btless gave to contemporaries a sense of strangeness at
first. Time was needed to harden the fresh lines, as well as to win
for them a place among the elder and accepted models.

Holmes's father was minister to the Congregational church in
Cambridge, a man of ability and author of some historical works. He
lived in a venerable house of the ante-Revolutionary period which
stood near the college grounds, and was demolished a few years ago to
make room for a new academic building. One of Holmes's most
characteristic articles is his description of "The Old Gambrel-roofed
House." In the time of his youth there were people in Cambridge who
remembered the march of the British troops on their way to Lexington
and Concord in 1775. The speech and the manners of the colonists long
retained the old English stamp, and the earliest of them had been
contemporaries of Bunyan and almost of Shakespeare; and so Holmes must
have heard, as I when a boy heard in another county, phrases and tones
which could not have differed much from those of Shakespeare's common
people. The influence of this is seen in his mastery of what is called
the Yankee dialect, development of old chimney-corner English. For the
same reason there is visible in his writings also some of that homely
astuteness which seems to have died out with the polish of modern
manners.

After completing his classical and medical studies, Dr. Holmes spent
two years in Europe, principally in Paris, and then settled in Boston
as a practising physician. Later he became a professor of anatomy, and
remained in service until within a few years. Thus his duties took him
away from his native Cambridge--although his heart never migrated--and
turned him from the pursuit of poetry, except as a recreation. His
recreation, however, must have been quite steadily indulged in, since
his occasional poems had grown to a goodly volume before he was forty
years of age. The great popularity of his later works has somewhat
overshadowed the early poems, but there is ample evidence of genius
in these first-fruits. None of them are meant to be thrilling or
profound, but they all have some characteristic grace, some unexpected
stroke of wit, some fascinating melody. I do not know any poems of a
similar class which afford such unfailing delight. It is true they are
mundane and their wit has often a satiric, "knowing" air; but the
pleasantry is never mocking or malevolent; and the exuberance of
spirit is con