He came of the Brahmin caste of New England, to quote a phrase
of his own invention: his father being a minister of the old-fashioned
severe type of that period; while his mother was a lady, he once
wrote, bred in quite a different atmosphere from that of the strait-
laced Puritanism.
of his own invention: his father being a minister of the old-fashioned
severe type of that period; while his mother was a lady, he once
wrote, bred in quite a different atmosphere from that of the strait-
laced Puritanism.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v13 - Her to Hux
He made his will October 1st,
1578 (the year of the publication of the 'Chronicles of England, Scot-
land, and Ireland'), and therein wrote himself down as a steward by
occupation. Wood states that he died in 1580,- another conjecture,
of which there is no reliable record.
-
The story of the preparing of the Chronicles' is this:- - Wolfe
inherited valuable notes from Leland (the King's Antiquary), planned
a sort of universal history and cosmography, with maps and illustra-
tions, and spent twenty-five years of labor upon the part relating to
Great Britain. He died in 1573; and his successors, frightened at the
vast extent of the work as sketched by him, drew in these ideas and
devoted their attention to the countries named in the title,- Eng-
land, Scotland, and Ireland. Holinshed carried this restricted plan
through to publication, being assisted therein by a number of schol-
ars, the best known of whom are William Harrison and John Stowe.
The three original publishers of the work were George Bishop, John
and Luke Harrison. The first edition (1578) was in two folio volumes,
which had portraits, battle-pieces, and other cuts in the highest style
of the art of that time. The work was dedicated to William Cecil,
Lord Burghley. The writing of it was apportioned to the several
chroniclers, Holinshed doing parts of the histories of all three coun-
tries. The freedom used in the treatment of events almost contem-
poraneous led to expurgations in the subsequent revised edition,
prepared and printed (1586-7) after Holinshed's death, by his fellow
workers; the result being that copies of the unexpurgated edition are
very rare, and much coveted by bibliophiles. The British Museum
## p. 7446 (#248) ###########################################
7446
RAPHAEL HOLINSHED
possesses a copy made by inserting in the revised version the can-
celed pages of the first edition.
Holinshed's personality is impressed upon the 'Chronicles' which
bear his name, and of which he is the master spirit. His style is
clear rather than warm, and his diligence in collecting historical ma-
terial is attested by the copious references to authorities. Though
honestly striving to present the truth, his Protestant bias is marked,
and he is unreliable when dealing with earlier times. But as an in-
defatigable pioneer delver in historic lore-as one of the chroniclers
who paved the way for the modern historian - he is worthy of much
praise, especially as he wrote in a way to make enjoyable reading.
His relation to literature is both direct and indirect. In his own
work, using the rich, full-mouthed speech of his period, he gives an
example of Elizabethan English in many ways admirable: solid, har-
monious, dignified. He lacks the picturesque touch and the idiomatic
virility of William Harrison, whose famous descriptions in the same
work of the social aspects of England rise to a higher plane. But
Holinshed's 'Chronicles' also proved a rich mine for the Elizabethan
dramatists to quarry from: the master of them all, Shakespeare, drew
most of his historical plays from this source, as well as 'Macbeth,'
'King Lear,' and parts of Cymbeline'; in some dramas - both parts
of 'Henry IV. ,' for example-following the chronicler so closely as
to use his phrases.
Thus Holinshed forms a link in the chain of history writers, bears
a not unimportant relation to the great dramatic poetry of his day,
and is himself a writer of vigorous and felicitous English which can
still be read with pleasure.
MACBETH'S WITCHES
From the Chronicles >
SHO
HORTLY after happened a strange and uncouth wonder, which
afterward was the cause of much trouble in the realm of
Scotland, as ye shall after hear. It fortuned as Makbeth
and Banquho journeyed towards Fores, where the King then lay,
they went sporting by the way together without other company
save only themselves, passing through the woods and fields, when
suddenly in the middest of a laund there met them three women
in strange and wild apparel, resembling creatures of the elder
world, whom when they attentively beheld, wondering much at
the sight, the first of them spake and said:-
"All hail Makbeth, thane of Glammis! »
## p. 7447 (#249) ###########################################
RAPHAEL HOLINSHED
7447
(For he had lately entered into that office by the death of his
father Sinell. ) The second of them said:-
"Hail Makbeth, thane of Cawder! "
-
But the third said:
"All hail Makbeth, that hereafter shall be King of Scotland! ”
Then Banquho: "What manner of women >>>
«<
(saith he) are
you that seem so little favourable unto me, whereas to my fellow
here, besides high offices, ye assign also the kingdom, appointing
forth nothing for me at all? " "Yes" (saith the first of them),
«< we promise greater benefits unto thee than unto him: for he
shall reign indeed, but with an unlucky end; neither shall he
leave any issue behind him to succeed in his place; when cer-
tainly thou indeed shalt not reign at all, but of thee those shall
be born which shall govern the Scottish kingdom by long order
of continual descent. " Herewith the fore said women vanished
immediately out of their sight. This was reputed at the first but
some vain fantastical illusion by Makbeth and Banquho, insomuch
that Banquho would call Makbeth in jest, King of Scotland,
and Makbeth again would call him in sport likewise, father of
many kings. But afterwards the common opinion was, that these
women were either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would say)
the goddesses of destiny, or else some nymphs or fairies, indued
with knowledge of prophecie by their necromatical science, be-
cause everything came to pass as they had spoken.
THE MURDER OF THE YOUNG PRINCES
From the Chronicles'
Κ
ING RICHARD after his coronation, taking his way to Glouces-
ter to visit (in his new honour) the town of which he bare
the name of his old, devised (as he rode) to fulfil the
things which he before had intended. And forsomuch that his
mind gave him, that his nephews living, men would not reckon
that he could have right to the realm; he thought therefore
without delay to rid them, as though the killing of his kinsmen
could amend his cause and make him a kindly king. Whereupon
he sent one Sir John Greene (whom he specially trusted) to Sir
Robert Brackenbury, Constable of the Tower, with a letter and
## p. 7448 (#250) ###########################################
7448
RAPHAEL HOLINSHED
credence also, that the same Sir Robert should in any wise put
the children to death.
Sir John Greene did his errand unto Brackenbury, kneeling
before our Lady in the Tower, who plainly answered that he
would never put them to death to die therefore. With which
answer John Greene returning, recounted the same to King Rich-
ard at Warwick yet in his way. Wherewith he took such dis-
pleasure and thought, that the same night he said unto a secret
page of his: "Ah, whom shall a man trust? Those that I have
brought up myself, those that I had weened would most surely
me-even those fail me, and at my commandment will
do nothing for me. "
serve
"Sir" (said his page), "there lieth one on your pallet without,
that I dare well say, to do your Grace pleasure, the thing were
right hard that he would refuse. " Meaning by this Sir James
Tirrell, which was a man of right goodly personage, and for
nature's gifts worthy to have served a much better prince, if he
had well served God, and by grace obtained as much truth and
good-will as he had strength and wit.
The man had a high heart, and sore longed upwards, not ris-
ing yet so fast as he had hoped; being hindered and kept under
by the means of Sir Richard Ratcliffe and Sir William Catesby,
which longing for no more partners of the prince's favour; and
namely, not for him whose pride they wist would bear no peer,
kept him by secret drifts out of all secret trust; which thing
this page well had marked and known. Wherefore this occasion
offered of very special friendship, he took his time to put him
forward, and by such wise to do him good that all the enemies
he had (except the Devil) could never have done him so much.
hurt. For upon this page's words King Richard arose (for this
communication had he sitting apart in his own chamber) and
came out into the pallet chamber, on which he found in bed Sir
James and Sir Thomas Tirrells, of person like, and brethren in
blood, but nothing akin in conditions.
Then said the King merrily to them: "What Sirs, be ye in
bed so soon? " and calling up Sir James, brake to him secretly
his mind in this mischievous matter. In which he found him
nothing strange. Wherefore on the morrow he sent him to
Brackenbury with a letter, by which he was commanded to de-
liver Sir James all the keys of the Tower for one night, to the
end he might there accomplish the king's pleasure in such things
## p. 7449 (#251) ###########################################
RAPHAEL HOLINSHED
7449
as he had given him commandment. After which letter delivered,
and the keys received, Sir James appointed the night next ensu-
ing to destroy them, devising before and preparing the means.
The prince (as soon as the Protector left that name and took
himself as King) had it showed unto him that he should not
reign, but his uncle should have the crown. At which word the
prince, sore abashed, began to sigh, and said: "Alas, I would my
uncle would let me have my life yet, though I lose my kingdom. "
Then he that told him the tale used him with good words,
and put him in the best comfort he could. But forthwith was
the prince and his brother both shut up, and all other removed
from them, only one (called Black Will or William Slaughter)
excepted, set to serve them and see them sure. After which
time the prince never tied his points nor aught wrought of him-
self, but with that young babe his brother lingered with thought
and heaviness, until this traitorous death delivered them of that
wretchedness. For Sir James Tirrell devised that they should be
murdered in their beds. To the execution whereof he appointed
Miles Forrest, one of the four that kept them, a fellow fleshed in
murder before time. To him he joined one John Dighton, his
own horse-keeper, a big, broad, square, and strong knave.
