Oliver Wendell Holmes | Page 9

have said, but one of the most
important, the most profoundly pathetic in the language. Indeed, I do
not know any other that in the same direction goes so far with
suggestion so penetrating. The other poems were mainly of a cast
which did not win; the metaphysics in them were too much for the
human interest, and again there rose a foolish clamor of the creeds
against him on account of them. The great talent, the beautiful and
graceful fancy, the eager imagination of the Autocrat could not avail in
this third attempt, and I suppose the Poet at the Breakfast Table must be
confessed as near a failure as Doctor Holmes could come. It certainly
was so in the magazine which the brilliant success of the first had

availed to establish in the high place the periodical must always hold in
the history of American literature. Lowell was never tired of saying,
when he recurred to the first days of his editorship, that the magazine
could never have gone at all without the Autocrat papers. He was proud
of having insisted upon Holmes's doing something for the new venture,
and he was fond of recalling the author's misgivings concerning his
contributions, which later repeated themselves with too much reason,
though not with the reason that was in his own mind.

V.
He lived twenty-five years after that self-question at sixty, and after
eighty he continued to prove that threescore was not the limit of a
man's intellectual activity or literary charm. During all that time the
work he did in mere quantity was the work that a man in the prime of
life might well have been vain of doing, and it was of a quality not less
surprising. If I asked him with any sort of fair notice I could rely upon
him always for something for the January number, and throughout the
year I could count upon him for those occasional pieces in which he so
easily excelled all former writers of occasional verse, and which he
liked to keep from the newspapers for the magazine. He had a pride in
his promptness with copy, and you could always trust his promise. The
printer's toe never galled the author's kibe in his case; he wished to
have an early proof, which he corrected fastidiously, but not overmuch,
and he did not keep it long. He had really done all his work in the
manuscript, which came print-perfect and beautifully clear from his pen,
in that flowing, graceful hand which to the last kept a suggestion of the
pleasure he must have had in it. Like all wise contributors, he was not
only patient, but very glad of all the queries and challenges that proof-
reader and editor could accumulate on the margin of his proofs, and
when they were both altogether wrong he was still grateful. In one of
his poems there was some Latin-Quarter French, which our collective
purism questioned, and I remember how tender of us he was in
maintaining that in his Parisian time, at least, some ladies beyond the
Seine said "Eh, b'en," instead of "Eh, bien." He knew that we must be
always on the lookout for such little matters, and he would not wound
our ignorance. I do not think any one enjoyed praise more than he. Of
course he would not provoke it, but if it came of itself, he would not

deny himself the pleasure, as long as a relish of it remained. He used
humorously to recognize his delight in it, and to say of the lecture
audiences which in earlier times hesitated applause, "Why don't they
give me three times three? I can stand it!" He himself gave in the
generous fulness he desired. He did not praise foolishly or dishonestly,
though he would spare an open dislike; but when a thing pleased him
he knew how to say so cordially and skilfully, so that it might help as
well as delight. I suppose no great author has tried more sincerely and
faithfully to befriend the beginner than he; and from time to time he
would commend something to me that he thought worth looking at, but
never insistently. In certain cases, where he had simply to ease a burden,
from his own to the editorial shoulders, he would ask that the aspirant
might be delicately treated. There might be personal reasons for this,
but usually his kindness of heart moved him. His tastes had their
geographical limit, but his sympathies were boundless, and the
hopeless creature for whom he interceded was oftener remote from
Boston and New England than otherwise.
It seems to me that he had a nature singularly affectionate, and that it
was this which was at fault if he gave somewhat too much