology in Harvard until 1882. The latter years of his life were spent happily in Boston, where he died.
The poems by Holmes are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of his works.