Then all the other being removed from them, this Miles For-
rest and John Dighton, about midnight (the seely children lying
in their beds), came to the chamber, and suddenly lapping them
up among the clothes, so too bewrapped them and entangled
them, keeping down by force the feather bed and pillows hard
unto their mouths, that within a while, smothered and stifled,
their breath failing, they gave up to God their innocent souls
into the joys of Heaven, leaving to the tormentors their bodies
dead in the bed. Which after that the wretches perceived, first
by the struggling with the pains of death, and after long lying
still, to be thoroughly dead, they laid their bodies naked out upon
the bed, and fetched Sir James to see them; which upon the
sight of them caused those murderers to bury them at the stair-
foot, meetly deep in the ground, under a great heap of stones.
Then rode Sir James in great haste to King Richard, and
shewed him all the manner of the murder; who gave him great
thanks, and (as some say) there made him knight. But he allowed
not (as I have heard) the burying in so vile a corner, saying that
he would have them buried in a better place, because they were
a king's sons. Lo, the honorable courage of a king! Whereupon.
## p. 7450 (#252) ###########################################
7450
RAPHAEL HOLINSHED
they say that a priest of Sir Robert Brackenbury's took up the
bodies again and secretly enterred them in such place as, by the
occasion of his death which only knew it, could never since come
to light. Very truth is it and well known, that at such time as
Sir James Tirrell was in the Tower for treason committed against
the most famous prince King Henry the Seventh, both Dighton
and he were examined and confessed the murder in manner
above written; but whither the bodies were removed they could
nothing tell.
And thus (as I have learned of them that must know and
little cause had to lie) were these two noble princes, these inno-
cent tender children, born of most royal blood, brought up in
great wealth, likely long to live, reign, and rule in the realm, by
traitorous tyranny taken, deprived of their estate, shortly shut
up in prison and privily slain and murdered, their bodies cast
God wot where, by the cruel ambition of their unnatural uncle
and his despiteous tormentors: which things on every part well
pondered, God never gave this world a more notable example,
neither in what unsurety standeth this worldly weal; or what
mischief worketh the proud enterprise of an high heart; or finally
what wretched end ensueth such despiteous cruelty.
For first, to begin with the ministers, Miles Forrest at St.
Martins piecemeal rotted away. Dighton indeed yet walketh on
alive, in good possibility to be hanged yet ere he die. But Sir
James Tirrell died at the Tower Hill, beheaded for treason. King
Richard himself, as ye shall hereafter hear, slain in the field,
hacked and hewed of his enemies' hands, harried on horseback
dead, his hair in despite torn and tugged like a cur dog; and the
mischief that he took within less than three years of the mischief
that he did; and yet all (in the meantime) spent in much pain.
and trouble outward, much fear, anguish, and sorrow within.
He never thought himself sure. Where he went abroad his
eyes whirled about, his body privily fenced, his hand ever upon
his dagger, his countenance and manner like one always ready
to strike again, he took ill rest o' nights, lay long waking and
musing, sore wearied with care and watch, rather slumbered than
slept, much troubled with fearful dreams, suddenly sometimes
start up, leapt out of his bed and ran about the chamber: so was
his restless heart continually tossed and tumbled with the tedious.
impression and stormy remembrance of his abominable deeds.
## p. 7451 (#253) ###########################################
7451
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
(1819-1881)
HEN Josiah Gilbert Holland, returning to Springfield, Massa-
chusetts, at the age of thirty, there met Mr. Samuel Bowles
and became his co-worker on the Springfield Republican, he
found at last a fitting opportunity for his talent. Up to that time
he had drearily struggled with poverty, and bravely tried in many
ways to earn his living. His father, the original of the well-known
poem 'Daniel Gray,' had inventive power but no practical ability,
and drifted with his family from town to town in search of work.
Josiah, born at Belchertown, Massachusetts,
in 1819, early learned the necessity of self-
support. He was eagerly ambitious of edu-
cation and a professional career; and in spite
of many obstacles he entered the North-
ampton High School, although ill health pre-
vented him from finishing the course. When
twenty-one he began the study of medicine,
and in 1844 was graduated with honor from
the Berkshire Medical College.
JOSIAH G. HOLLAND
The years that followed were discoura-
ging, for patients did not come to the young
doctor. With true Yankee versatility he
turned his hand to anything,-taught dis-
trict school, was a traveling writing-master,
and a daguerreotypist. Of his boyish mortification at being a mill
hand he has told us in 'Arthur Bonnicastle. ' For a year he was
superintendent of education at Vicksburg, Mississippi. He tried edi-
torial work, and started the Bay State Courier, which ran for six
months. All these varied experiences gave him the knowledge of
American life and appreciation of workaday struggles which later
made the value of his poems, essays, and novels. It was largely due
to his influence that the Springfield Republican became so widely
known and popular a journal. In it his 'Letters to Young People
Married and Single: By Timothy Titcomb' first attracted readers by
their vivacious style, moral sincerity, and good common-sense. Later.
in book form, they had a great and immediate success.
In 1870 Dr. Holland was one of the founders and became editor
of Scribner's Monthly, later the Century Magazine, and retained the
## p. 7452 (#254) ###########################################
7452
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
editorship until his death in 1881. Here, as in all his work, he
showed his conscious purpose to be a helpful moral influence to his
readers.
Dr. Holland's novels, Arthur Bonnicastle (1873), (Sevenoaks'
(1876), and Nicholas Minturn' (1877), although showing his quick
and sympathetic observation and containing fine passages, have been
far less popular than his poems. The latter, in their constant appeal
to moral sense, and in their accurate depiction of the homely and
picturesque in New England life, found many lovers. Several of the
short lyrics, with 'Bittersweet' (1858), 'Katrina' (1868), and 'The Mis-
tress of the Manse' (1871), came as messages from a true American
poet who understood and honored his own people.
CRADLE SONG
From 'Bittersweet: A Poem. Copyright 1886, by Elizabeth L. Holland
HAT is the little one thinking about?
Very wonderful things, no doubt!
Unwritten history!
WHAT
Unfathomed mystery!
Yet he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks,
And chuckles and crows, and nods and winks,
As if his head were as full of kinks
And curious riddles as any sphinx!
Warped by colic, and wet by tears,
Punctured by pins, and tortured by fears,
Our little nephew will lose two years;
And he'll never know
Where the summers go;-
He need not laugh, for he'll find it so!
-
Who can tell what a baby thinks?
Who can follow the gossamer links
By which the mannikin feels his way
Out from the shore of the great unknown,
Blind, and wailing, and alone,
Into the light of day?
Out from the shore of the unknown sea,
Tossing in pitiful agony;
Of the unknown sea that reels and rolls,
Specked with the barks of little souls,-
Barks that were launched on the other side,
And slipped from heaven on an ebbing tide!
## p. 7453 (#255) ###########################################
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
7453
What does he think of his mother's eyes?
What does he think of his mother's hair?
What of the cradle-roof that flies
Forward and backward through the air?
What does he think of his mother's breast,
Bare and beautiful, smooth and white,—
Seeking it ever with fresh delight,
Cup of his life and couch of his rest?
What does he think when her quick embrace
Presses his hand and buries his face
Deep where the heart-throbs sink and swell
With a tenderness she can never tell,
Though she murmur the words
Of all the birds-
Words she has learned to murmur well?
Now he thinks he'll go to sleep!
I can see the shadow creep
Over his eyes, in soft eclipse,
Over his brow, and over his lips,
Out to his little finger-tips!
Softly sinking, down he goes!
Down he goes! Down he goes!
See! He is hushed in sweet repose!
THE SONG OF THE CIDER
From Bittersweet: A Poem. Copyright 1886, by Elizabeth L. Holland,
IXTEEN barrels of cider
SIXTE
Ripening all in a row!
Open the vent-channels wider!
See the froth, drifted like snow,
Blown by the tempest below!
Those delectable juices
Flowed through the sinuous sluices
Of sweet springs under the orchard;
Climbed into fountains that chained them,
Dripped into cups that retained them,
And swelled till they dropped, and we gained them.
Then they were gathered and tortured
By passage from hopper to vat,
And fell — every apple crushed flat.
Ah! how the bees gathered round them
And how delicious they found them!
## p. 7454 (#256) ###########################################
7454
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
Oat-straw, as fragrant as clover,
Was platted, and smoothly turned over,
Weaving a neatly ribbed basket;
And as they built up the casket,
In went the pulp by the scoop-full,
Till the juice flowed by the stoup-full,-
Filling the half of a puncheon
While the men swallowed their luncheon.
Pure grew the stream with the stress
Of the lever and screw,
Till the last drops from the press
Were as bright as the dew.
There were these juices spilled;
There were these barrels filled;
Sixteen barrels of cider-
Ripening all in a row!
Open the vent-channels wider!
See the froth, drifted like snow,
Blown by the tempest below!
-
WANTED
From The Complete Poetical Writings of Dr. J. G. Holland. ' Copyright
1879, by Charles Scribner's Sons
OD give us men! A time like this demands
G Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready
hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor, men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue,
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking:
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife,-lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps!
## p. 7455 (#257) ###########################################
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
7455
DANIEL GRAY
From The Complete Poetical Writings of Dr. J. G. Holland. Copyright
1879, by Charles Scribner's Sons
F I SHALL ever win the home in heaven
IT
For whose sweet rest I humbly hope and pray,
In the great company of the forgiven
I shall be sure to find old Daniel Gray.
I knew him well: in truth, few knew him better;
For my young eyes oft read for him the Word,
And saw how meekly from the crystal letter
He drank the life of his beloved Lord.
