The Arena. Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891. Various
is more plot, but the range is not so lofty. It is less philosophical in tone than “Elsie Venner,” and the events move quicker. The scene of “The Guardian Angel” is also laid in an ordinary New England village, and the object of the Doctor-Novelist was to write a tale in which the peculiarities and laws of hysteria should find expression and development. In carrying out his plan, Dr. Holmes has achieved a genuine success. He has taught a lesson, and at the same time has told a deeply interesting story, lightened up here and there with characteristic humor and wit. The characters of Myrtle Hazard and Byles Gridley are drawn with nice discrimination, while the sketch of the village poet, Mr. Gifted Hopkins, is so life-like and realistic, that he has only to be named to be instantly recognized. He is a type of the poet who haunts the newspaper office, and belongs to every town and hamlet. His lady-love is Miss Susan Posey, a delicious creation in Dr. Holmes’ best manner. These two prove excellent foils for the stronger personages of the story, and afford much amusement. “A Mortal Antipathy” is less of a romance than the others. The reader will be interested in the description of a boat race which is exquisitely done.
In biographical writing, we have two books from Dr. Holmes, one a short life of Emerson, and the other a memoir of Motley. Though capable of writing a great biography like Trevelyan’s Macaulay or Lockhart’s Scott, the doctor has not yet done so. Of the two which he has written, the Motley is the better one. In neither, however, has the author arrived at his own standard of what a biography should be.
Mechanism in thought and morals,—a Phi-Beta-Kappa address, delivered at Harvard in 1870,—is one of Dr. Holmes’ most luminous contributions to popular science. It is ample in the way of suggestion and the presentation of facts, and though scientific in treatment, the captivating style of the essayist relieves the paper of all heaviness. A brief extract from this fine, thoughtful work may be given here:—
“We wish to remember something in the course of conversation. No effort of the will can reach it; but we say, ‘wait a minute, and it will come to me,’ and go on talking. Presently, perhaps some minutes later, the idea we are in search of comes all at once into the mind, delivered like a prepaid bundle, laid at the door of consciousness like a foundling in a basket. How it came there we know not. The mind must have been at work groping and feeling for it in the dark; it cannot have come of itself. Yet all the while, our consciousness was busy with other thoughts.”
The literary reputation of Dr. Holmes will rest on the three great books which have made his name famous on two continents. Thackeray had passed his fortieth year before he produced his magnificent novel. Holmes, too, was more than forty when he began that unique and original book, “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” one of the most thoughtful, graceful, and able investigations into philosophy and culture ever written. We have the author in every mood, playful and pathetic, witty and wise. Who can ever forget the young fellow called John, our Benjamin Franklin, the Divinity student, the school-mistress, the landlady’s daughter, and the poor relation? What characterization is there here! The delightful talk of the autocrat, his humor, always infectious, his logic, his strong common sense, illumine every page. When he began to write, Dr. Holmes had no settled plan in his head. In November, 1831, he sent an article to the New England Magazine, published by Buckingham in Boston, followed by another paper in February, 1832. The idea next occurred to the author in 1857,—a quarter of a century afterwards, when the editors of the Atlantic Monthly, then starting on its career, begged him to write something for its pages. He thought of “The Autocrat,” and resolved, as he says, “to shake the same bough again, and see if the ripe fruit were better or worse than the early windfalls.” At a bound “The Autocrat” leaped into popular favor. The reading public could hardly wait for the numbers. All sorts of topics are touched upon from nature to mankind. There is the talk about the trees, which one may read a dozen times and feel the better for it. And then comes that charming account of the walk with the school-mistress, when the lovers looked at the elms, and the roses came and went on the maiden’s cheeks. And here is a paragraph or two which makes men think:
“Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The angel of life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection. Tic-tac! tic-tac! go the wheels of thought; our will cannot stop them; they cannot stop themselves; sleep cannot still them; madness only makes them go faster; death alone can break into the case, and seizing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call the heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath our wrinkled foreheads.
“If we could only get at them, as we lie on our pillows and count the dead beats of thought after thought, and image after image, jarring through the overtired organ! Will nobody block those wheels, uncouple that pinion, cut the string that holds those weights, blow up the infernal machine with gun-powder? What a passion comes over us sometimes for silence and rest!—that this dreadful mechanism, unwinding the endless tapestry of time, embroidered with spectral figures of life and death, could have but one brief holiday! Who can wonder that men swing themselves off from beams in hempen lassos?—that they jump off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters beneath?—that they take counsel of the grim friend who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable and the restless machine is shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a marble floor? Under that building which we pass every day there are strong dungeons, where neither hook, nor bar, nor bed-cord, nor drinking vessel from which a sharp fragment may be shattered, shall by any chance be seen. There is nothing for it, when the brain is on fire with the whirling of its wheels, but to spring against the stone wall and silence them with one crash. Ah, they remembered that,—the kind city fathers,—and the walls are nicely padded, so that one can take such exercise as he likes without damaging himself on the very plain and serviceable upholstery. If anybody would only contrive some kind of a lever that one could thrust in among the works of this horrid automaton and check them, or alter their rate of going, what would the world give for the discovery?”
“The Autocrat” was followed by “The Professor at the Breakfast Table,”—a book in every way equal to the first one, though, to be sure, there are critics who pretend to see diminished power in the author’s pen. It is, however, full of the same gentle humor and keen analyses of the follies and foibles of human kind. It is a trifle graver, though some of the characters belonging to “The Autocrat” come to the front again. It is in this book that we find that lovely story of Iris,—a masterpiece in itself and one of the sweetest things that has come to us for a hundred years, rivalling to a degree the delicious manner and style of Goldsmith and Lamb. In 1873 the last of the series appeared, and “The Poet” came upon the scene to gladden the breakfasters. Every chapter sparkles with originality. “I have,” says Dr. Holmes, “unburdened myself in this book, and in some other pages, of what I was born to say. Many things that I have said in my riper days have been aching in my soul since I was a mere child. I say aching, because they conflicted with many of my inherited beliefs, or rather traditions. I did not know then that two strains of blood were striving in me for the mastery—two! twenty, perhaps, twenty thousand, for aught I know—but represented to me by two—paternal and maternal. But I do know this: I have struck a good many chords, first and last, in the consciousness of other people. I confess to a tender feeling for my little brood of thoughts. When they have been welcomed and praised, it has pleased me, and if at any time they have been rudely handled and despitefully treated, it has cost me a little worry. I don’t despise reputation, and I should like to be remembered as having said something worth lasting well enough to last.”
There is much philosophy in “The Poet,” and if it is less humorous than “The Autocrat,” it is more profound than either of its fellows in the great trio. In it the doctor has said enough to make the reputations of half a dozen authors.
“One Hundred Days in Europe,” if written by anyone else save Dr. Holmes, would, perhaps, go begging for a publisher. But he journeyed to the old land with his heart upon his sleeve. He met nearly every man and woman worth knowing, and the Court, Science, and Literature received him with open arms. He had not seen England for half a century. Fifty years before, he was an obscure young man, studying medicine, and known by scarcely half a dozen persons. He returned in 1886, a man of world-wide fame, and every hand was stretched out to do him honor, and to pay him homage. Lord Houghton,—the famous breakfast giver of his time, certainly, the most successful