Biography of OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, author, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 29
August 1809. Among his schoolmates were Alfred Lee, afterward Bishop of
Delaware, Margaret Fuller, and Richard Henry Dana, Jr. He was prepared for
college at Phillips Andover Academy, where he made his first attempt at
versification, a translation from the first book of the Aeneid, in heroic
couplets. He was graduated at Harvard in 1829, among his classmates being
William H. Channing, James Freeman Clarke, and Benjamin R. Curtis. He was a
contributor to one of the college periodicals, delivered the poem at
commencement, and was one of the sixteen members chosen into the F B K
society. The next year, when it was proposed to break up the old frigate
"Constitution," Holmes published in the Boston "Advertiser" his lyrical
protest, beginning, "Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!" which was
widely copied in the newspapers and circulated in handbills, saving the ship
from destruction and giving the young poet a reputation. He studied law for a
year at the law school in Cambridge, and at that time produced some of his
best-known humorous pieces, including "Evening by a Tailor" and "The
Height of the Ridiculous." In 1833, with Epes Sargent and Park Benjamin,
he contributed to a gift-book, entitled "The Harbinger," the profits of
which were given to the Asylum for the Blind. But his hereditary instincts
appear to have been for the profession of medicine, and he studied under Dr.
James Jackson and then spent three years chiefly in Paris. He received his
degree in 1836, and in the same year published his first volume of poems
(Boston), which contained forty-five pieces, including, besides those already
named, "Poetry, a Metrical Essay," read before the B K society: "The
Last Leaf"; "My Aunt": "The Treadmill Song"; and "The
September Gale." In 1839 he was chosen Professor of Anatomy and Physiology
at Dartmouth. In 1840 he married Amelia Lee daughter of Judge Charles
Jackson, of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and soon afterward he resigned
his professorship at Dartmouth in order to devote himself to practice in
Boston. In 1849 he established a summer home at Pittsfield, Massachusetts,
Hawthorne at that time was living at Lenox, a few miles away, and in his
"Hall of Fantasy," after describing an ideal group of poets, he says:
"In the most vivacious of these I recognized Holmes." In 1847 he
succeeded Dr. John C. Warren as Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the
medical school of Harvard. About the same time he became a lyceum lecturer.
Dr. Holmes had gained three of the Boylston prizes for medical dissertations,
and his three essays were published together (Boston, 1838). His other
scientific works include an edition of "Marshall Hall's Theory and Practice
of Medicine," with Dr. Jacob Bigelow (1839); "Lectures on Homoeopathy
and its Kindred Delusions" (1842); "Report on Medical Literature,"
in the "Transactions" of the National Medical Association (1848);
"Puerperal Fever as a Private Pestilence," a pamphlet (1855);
"Currents and Counter-Currents in Medical Science" (1861); and
"Border Lines in some Provinces of Medical Science" (1862). Several of
these have been reissued in one volume with the title "Medical Essays"
(1883). His successive volumes of poetry have borne the titles
"Urania" (1846); "Astraea: the Balance of Illusions" (1850);
"Songs in Many Keys" (1861); "Songs of Many Seasons" (1875); and
"The Iron Gate" (1880). There are several collected editions, and some
of the pieces have been issued singly with sumptuous illustrations. When the
"Atlantic Monthly" was established, in the autumn of 1857, Dr. Holmes
became one of the first contributors, and by many readers was esteemed the
most brilliant of all that notable galaxy. His first contributions were in
the form of a series of conversational papers entitled "The Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table," in which were included some of the finest of his poems.
The "Autocrat" was followed by a similar series, "The Professor at the
Breakfast-Table," and, after an interval, by "The Poet at the
Breakfast-Table," each of which on its completion in the magazine was
issued in book-form (1859, 1860, 1872). These papers, he tells us in his
preface, were the fulfillment of a plan that was conceived twenty-five years
before, when he published in the "New England Magazine" two articles
with the title of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table." Dr. Holmes
also wrote two novels, which were first published serially, "Elsie Venner,
a Romance of Destiny" (2 vols., 1861), and "The Guardian Angel" (2
vols., 1868), which are remarkable rather as character-studies than for
dramatic power. His other prose works are "Soundings from the
Atlantic," a collection of essays (1864); "Mechanism in Thought and
Morals" (1871.); memoirs of John Lothrop Motley (1879) and Ralph Waldo
Emerson (1884); "A Mortal Antipathy" (1885); and "Our Hundred Days
in Europe" (1887). Dr. Holmes has been successful in every kind of
literature that he has undertaken, but his most brilliant and popular work is
in "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table," while his longest lived is
probably in his poems. In these the expression is so admirably clear that the
reader does not always immediately appreciate the depth of the thought. His
own favorite among his serious poems is said to be "The Chambered
Nautilus"; but "The Voiceless," "Sun and Shadow," and
several of his patriotic lyrics, easily take rank with it. Some of his
satirical pieces, like "The Moral Bully," are as sharp as the most
merciless critic could desire, while many of his purely humorous ones, like
"The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay," are already classic. As a poet of
occasions it is doubtful if he has ever had an equal. The publishers of the
"Atlantic Monthly" gave a breakfast in his honor on his seventieth
birthday, 29 August 1879, at which many literary celebrities were present, and
he read his poem of "The Iron Gate," written for the occasion. His
life has been written by Walter S. Kennedy (Boston, 1883), and also by Emma
E. Brown (1884), in a volume to which is appended a complete bibliography of
his publications.
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