Old Daniel Gray was not a man who lifted
On ready words his freight of gratitude;
Nor was he called as one among the gifted,
In the prayer-meetings of his neighborhood.
He had a few old-fashioned words and phrases,
Linked in with sacred texts and Sunday rhymes;
And I suppose that in his prayers and graces
I've heard them all at least a thousand times.
I see him now, his form, his face, his motions,
His homespun habit, and his silver hair,—
And hear the language of his trite devotions,
Rising behind the straight-backed kitchen chair.
-
I can remember how the sentence sounded.
"Help us, O Lord, to pray and not to faint! »
And how the "conquering-and-to-conquer" rounded
The loftier aspirations of the saint.
He had some notions that did not improve him:
He never kissed his children - so they say;
And finest scenes and fairest flowers would move him
Less than a horseshoe picked up in the way.
He had a hearty hatred of oppression,
And righteous words for sin of every kind:
Alas, that the transgressor and transgression
Were linked so closely in his honest mind!
He could see naught but vanity in beauty,
And naught but weakness in a fond caress,
## p. 7456 (#258) ###########################################
7456
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
And pitied men whose views of Christian duty
Allowed indulgence in such foolishness.
Yet there were love and tenderness within him;
And I am told that when his Charley died,
Nor nature's need nor gentle words could win him
From his fond vigils at the sleeper's side.
And when they came to bury little Charley,
They found fresh dew-drops sprinkled in his hair,
And on his breast a rosebud gathered early,—
And guessed, but did not know, who placed it there.
Honest and faithful, constant in his calling,
Strictly attendant on the means of grace,
Instant in prayer, and fearful most of falling,
Old Daniel Gray was always in his place.
A practical old man, and yet a dreamer,
He thought that in some strange, unlooked-for way
His mighty Friend in heaven, the great Redeemer,
Would honor him with wealth some golden day.
This dream he carried in a hopeful spirit
Until in death his patient eye grew dim,
And his Redeemer called him to inherit
The heaven of wealth long garnered up for him.
So, if I ever win the home in heaven
For whose sweet rest I humbly hope and pray,
In the great company of the forgiven
I shall be sure to find old Daniel Gray.
## p. 7456 (#259) ###########################################
## p. 7456 (#260) ###########################################
DOOHOOOOOOOOOO
S
梭
B
O. W. HOLMES.
D
R
40
Gresah
OHOH!
30
16
P
## p. 7456 (#261) ###########################################
## p. 7456 (#262) ###########################################
## p. 7457 (#263) ###########################################
7457
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
(1809-1894).
BY MRS. JAMES T. FIELDS
Liver Wendell HOLMES was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
in the year 1809, under the shadow-or the sunshine, shall
we say? of Harvard University. "I remember that week
well," the doctor wrote in after years: "for something happened to
me once at that time; namely, I was born. " "Nature was active that
year," says his biographer, "like a stirred volcano; casting forth also
upon the world Gladstone, Tennyson, Darwin, and Abraham Lincoln. "
The discovery of a pile of old almanacs belonging to his father gave
Dr. Holmes, late in life, a whimsical view of his own birthday. "I
took up that for the year 1809: opposite a certain date was an aster-
isk, and a note below consisting of four letters, thus:-
August 27
«<
28
«<
29*
«<
30
* Son b.
My father thus recorded my advent; and after he wrote the four let-
ters, according to his wont, he threw black sand upon them to keep
them from blotting. I am looking at it now, and there the black
sand glistens still. "
Dr. Holmes even went so far as to have the page photographed,
and never failed to regard the brief memorandum with a kind of odd
pathos.
He came of the Brahmin caste of New England, to quote a phrase
of his own invention: his father being a minister of the old-fashioned
severe type of that period; while his mother was a lady, he once
wrote, bred in quite a different atmosphere from that of the strait-
laced Puritanism. She was a bright, vivacious woman, of small size,
sprightly manners, and good education. She lived to a great age,
a quaint figure, youthful and sympathetic to the end. "Like a faith-
ful wife as she was," her son says, "she sobered her pleasant coun-
tenance and sat down to hear us recite of justification,' 'adoption,'
XIII-467
## p. 7458 (#264) ###########################################
7458
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
I was
and 'sanctification,' and the rest of the programme.
given to questionings, and my mind early revolted. » Those who
knew Dr. Holmes's father and mother well, say there was more of
the intellectual character of the mother than of the father in him.
There was a human and humane side to his mother, something akin
to her neighbors because of their common humanity; a simple trait
of kindly interest in all who drew within the scope of their acquaint-
ance, which also belonged to her son and made him what he became.
The simplicity of the life of a minister's family in the Cambridge of
that period was very unlike anything we know to-day, when Cam-
bridge has become a large city; and it is difficult to believe so few
years have passed since boyish rambles were carried on in the very
heart of what is now a town.
Dr. Holmes's writings, of course, give something more than a hint
of these conditions: we are made to see them pretty clearly; but
there is nothing in the life of old England which is a match for
them,- nothing by which men nurtured under different conditions
can estimate the advantages and drawbacks of the New England of
that time. The men of his day were not nursed in letters; there
was no Eton, and no Bluecoat School to which the younger boys
were sent. They stayed at home and learned their first lessons, but
they frequently studied on the principle of some church-goers who
trust that an hour on Sunday will give them absolution for a week of
indulgence: studying served by the way, as it were; a kind of toll-
gate to be passed before the good things of life set in.
The boys
of those days chopped wood, made fires, ran errands, skated, birds'-
nested, or went nutting, according to the seasons. Their heads were
not burthened by breathing a scholastic atmosphere. But if the edu-
cation to a life of literature was wanting, the finer inciters to true
thought and life were not wanting. "My birth chamber," writes Dr.
Holmes, "and the places most familiar to my early years, looked out
to the west. My sunsets were as beautiful as any poet could ask
for. Between my chamber and the sunset were hills covered with
trees, from amid which peeped out here and there the walls of a
summer mansion, which my imagination turned into a palace. "
His scheme of life did not readily mature. At school in Andover,
and while in Harvard College, he was totally undecided what to
study. " "It will be law or physick," he wrote, "for I cannot say
that I think the trade of authorship quite adapted to this meridian. "
It is very curious to see how his mind wavered between these
three careers. Neither Lowell nor Longfellow appears to have been
detained for an instant from the pursuit of literature by "the merid-
ian"! But Dr. Holmes was not a great reader; he was not trained,
as we have said, in a home atmosphere of letters, and it was like
## p. 7459 (#265) ###########################################
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
7459
putting to sea in an untrimmed boat. On the whole, the law pre-
sented itself to his mind as possessing the largest advantages to a
man of gifts; and after leaving college in 1829 he decided to devote
a year to that study. He says of himself, in reverting to this period:
"I had been busy, more or less, with the pages of Blackstone and
Chitty and other text-books of legal study. More or less, I say, but
I am afraid it was less rather than more. For during that year I
first tasted the intoxicating pleasure of authorship. A college period-
ical conducted by friends of mine, still undergraduates, tempted me
into print; and there is no form of lead poisoning which more rap-
idly and thoroughly pervades the blood and bones and marrow than
that which reaches the young author through mental contact with
type-metal. . . What determined me to give up law and apply
myself to medicine I can hardly say; but I had from the first looked
upon that year's study as an experiment. "
It appears that his second choice of profession, although most con-
scientiously followed and always considered by him as final, was not
the career which was to make his name and fame nor his modest
fortune. One might say even more: a certain turn for or faith in
science was a substratum of his mind. He loved to see the proof of
what his imagination or that of other men had suggested. In this
we are reminded of Shelley, who said once that whatever the imagina-
tion of a man can see clearly, the man can reproduce in words. Dr.
Holmes looked askance at what could not be proved; and his study
of medicine enlarged his intellectual sphere. He was immediately
associated in Paris with the most distinguished scientists of his day,
who doubtless found their eager pupil very engaging. He had an
overwhelming distaste for many details of his profession; but as the
years went on, he found his place on the scientific rather than the
more immediately practical side of his profession. He was chosen
professor and lecturer to the Harvard Medical School, a position
which he filled for thirty-five years, only relinquishing it when age
gave him warning against over-fatigue.
Dr. Holmes did not wish in after years to recognize his first lit-
erary ventures, which were even earlier than the year of his law
studies. The Spectre Pig' and a few other juvenile verses had
actually found their way into print, but he never looked upon them
with favor. He understood himself well enough to recognize that
year in the law school as the moment of his first poetic inspiration.
The frigate Constitution was at that time lying in the Navy Yard
at Charlestown. Dr. Holmes saw a paragraph in a newspaper say-
ing that the ship was condemned by the Navy Department to be
destroyed. He was
on fire at the idea; with a pencil hurriedly
writing down his verses 'Old Ironsides' on a scrap of paper, he soon
## p. 7460 (#266) ###########################################
7460
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
wrought them into shape and sent them to a Boston newspaper.
They flew from end to end of the country; were reprinted on slips
and distributed in the streets of Washington. The old man-of-war
was saved, and the country learned the name of Oliver Wendell
Holmes, a young law student in Cambridge, for the first time.
Edward Everett Hale, a man who is an electric storage-battery of
thought to the men of his time, long ago said that "every man should
have his vocation and his avocation. » For many years Dr. Holmes
looked upon his profession as the vocation of his life and literature
as his avocation; but by degrees, and perhaps without acknowledg-
ment to himself, the tables were gradually turned, and the pen-point
became his weapon with which to front the world.
