ow was it?

Doctor Holmes at once rose, went to the turning book-stand, and took
down volume three of his own poems, and read me with great spirit the
passage. I do not know how I had forgotten it.

"Where in the realm of thought, whose air is song,
Does he, the Buddha of the West, belong?
He seems a winged Franklin, sweetly wise,
Born to unlock the secrets of the skies;
And which the nobler calling,--if 'tis fair
Terrestrial with celestial to compare,--
To guide the storm-cloud's elemental flame,
Or walk the chambers whence the lightning came,
Amidst the sources of its subtile fire,
And steal their effluence for his lips and lyre?"

Here he said, with great fun, "One great good of writing poetry is to
furnish you with your own quotations." And afterwards, when I had made
him read to me some other verses from his own poems, he said, "Oh,
yes, as a reservoir of the best quotations in the language, there is
nothing like a book of your own poems."

[Illustration: O. W. HOLMES'S RESIDENCE IN BEACON STREET, BOSTON.]

I said that there was no greater nonsense than the talk of Emerson's
time, that he introduced German philosophy here, and I asked Holmes if
he thought that Emerson had borrowed anything in the philosophical
line from the German. He agreed with me that his philosophy was
thoroughly home-bred, and wrought out in the experience of his own
home-life. He said that he was disposed to believe that that would be
true of Emerson which he knew was true of himself. He knew Emerson
went over a great many books, but he did not really believe that he
often really read a book through. I remember one of his phrases was,
that he thought that Emerson "tasted books;" and he cited a bright
lady from Philadelphia, whom he had met the day before, who had said
that she thought men of genius did not rely much upon their reading,
and had complimented him by asking if he did so. Holmes said:

"I told her--I had to tell her--that in reading my mind is always
active. I do not follow the author steadily or implicitly, but my
thought runs off to right and left. It runs off in every direction,
and I find I am not so much taking his book as I am thinking my own
thoughts upon his subject."

_I._ I want to thank you for your contrast between Emerson and
Carlyle: "The hatred of unreality was uppermost in Carlyle; the love
of what is real and genuine, with Emerson." Is it not perhaps possible
that Carlyle would not h