After returning from his studies in Paris and putting up his sign
as a physician in Boston, he found himself, while waiting "for the
smallest favors or fevers," again writing verses. There was some-
thing about his self-occupied yet gay boyishness which did not incline
the hypochondriac to face such strong sunshine. Whatever the reasons
may have been, his calls as a physician were few and his verses were
many. The Last Leaf' among others was written in this pause;
and at the end of a twelvemonth he was so unwise, from a profes-
sional point of view, as to publish a volume. In brief, his light
was one not to be concealed. His quickness of sympathy and readi-
ness of expression marked him immediately as the spokesman of
great occasions. He was invited to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa poem
of 1836, and from this date there was probably never a year of his
life without invitations to perform some such service, public or pri-
vate. What is still more important to record as a part of literary
history, his prose style was beginning to take form. He took prizes
for medical essays and dissertations. "It is somewhat pleasant," he
wrote this same year of 1836, "to have cut out a fifty-dollar prize
under the guns of two old blazers, who have each of them swamped
their competitors in preceding trials. " In 1834 his essay on 'The
Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever' marked him to the eyes of the
scientific world as a man of original thought and careful but deter-
mined expression of the truth. The qualities which distinguished
him afterward in the larger world of letters were then slowly acknowl-
edged for the first time by men of science. In after years he referred
to this experience in The Professor at the Breakfast-Table': -
"When, by the permission of Providence, I held up to the professional
public the damnable facts connected with the conveyance of poison
from one young mother's chamber to another's,- for doing which
humble office I desire to be thankful that I have lived, though noth-
ing else good should ever come of my life, I had to hear the sneers
of those whose position I had assailed, and as I believe, have at last
## p. 7461 (#267) ###########################################
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
7461
demolished, so that nothing but the ghosts of dead women stir among
the ruins. "
«<
Among Dr. Holmes's early writings were two prose essays pub-
lished in the New England Magazine, which lived briefly from 1831
to 1835. They bore the title of The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table';
but they appeared afterward to the author as early windfalls," and
he was not willing to incorporate them among his acknowledged
works, except as he acknowledges and quotes from them in one of
his prefaces to the 'Autocrat' of 1857. Whether Lowell had seen
these papers, or whether he judged what Dr. Holmes could do from
his scientific productions and his incomparable conversation, no one
can say; but when the Atlantic Monthly was launched, and a little
later Lowell was asked to become its editor, he made one condition:
"that Dr. Holmes should be the first contributor to be engaged. ”
"I looked at the old Portfolio," said Dr. Holmes, "and said to myself,
'Too late! too late! '" But Lowell insisted-otherwise there would
be no Atlantic; and Dr. Holmes yielded. "Lowell," he wrote after-
ward, "woke me from a kind of literary lethargy in which I was half
slumbering, to call me to active service. " Dr. Holmes's genius, as
seen in the 'Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table,' will carry his name
down the tide of time. It was succeeded by nine volumes of prose,
interrupted only by what now amounts to three volumes of verse,
making thirteen volumes of his complete works. It is, even in quan-
tity, no small showing, when we recall in addition his thirty-five
years of medical professorship. Dr. Holmes was no idler: he loved
to work and to do his work well. He scorned no expenditure of time
in order to find the right word and to bring his verse into accurate
form.
In 1840 Dr. Holmes married Amelia Lee Jackson, a woman exqui-
sitely adapted to make him happy. She was not beautiful, nor in
common phrase a woman of society; but she possessed a refinement,
a wit, a charm, a power of self-forgetfulness, which were all her own.
She was known to a small circle only, but wherever she allowed her-
self the opportunity to know and be known, she was beloved.
There were three children; only one of whom, Judge Holmes, sur-
vives his father. Dr. Holmes suffered the pain of seeing his wife and
a son and daughter go before him. Nevertheless life was very sweet
to him, and he bore the trials of age cheerfully, dying October 7th,
1894. He wrote once to Lowell: "Life is never monotonous, abso-
lutely, to me. I am a series of surprises to myself in the changes
that years and ripening, and it may be a still further process which
I need not name, bring about. The movement onward is like chan-
ging place in a picture gallery,- the light fades from this picture
and falls on that; . . but what a strange thing life is, when you
.
## p. 7462 (#268) ###########################################
7462
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
have waded in up to your neck and remember the shelving sands you
have trodden! "
But all the writing in the world about Dr. Holmes appears totally
inefficient to represent his delightful ebullient spirit, freshening and
sweetening every subject that he touched. The world soon found
that a new wit was astir under the old pudding-stone, and that wit
they could not do without. Every year, from 1851 until just before
the end, he wrote and read class poem; every dinner-table in Bos-
ton aspired to listen to his words; every occasion of importance called
for his presence. Loving and beloved, he passed on his cheerful way.
The cabman who drove him, the maid who put on his shoes, every
one who performed the slightest service for him, loved him. No
wonder life was not all dark to the one who shed such sunshine.
Annie Fields
[All the works of Oliver Wendell Holmes from which the following selec-
tions are taken are copyrighted. The reprint is made by permission of
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers, Boston. ]
OLD IRONSIDES*
Y, TEAR her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
Α΄
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;-
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.
-
Her deck once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood
And waves were white below,
-
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee; —
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
*This was the popular name by which the frigate Constitution was known.
The poem was first printed in the Boston Daily Advertiser, at the time when
it was proposed to break up the old ship as unfit for service.
## p. 7463 (#269) ###########################################
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
7463
Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave:
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!
I
THE LAST LEAF
SAW him once before,
As he passed by the door;
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.
They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.
But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan;
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone. "
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
My grandmamma has said
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago-
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow.
-
## p. 7464 (#270) ###########################################
7464
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff;
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!
And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.
ON LENDING A PUNCH-BOWL
THIS
HIS ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times,
Of joyous days and jolly nights, and merry Christmas-times;
They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true,
Who dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new.
A Spanish galleon brought the bar,-so runs the ancient tale:
'Twas hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail;
And now and then between the strokes, for fear his strength should
fail,
He wiped his brow and quaffed a cup of good old Flemish ale.
'Twas chased by an English squire to please his loving dame,
Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a longing for the same;
And oft as on the ancient stock another twig was found,
'Twas filled with caudle spiced and hot, and handed smoking round.
But, changing hands, it reached at length a Puritan divine,
Who used to follow Timothy, and take a little wine,
But hated punch and prelacy; and so it was, perhaps,
He went to Leyden, where he found conventicles and schnapps.
## p. 7465 (#271) ###########################################
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
7465
And then, of course, you know what's next: it left the Dutchman's
shore
With those that in the Mayflower came, a hundred souls and more,
Along with all the furniture to fill their new abodes-
To judge by what is still on hand, at least a hundred loads.
'Twas on a dreary winter's eve, the night was closing dim,
When brave Miles Standish took the bowl, and filled it to the brim;
The little Captain stood and stirred the posset with his sword,
And all his sturdy men-at-arms were ranged about the board.
He poured the fiery Hollands in,- the man that never feared,-
He took a long and solemn draught, and wiped his yellow beard;
And one by one the musketeers-the men that fought and prayed —
All drank as 'twere their mother's milk, and not a man afraid.
That night, affrighted, from his nest the screaming eagle flew,-
He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the soldier's wild halloo;
And there the sachem learned the rule he taught to kith and kin,
"Run from the white man when you find he smells of Hollands gin! "
A hundred years, and fifty more, had spread their leaves and snows,
A thousand rubs had flattened down each little cherub's nose,
When once again the bowl was filled, but not in mirth or joy,—
'Twas mingled by a mother's hand to cheer her parting boy.
"Drink, John," she said: "'twill do you good,—poor child, you'll never
bear
This working in the dismal trench, out in the midnight air;
And if - God bless me! - you were hurt, 'twould keep away the chill. "
So John did drink —and well he wrought that night at Bunker's Hill!
I tell you, there was generous warmth in good old English cheer;
I tell you, 'twas a pleasant thought to bring its symbol here.
'Tis but the fool that loves excess: hast thou a drunken soul?
Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my silver bowl!
TL
I love the memory of the past,-its pressed yet fragrant flow
The moss that clothes its broken walls, the ivy on its tower. ,"
Nay, this poor bauble it bequeathed,—my eyes grow moist and dim,
To think of all the vanished joys that danced around its brim.
Then fill a fair and honest cup, and bear it straight to me:
The goblet hallows all it holds, whate'er the liquid be;
And may the cherubs on its face protect me from the sin
That dooms one to those dreadful words, "My dear, where have you
been? »
## p. 7466 (#272) ###########################################
7466
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS
THIS
HIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,-
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:-
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
## p. 7467 (#273) ###########################################
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
7467
THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE
OR, THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS SHAY"
A Logical Story
H
AVE you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it—ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay:
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits-
Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five:
Georgius Secundus was then alive,—
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock's army was done so brown,
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.
Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always somewhere a weakest spot,—
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,- lurking still,
Find it somewhere you must and will,-
Above or below, or within or without,
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
That a chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out.
But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,
With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou")
He would build one shay to beat the taown
'N' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun';
It should be so built that it couldn' break daown:
«< Fur," said the Deacon, "t's mighty plain
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;
'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain,
Is only jest
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest. ”
## p. 7468 (#274) ###########################################
7468
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,—
That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees;
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"
Last of its timber, - they couldn't sell 'em,—
Never an axe had seen their chips,
And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Thoroughbrace, bison-skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he "put her through. ”
"There! " said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew. "
Do! I tell you, I rather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and deaconess dropped away,
Children and grandchildren where were they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake day!
-
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED; -it came and found
The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hundred increased by ten;-
"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came;-
Running as usual; much the same.
Thirty and forty at last arrive,
And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.
-
-
Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it. You're welcome. - No extra charge. )
## p. 7469 (#275) ###########################################
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
7469
FIRST OF NOVEMBER,- the Earthquake day:
There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay;
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local, as one may say.
There couldn't be,- for the Deacon's art
Had made it so like in every part
That there wasn't a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the whipple-tree neither less nor more,
And the back crossbar as strong as the fore,
And spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be worn out!
First of November, 'Fifty-five!
This morning the parson takes a drive.
Now, small boys, get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay,
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
"Huddup! " said the parson. -Off went they.
The parson was working his Sunday's text;
Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed
At what the-Moses-was coming next.
1578 (the year of the publication of the 'Chronicles of England, Scot-
land, and Ireland'), and therein wrote himself down as a steward by
occupation. Wood states that he died in 1580,- another conjecture,
of which there is no reliable record.
-
The story of the preparing of the Chronicles' is this:- - Wolfe
inherited valuable notes from Leland (the King's Antiquary), planned
a sort of universal history and cosmography, with maps and illustra-
tions, and spent twenty-five years of labor upon the part relating to
Great Britain. He died in 1573; and his successors, frightened at the
vast extent of the work as sketched by him, drew in these ideas and
devoted their attention to the countries named in the title,- Eng-
land, Scotland, and Ireland. Holinshed carried this restricted plan
through to publication, being assisted therein by a number of schol-
ars, the best known of whom are William Harrison and John Stowe.
The three original publishers of the work were George Bishop, John
and Luke Harrison. The first edition (1578) was in two folio volumes,
which had portraits, battle-pieces, and other cuts in the highest style
of the art of that time. The work was dedicated to William Cecil,
Lord Burghley. The writing of it was apportioned to the several
chroniclers, Holinshed doing parts of the histories of all three coun-
tries. The freedom used in the treatment of events almost contem-
poraneous led to expurgations in the subsequent revised edition,
prepared and printed (1586-7) after Holinshed's death, by his fellow
workers; the result being that copies of the unexpurgated edition are
very rare, and much coveted by bibliophiles. The British Museum
## p. 7446 (#248) ###########################################
7446
RAPHAEL HOLINSHED
possesses a copy made by inserting in the revised version the can-
celed pages of the first edition.
Holinshed's personality is impressed upon the 'Chronicles' which
bear his name, and of which he is the master spirit. His style is
clear rather than warm, and his diligence in collecting historical ma-
terial is attested by the copious references to authorities. Though
honestly striving to present the truth, his Protestant bias is marked,
and he is unreliable when dealing with earlier times. But as an in-
defatigable pioneer delver in historic lore-as one of the chroniclers
who paved the way for the modern historian - he is worthy of much
praise, especially as he wrote in a way to make enjoyable reading.
His relation to literature is both direct and indirect. In his own
work, using the rich, full-mouthed speech of his period, he gives an
example of Elizabethan English in many ways admirable: solid, har-
monious, dignified. He lacks the picturesque touch and the idiomatic
virility of William Harrison, whose famous descriptions in the same
work of the social aspects of England rise to a higher plane. But
Holinshed's 'Chronicles' also proved a rich mine for the Elizabethan
dramatists to quarry from: the master of them all, Shakespeare, drew
most of his historical plays from this source, as well as 'Macbeth,'
'King Lear,' and parts of Cymbeline'; in some dramas - both parts
of 'Henry IV. ,' for example-following the chronicler so closely as
to use his phrases.
Thus Holinshed forms a link in the chain of history writers, bears
a not unimportant relation to the great dramatic poetry of his day,
and is himself a writer of vigorous and felicitous English which can
still be read with pleasure.
MACBETH'S WITCHES
From the Chronicles >
SHO
HORTLY after happened a strange and uncouth wonder, which
afterward was the cause of much trouble in the realm of
Scotland, as ye shall after hear. It fortuned as Makbeth
and Banquho journeyed towards Fores, where the King then lay,
they went sporting by the way together without other company
save only themselves, passing through the woods and fields, when
suddenly in the middest of a laund there met them three women
in strange and wild apparel, resembling creatures of the elder
world, whom when they attentively beheld, wondering much at
the sight, the first of them spake and said:-
"All hail Makbeth, thane of Glammis! »
## p. 7447 (#249) ###########################################
RAPHAEL HOLINSHED
7447
(For he had lately entered into that office by the death of his
father Sinell. ) The second of them said:-
"Hail Makbeth, thane of Cawder! "
-
But the third said:
"All hail Makbeth, that hereafter shall be King of Scotland! ”
Then Banquho: "What manner of women >>>
«<
(saith he) are
you that seem so little favourable unto me, whereas to my fellow
here, besides high offices, ye assign also the kingdom, appointing
forth nothing for me at all? " "Yes" (saith the first of them),
«< we promise greater benefits unto thee than unto him: for he
shall reign indeed, but with an unlucky end; neither shall he
leave any issue behind him to succeed in his place; when cer-
tainly thou indeed shalt not reign at all, but of thee those shall
be born which shall govern the Scottish kingdom by long order
of continual descent. " Herewith the fore said women vanished
immediately out of their sight. This was reputed at the first but
some vain fantastical illusion by Makbeth and Banquho, insomuch
that Banquho would call Makbeth in jest, King of Scotland,
and Makbeth again would call him in sport likewise, father of
many kings. But afterwards the common opinion was, that these
women were either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would say)
the goddesses of destiny, or else some nymphs or fairies, indued
with knowledge of prophecie by their necromatical science, be-
cause everything came to pass as they had spoken.
THE MURDER OF THE YOUNG PRINCES
From the Chronicles'
Κ
ING RICHARD after his coronation, taking his way to Glouces-
ter to visit (in his new honour) the town of which he bare
the name of his old, devised (as he rode) to fulfil the
things which he before had intended. And forsomuch that his
mind gave him, that his nephews living, men would not reckon
that he could have right to the realm; he thought therefore
without delay to rid them, as though the killing of his kinsmen
could amend his cause and make him a kindly king. Whereupon
he sent one Sir John Greene (whom he specially trusted) to Sir
Robert Brackenbury, Constable of the Tower, with a letter and
## p. 7448 (#250) ###########################################
7448
RAPHAEL HOLINSHED
credence also, that the same Sir Robert should in any wise put
the children to death.
Sir John Greene did his errand unto Brackenbury, kneeling
before our Lady in the Tower, who plainly answered that he
would never put them to death to die therefore. With which
answer John Greene returning, recounted the same to King Rich-
ard at Warwick yet in his way. Wherewith he took such dis-
pleasure and thought, that the same night he said unto a secret
page of his: "Ah, whom shall a man trust? Those that I have
brought up myself, those that I had weened would most surely
me-even those fail me, and at my commandment will
do nothing for me. "
serve
"Sir" (said his page), "there lieth one on your pallet without,
that I dare well say, to do your Grace pleasure, the thing were
right hard that he would refuse. " Meaning by this Sir James
Tirrell, which was a man of right goodly personage, and for
nature's gifts worthy to have served a much better prince, if he
had well served God, and by grace obtained as much truth and
good-will as he had strength and wit.
The man had a high heart, and sore longed upwards, not ris-
ing yet so fast as he had hoped; being hindered and kept under
by the means of Sir Richard Ratcliffe and Sir William Catesby,
which longing for no more partners of the prince's favour; and
namely, not for him whose pride they wist would bear no peer,
kept him by secret drifts out of all secret trust; which thing
this page well had marked and known. Wherefore this occasion
offered of very special friendship, he took his time to put him
forward, and by such wise to do him good that all the enemies
he had (except the Devil) could never have done him so much.
hurt. For upon this page's words King Richard arose (for this
communication had he sitting apart in his own chamber) and
came out into the pallet chamber, on which he found in bed Sir
James and Sir Thomas Tirrells, of person like, and brethren in
blood, but nothing akin in conditions.
Then said the King merrily to them: "What Sirs, be ye in
bed so soon? " and calling up Sir James, brake to him secretly
his mind in this mischievous matter. In which he found him
nothing strange. Wherefore on the morrow he sent him to
Brackenbury with a letter, by which he was commanded to de-
liver Sir James all the keys of the Tower for one night, to the
end he might there accomplish the king's pleasure in such things
## p. 7449 (#251) ###########################################
RAPHAEL HOLINSHED
7449
as he had given him commandment. After which letter delivered,
and the keys received, Sir James appointed the night next ensu-
ing to destroy them, devising before and preparing the means.
The prince (as soon as the Protector left that name and took
himself as King) had it showed unto him that he should not
reign, but his uncle should have the crown. At which word the
prince, sore abashed, began to sigh, and said: "Alas, I would my
uncle would let me have my life yet, though I lose my kingdom. "
Then he that told him the tale used him with good words,
and put him in the best comfort he could. But forthwith was
the prince and his brother both shut up, and all other removed
from them, only one (called Black Will or William Slaughter)
excepted, set to serve them and see them sure. After which
time the prince never tied his points nor aught wrought of him-
self, but with that young babe his brother lingered with thought
and heaviness, until this traitorous death delivered them of that
wretchedness. For Sir James Tirrell devised that they should be
murdered in their beds. To the execution whereof he appointed
Miles Forrest, one of the four that kept them, a fellow fleshed in
murder before time. To him he joined one John Dighton, his
own horse-keeper, a big, broad, square, and strong knave.
Then all the other being removed from them, this Miles For-
rest and John Dighton, about midnight (the seely children lying
in their beds), came to the chamber, and suddenly lapping them
up among the clothes, so too bewrapped them and entangled
them, keeping down by force the feather bed and pillows hard
unto their mouths, that within a while, smothered and stifled,
their breath failing, they gave up to God their innocent souls
into the joys of Heaven, leaving to the tormentors their bodies
dead in the bed. Which after that the wretches perceived, first
by the struggling with the pains of death, and after long lying
still, to be thoroughly dead, they laid their bodies naked out upon
the bed, and fetched Sir James to see them; which upon the
sight of them caused those murderers to bury them at the stair-
foot, meetly deep in the ground, under a great heap of stones.
Then rode Sir James in great haste to King Richard, and
shewed him all the manner of the murder; who gave him great
thanks, and (as some say) there made him knight. But he allowed
not (as I have heard) the burying in so vile a corner, saying that
he would have them buried in a better place, because they were
a king's sons. Lo, the honorable courage of a king! Whereupon.
## p. 7450 (#252) ###########################################
7450
RAPHAEL HOLINSHED
they say that a priest of Sir Robert Brackenbury's took up the
bodies again and secretly enterred them in such place as, by the
occasion of his death which only knew it, could never since come
to light. Very truth is it and well known, that at such time as
Sir James Tirrell was in the Tower for treason committed against
the most famous prince King Henry the Seventh, both Dighton
and he were examined and confessed the murder in manner
above written; but whither the bodies were removed they could
nothing tell.
And thus (as I have learned of them that must know and
little cause had to lie) were these two noble princes, these inno-
cent tender children, born of most royal blood, brought up in
great wealth, likely long to live, reign, and rule in the realm, by
traitorous tyranny taken, deprived of their estate, shortly shut
up in prison and privily slain and murdered, their bodies cast
God wot where, by the cruel ambition of their unnatural uncle
and his despiteous tormentors: which things on every part well
pondered, God never gave this world a more notable example,
neither in what unsurety standeth this worldly weal; or what
mischief worketh the proud enterprise of an high heart; or finally
what wretched end ensueth such despiteous cruelty.
For first, to begin with the ministers, Miles Forrest at St.
Martins piecemeal rotted away. Dighton indeed yet walketh on
alive, in good possibility to be hanged yet ere he die. But Sir
James Tirrell died at the Tower Hill, beheaded for treason. King
Richard himself, as ye shall hereafter hear, slain in the field,
hacked and hewed of his enemies' hands, harried on horseback
dead, his hair in despite torn and tugged like a cur dog; and the
mischief that he took within less than three years of the mischief
that he did; and yet all (in the meantime) spent in much pain.
and trouble outward, much fear, anguish, and sorrow within.
He never thought himself sure. Where he went abroad his
eyes whirled about, his body privily fenced, his hand ever upon
his dagger, his countenance and manner like one always ready
to strike again, he took ill rest o' nights, lay long waking and
musing, sore wearied with care and watch, rather slumbered than
slept, much troubled with fearful dreams, suddenly sometimes
start up, leapt out of his bed and ran about the chamber: so was
his restless heart continually tossed and tumbled with the tedious.
impression and stormy remembrance of his abominable deeds.
## p. 7451 (#253) ###########################################
7451
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
(1819-1881)
HEN Josiah Gilbert Holland, returning to Springfield, Massa-
chusetts, at the age of thirty, there met Mr. Samuel Bowles
and became his co-worker on the Springfield Republican, he
found at last a fitting opportunity for his talent. Up to that time
he had drearily struggled with poverty, and bravely tried in many
ways to earn his living. His father, the original of the well-known
poem 'Daniel Gray,' had inventive power but no practical ability,
and drifted with his family from town to town in search of work.
Josiah, born at Belchertown, Massachusetts,
in 1819, early learned the necessity of self-
support. He was eagerly ambitious of edu-
cation and a professional career; and in spite
of many obstacles he entered the North-
ampton High School, although ill health pre-
vented him from finishing the course. When
twenty-one he began the study of medicine,
and in 1844 was graduated with honor from
the Berkshire Medical College.
JOSIAH G. HOLLAND
The years that followed were discoura-
ging, for patients did not come to the young
doctor. With true Yankee versatility he
turned his hand to anything,-taught dis-
trict school, was a traveling writing-master,
and a daguerreotypist. Of his boyish mortification at being a mill
hand he has told us in 'Arthur Bonnicastle. ' For a year he was
superintendent of education at Vicksburg, Mississippi. He tried edi-
torial work, and started the Bay State Courier, which ran for six
months. All these varied experiences gave him the knowledge of
American life and appreciation of workaday struggles which later
made the value of his poems, essays, and novels. It was largely due
to his influence that the Springfield Republican became so widely
known and popular a journal. In it his 'Letters to Young People
Married and Single: By Timothy Titcomb' first attracted readers by
their vivacious style, moral sincerity, and good common-sense. Later.
in book form, they had a great and immediate success.
In 1870 Dr. Holland was one of the founders and became editor
of Scribner's Monthly, later the Century Magazine, and retained the
## p. 7452 (#254) ###########################################
7452
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
editorship until his death in 1881. Here, as in all his work, he
showed his conscious purpose to be a helpful moral influence to his
readers.
Dr. Holland's novels, Arthur Bonnicastle (1873), (Sevenoaks'
(1876), and Nicholas Minturn' (1877), although showing his quick
and sympathetic observation and containing fine passages, have been
far less popular than his poems. The latter, in their constant appeal
to moral sense, and in their accurate depiction of the homely and
picturesque in New England life, found many lovers. Several of the
short lyrics, with 'Bittersweet' (1858), 'Katrina' (1868), and 'The Mis-
tress of the Manse' (1871), came as messages from a true American
poet who understood and honored his own people.
CRADLE SONG
From 'Bittersweet: A Poem. Copyright 1886, by Elizabeth L. Holland
HAT is the little one thinking about?
Very wonderful things, no doubt!
Unwritten history!
WHAT
Unfathomed mystery!
Yet he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks,
And chuckles and crows, and nods and winks,
As if his head were as full of kinks
And curious riddles as any sphinx!
Warped by colic, and wet by tears,
Punctured by pins, and tortured by fears,
Our little nephew will lose two years;
And he'll never know
Where the summers go;-
He need not laugh, for he'll find it so!
-
Who can tell what a baby thinks?
Who can follow the gossamer links
By which the mannikin feels his way
Out from the shore of the great unknown,
Blind, and wailing, and alone,
Into the light of day?
Out from the shore of the unknown sea,
Tossing in pitiful agony;
Of the unknown sea that reels and rolls,
Specked with the barks of little souls,-
Barks that were launched on the other side,
And slipped from heaven on an ebbing tide!
## p. 7453 (#255) ###########################################
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
7453
What does he think of his mother's eyes?
What does he think of his mother's hair?
What of the cradle-roof that flies
Forward and backward through the air?
What does he think of his mother's breast,
Bare and beautiful, smooth and white,—
Seeking it ever with fresh delight,
Cup of his life and couch of his rest?
What does he think when her quick embrace
Presses his hand and buries his face
Deep where the heart-throbs sink and swell
With a tenderness she can never tell,
Though she murmur the words
Of all the birds-
Words she has learned to murmur well?
Now he thinks he'll go to sleep!
I can see the shadow creep
Over his eyes, in soft eclipse,
Over his brow, and over his lips,
Out to his little finger-tips!
Softly sinking, down he goes!
Down he goes! Down he goes!
See! He is hushed in sweet repose!
THE SONG OF THE CIDER
From Bittersweet: A Poem. Copyright 1886, by Elizabeth L. Holland,
IXTEEN barrels of cider
SIXTE
Ripening all in a row!
Open the vent-channels wider!
See the froth, drifted like snow,
Blown by the tempest below!
Those delectable juices
Flowed through the sinuous sluices
Of sweet springs under the orchard;
Climbed into fountains that chained them,
Dripped into cups that retained them,
And swelled till they dropped, and we gained them.
Then they were gathered and tortured
By passage from hopper to vat,
And fell — every apple crushed flat.
Ah! how the bees gathered round them
And how delicious they found them!
## p. 7454 (#256) ###########################################
7454
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
Oat-straw, as fragrant as clover,
Was platted, and smoothly turned over,
Weaving a neatly ribbed basket;
And as they built up the casket,
In went the pulp by the scoop-full,
Till the juice flowed by the stoup-full,-
Filling the half of a puncheon
While the men swallowed their luncheon.
Pure grew the stream with the stress
Of the lever and screw,
Till the last drops from the press
Were as bright as the dew.
There were these juices spilled;
There were these barrels filled;
Sixteen barrels of cider-
Ripening all in a row!
Open the vent-channels wider!
See the froth, drifted like snow,
Blown by the tempest below!
-
WANTED
From The Complete Poetical Writings of Dr. J. G. Holland. ' Copyright
1879, by Charles Scribner's Sons
OD give us men! A time like this demands
G Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready
hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor, men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue,
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking:
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife,-lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps!
## p. 7455 (#257) ###########################################
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
7455
DANIEL GRAY
From The Complete Poetical Writings of Dr. J. G. Holland. Copyright
1879, by Charles Scribner's Sons
F I SHALL ever win the home in heaven
IT
For whose sweet rest I humbly hope and pray,
In the great company of the forgiven
I shall be sure to find old Daniel Gray.
I knew him well: in truth, few knew him better;
For my young eyes oft read for him the Word,
And saw how meekly from the crystal letter
He drank the life of his beloved Lord.
Old Daniel Gray was not a man who lifted
On ready words his freight of gratitude;
Nor was he called as one among the gifted,
In the prayer-meetings of his neighborhood.
He had a few old-fashioned words and phrases,
Linked in with sacred texts and Sunday rhymes;
And I suppose that in his prayers and graces
I've heard them all at least a thousand times.
I see him now, his form, his face, his motions,
His homespun habit, and his silver hair,—
And hear the language of his trite devotions,
Rising behind the straight-backed kitchen chair.
-
I can remember how the sentence sounded.
"Help us, O Lord, to pray and not to faint! »
And how the "conquering-and-to-conquer" rounded
The loftier aspirations of the saint.
He had some notions that did not improve him:
He never kissed his children - so they say;
And finest scenes and fairest flowers would move him
Less than a horseshoe picked up in the way.
He had a hearty hatred of oppression,
And righteous words for sin of every kind:
Alas, that the transgressor and transgression
Were linked so closely in his honest mind!
He could see naught but vanity in beauty,
And naught but weakness in a fond caress,
## p. 7456 (#258) ###########################################
7456
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
And pitied men whose views of Christian duty
Allowed indulgence in such foolishness.
Yet there were love and tenderness within him;
And I am told that when his Charley died,
Nor nature's need nor gentle words could win him
From his fond vigils at the sleeper's side.
And when they came to bury little Charley,
They found fresh dew-drops sprinkled in his hair,
And on his breast a rosebud gathered early,—
And guessed, but did not know, who placed it there.
Honest and faithful, constant in his calling,
Strictly attendant on the means of grace,
Instant in prayer, and fearful most of falling,
Old Daniel Gray was always in his place.
A practical old man, and yet a dreamer,
He thought that in some strange, unlooked-for way
His mighty Friend in heaven, the great Redeemer,
Would honor him with wealth some golden day.
This dream he carried in a hopeful spirit
Until in death his patient eye grew dim,
And his Redeemer called him to inherit
The heaven of wealth long garnered up for him.
So, if I ever win the home in heaven
For whose sweet rest I humbly hope and pray,
In the great company of the forgiven
I shall be sure to find old Daniel Gray.
## p. 7456 (#259) ###########################################
## p. 7456 (#260) ###########################################
DOOHOOOOOOOOOO
S
梭
B
O. W. HOLMES.
D
R
40
Gresah
OHOH!
30
16
P
## p. 7456 (#261) ###########################################
## p. 7456 (#262) ###########################################
## p. 7457 (#263) ###########################################
7457
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
(1809-1894).
BY MRS. JAMES T. FIELDS
Liver Wendell HOLMES was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
in the year 1809, under the shadow-or the sunshine, shall
we say? of Harvard University. "I remember that week
well," the doctor wrote in after years: "for something happened to
me once at that time; namely, I was born. " "Nature was active that
year," says his biographer, "like a stirred volcano; casting forth also
upon the world Gladstone, Tennyson, Darwin, and Abraham Lincoln. "
The discovery of a pile of old almanacs belonging to his father gave
Dr. Holmes, late in life, a whimsical view of his own birthday. "I
took up that for the year 1809: opposite a certain date was an aster-
isk, and a note below consisting of four letters, thus:-
August 27
«<
28
«<
29*
«<
30
* Son b.
My father thus recorded my advent; and after he wrote the four let-
ters, according to his wont, he threw black sand upon them to keep
them from blotting. I am looking at it now, and there the black
sand glistens still. "
Dr. Holmes even went so far as to have the page photographed,
and never failed to regard the brief memorandum with a kind of odd
pathos.
He came of the Brahmin caste of New England, to quote a phrase
of his own invention: his father being a minister of the old-fashioned
severe type of that period; while his mother was a lady, he once
wrote, bred in quite a different atmosphere from that of the strait-
laced Puritanism. She was a bright, vivacious woman, of small size,
sprightly manners, and good education. She lived to a great age,
a quaint figure, youthful and sympathetic to the end. "Like a faith-
ful wife as she was," her son says, "she sobered her pleasant coun-
tenance and sat down to hear us recite of justification,' 'adoption,'
XIII-467
## p. 7458 (#264) ###########################################
7458
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
I was
and 'sanctification,' and the rest of the programme.
given to questionings, and my mind early revolted. » Those who
knew Dr. Holmes's father and mother well, say there was more of
the intellectual character of the mother than of the father in him.
There was a human and humane side to his mother, something akin
to her neighbors because of their common humanity; a simple trait
of kindly interest in all who drew within the scope of their acquaint-
ance, which also belonged to her son and made him what he became.
The simplicity of the life of a minister's family in the Cambridge of
that period was very unlike anything we know to-day, when Cam-
bridge has become a large city; and it is difficult to believe so few
years have passed since boyish rambles were carried on in the very
heart of what is now a town.
Dr. Holmes's writings, of course, give something more than a hint
of these conditions: we are made to see them pretty clearly; but
there is nothing in the life of old England which is a match for
them,- nothing by which men nurtured under different conditions
can estimate the advantages and drawbacks of the New England of
that time. The men of his day were not nursed in letters; there
was no Eton, and no Bluecoat School to which the younger boys
were sent. They stayed at home and learned their first lessons, but
they frequently studied on the principle of some church-goers who
trust that an hour on Sunday will give them absolution for a week of
indulgence: studying served by the way, as it were; a kind of toll-
gate to be passed before the good things of life set in.
The boys
of those days chopped wood, made fires, ran errands, skated, birds'-
nested, or went nutting, according to the seasons. Their heads were
not burthened by breathing a scholastic atmosphere. But if the edu-
cation to a life of literature was wanting, the finer inciters to true
thought and life were not wanting. "My birth chamber," writes Dr.
Holmes, "and the places most familiar to my early years, looked out
to the west. My sunsets were as beautiful as any poet could ask
for. Between my chamber and the sunset were hills covered with
trees, from amid which peeped out here and there the walls of a
summer mansion, which my imagination turned into a palace. "
His scheme of life did not readily mature. At school in Andover,
and while in Harvard College, he was totally undecided what to
study. " "It will be law or physick," he wrote, "for I cannot say
that I think the trade of authorship quite adapted to this meridian. "
It is very curious to see how his mind wavered between these
three careers. Neither Lowell nor Longfellow appears to have been
detained for an instant from the pursuit of literature by "the merid-
ian"! But Dr. Holmes was not a great reader; he was not trained,
as we have said, in a home atmosphere of letters, and it was like
## p. 7459 (#265) ###########################################
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
7459
putting to sea in an untrimmed boat. On the whole, the law pre-
sented itself to his mind as possessing the largest advantages to a
man of gifts; and after leaving college in 1829 he decided to devote
a year to that study. He says of himself, in reverting to this period:
"I had been busy, more or less, with the pages of Blackstone and
Chitty and other text-books of legal study. More or less, I say, but
I am afraid it was less rather than more. For during that year I
first tasted the intoxicating pleasure of authorship. A college period-
ical conducted by friends of mine, still undergraduates, tempted me
into print; and there is no form of lead poisoning which more rap-
idly and thoroughly pervades the blood and bones and marrow than
that which reaches the young author through mental contact with
type-metal. . . What determined me to give up law and apply
myself to medicine I can hardly say; but I had from the first looked
upon that year's study as an experiment. "
It appears that his second choice of profession, although most con-
scientiously followed and always considered by him as final, was not
the career which was to make his name and fame nor his modest
fortune. One might say even more: a certain turn for or faith in
science was a substratum of his mind. He loved to see the proof of
what his imagination or that of other men had suggested. In this
we are reminded of Shelley, who said once that whatever the imagina-
tion of a man can see clearly, the man can reproduce in words. Dr.
Holmes looked askance at what could not be proved; and his study
of medicine enlarged his intellectual sphere. He was immediately
associated in Paris with the most distinguished scientists of his day,
who doubtless found their eager pupil very engaging. He had an
overwhelming distaste for many details of his profession; but as the
years went on, he found his place on the scientific rather than the
more immediately practical side of his profession. He was chosen
professor and lecturer to the Harvard Medical School, a position
which he filled for thirty-five years, only relinquishing it when age
gave him warning against over-fatigue.
Dr. Holmes did not wish in after years to recognize his first lit-
erary ventures, which were even earlier than the year of his law
studies. The Spectre Pig' and a few other juvenile verses had
actually found their way into print, but he never looked upon them
with favor. He understood himself well enough to recognize that
year in the law school as the moment of his first poetic inspiration.
The frigate Constitution was at that time lying in the Navy Yard
at Charlestown. Dr. Holmes saw a paragraph in a newspaper say-
ing that the ship was condemned by the Navy Department to be
destroyed. He was
on fire at the idea; with a pencil hurriedly
writing down his verses 'Old Ironsides' on a scrap of paper, he soon
## p. 7460 (#266) ###########################################
7460
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
wrought them into shape and sent them to a Boston newspaper.
They flew from end to end of the country; were reprinted on slips
and distributed in the streets of Washington. The old man-of-war
was saved, and the country learned the name of Oliver Wendell
Holmes, a young law student in Cambridge, for the first time.
Edward Everett Hale, a man who is an electric storage-battery of
thought to the men of his time, long ago said that "every man should
have his vocation and his avocation. » For many years Dr. Holmes
looked upon his profession as the vocation of his life and literature
as his avocation; but by degrees, and perhaps without acknowledg-
ment to himself, the tables were gradually turned, and the pen-point
became his weapon with which to front the world.
After returning from his studies in Paris and putting up his sign
as a physician in Boston, he found himself, while waiting "for the
smallest favors or fevers," again writing verses. There was some-
thing about his self-occupied yet gay boyishness which did not incline
the hypochondriac to face such strong sunshine. Whatever the reasons
may have been, his calls as a physician were few and his verses were
many. The Last Leaf' among others was written in this pause;
and at the end of a twelvemonth he was so unwise, from a profes-
sional point of view, as to publish a volume. In brief, his light
was one not to be concealed. His quickness of sympathy and readi-
ness of expression marked him immediately as the spokesman of
great occasions. He was invited to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa poem
of 1836, and from this date there was probably never a year of his
life without invitations to perform some such service, public or pri-
vate. What is still more important to record as a part of literary
history, his prose style was beginning to take form. He took prizes
for medical essays and dissertations. "It is somewhat pleasant," he
wrote this same year of 1836, "to have cut out a fifty-dollar prize
under the guns of two old blazers, who have each of them swamped
their competitors in preceding trials. " In 1834 his essay on 'The
Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever' marked him to the eyes of the
scientific world as a man of original thought and careful but deter-
mined expression of the truth. The qualities which distinguished
him afterward in the larger world of letters were then slowly acknowl-
edged for the first time by men of science. In after years he referred
to this experience in The Professor at the Breakfast-Table': -
"When, by the permission of Providence, I held up to the professional
public the damnable facts connected with the conveyance of poison
from one young mother's chamber to another's,- for doing which
humble office I desire to be thankful that I have lived, though noth-
ing else good should ever come of my life, I had to hear the sneers
of those whose position I had assailed, and as I believe, have at last
## p. 7461 (#267) ###########################################
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
7461
demolished, so that nothing but the ghosts of dead women stir among
the ruins. "
«<
Among Dr. Holmes's early writings were two prose essays pub-
lished in the New England Magazine, which lived briefly from 1831
to 1835. They bore the title of The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table';
but they appeared afterward to the author as early windfalls," and
he was not willing to incorporate them among his acknowledged
works, except as he acknowledges and quotes from them in one of
his prefaces to the 'Autocrat' of 1857. Whether Lowell had seen
these papers, or whether he judged what Dr. Holmes could do from
his scientific productions and his incomparable conversation, no one
can say; but when the Atlantic Monthly was launched, and a little
later Lowell was asked to become its editor, he made one condition:
"that Dr. Holmes should be the first contributor to be engaged. ”
"I looked at the old Portfolio," said Dr. Holmes, "and said to myself,
'Too late! too late! '" But Lowell insisted-otherwise there would
be no Atlantic; and Dr. Holmes yielded. "Lowell," he wrote after-
ward, "woke me from a kind of literary lethargy in which I was half
slumbering, to call me to active service. " Dr. Holmes's genius, as
seen in the 'Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table,' will carry his name
down the tide of time. It was succeeded by nine volumes of prose,
interrupted only by what now amounts to three volumes of verse,
making thirteen volumes of his complete works. It is, even in quan-
tity, no small showing, when we recall in addition his thirty-five
years of medical professorship. Dr. Holmes was no idler: he loved
to work and to do his work well. He scorned no expenditure of time
in order to find the right word and to bring his verse into accurate
form.
In 1840 Dr. Holmes married Amelia Lee Jackson, a woman exqui-
sitely adapted to make him happy. She was not beautiful, nor in
common phrase a woman of society; but she possessed a refinement,
a wit, a charm, a power of self-forgetfulness, which were all her own.
She was known to a small circle only, but wherever she allowed her-
self the opportunity to know and be known, she was beloved.
There were three children; only one of whom, Judge Holmes, sur-
vives his father. Dr. Holmes suffered the pain of seeing his wife and
a son and daughter go before him. Nevertheless life was very sweet
to him, and he bore the trials of age cheerfully, dying October 7th,
1894. He wrote once to Lowell: "Life is never monotonous, abso-
lutely, to me. I am a series of surprises to myself in the changes
that years and ripening, and it may be a still further process which
I need not name, bring about. The movement onward is like chan-
ging place in a picture gallery,- the light fades from this picture
and falls on that; . . but what a strange thing life is, when you
.
## p. 7462 (#268) ###########################################
7462
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
have waded in up to your neck and remember the shelving sands you
have trodden! "
But all the writing in the world about Dr. Holmes appears totally
inefficient to represent his delightful ebullient spirit, freshening and
sweetening every subject that he touched. The world soon found
that a new wit was astir under the old pudding-stone, and that wit
they could not do without. Every year, from 1851 until just before
the end, he wrote and read class poem; every dinner-table in Bos-
ton aspired to listen to his words; every occasion of importance called
for his presence. Loving and beloved, he passed on his cheerful way.
The cabman who drove him, the maid who put on his shoes, every
one who performed the slightest service for him, loved him. No
wonder life was not all dark to the one who shed such sunshine.
Annie Fields
[All the works of Oliver Wendell Holmes from which the following selec-
tions are taken are copyrighted. The reprint is made by permission of
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers, Boston. ]
OLD IRONSIDES*
Y, TEAR her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
Α΄
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;-
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.
-
Her deck once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood
And waves were white below,
-
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee; —
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
*This was the popular name by which the frigate Constitution was known.
The poem was first printed in the Boston Daily Advertiser, at the time when
it was proposed to break up the old ship as unfit for service.
## p. 7463 (#269) ###########################################
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
7463
Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave:
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!
I
THE LAST LEAF
SAW him once before,
As he passed by the door;
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.
They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.
But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan;
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone. "
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
My grandmamma has said
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago-
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow.
-
## p. 7464 (#270) ###########################################
7464
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff;
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!
And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.
ON LENDING A PUNCH-BOWL
THIS
HIS ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times,
Of joyous days and jolly nights, and merry Christmas-times;
They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true,
Who dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new.
A Spanish galleon brought the bar,-so runs the ancient tale:
'Twas hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail;
And now and then between the strokes, for fear his strength should
fail,
He wiped his brow and quaffed a cup of good old Flemish ale.
'Twas chased by an English squire to please his loving dame,
Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a longing for the same;
And oft as on the ancient stock another twig was found,
'Twas filled with caudle spiced and hot, and handed smoking round.
But, changing hands, it reached at length a Puritan divine,
Who used to follow Timothy, and take a little wine,
But hated punch and prelacy; and so it was, perhaps,
He went to Leyden, where he found conventicles and schnapps.
## p. 7465 (#271) ###########################################
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
7465
And then, of course, you know what's next: it left the Dutchman's
shore
With those that in the Mayflower came, a hundred souls and more,
Along with all the furniture to fill their new abodes-
To judge by what is still on hand, at least a hundred loads.
'Twas on a dreary winter's eve, the night was closing dim,
When brave Miles Standish took the bowl, and filled it to the brim;
The little Captain stood and stirred the posset with his sword,
And all his sturdy men-at-arms were ranged about the board.
He poured the fiery Hollands in,- the man that never feared,-
He took a long and solemn draught, and wiped his yellow beard;
And one by one the musketeers-the men that fought and prayed —
All drank as 'twere their mother's milk, and not a man afraid.
That night, affrighted, from his nest the screaming eagle flew,-
He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the soldier's wild halloo;
And there the sachem learned the rule he taught to kith and kin,
"Run from the white man when you find he smells of Hollands gin! "
A hundred years, and fifty more, had spread their leaves and snows,
A thousand rubs had flattened down each little cherub's nose,
When once again the bowl was filled, but not in mirth or joy,—
'Twas mingled by a mother's hand to cheer her parting boy.
"Drink, John," she said: "'twill do you good,—poor child, you'll never
bear
This working in the dismal trench, out in the midnight air;
And if - God bless me! - you were hurt, 'twould keep away the chill. "
So John did drink —and well he wrought that night at Bunker's Hill!
I tell you, there was generous warmth in good old English cheer;
I tell you, 'twas a pleasant thought to bring its symbol here.
'Tis but the fool that loves excess: hast thou a drunken soul?
Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my silver bowl!
TL
I love the memory of the past,-its pressed yet fragrant flow
The moss that clothes its broken walls, the ivy on its tower. ,"
Nay, this poor bauble it bequeathed,—my eyes grow moist and dim,
To think of all the vanished joys that danced around its brim.
Then fill a fair and honest cup, and bear it straight to me:
The goblet hallows all it holds, whate'er the liquid be;
And may the cherubs on its face protect me from the sin
That dooms one to those dreadful words, "My dear, where have you
been? »
## p. 7466 (#272) ###########################################
7466
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS
THIS
HIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,-
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:-
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
## p. 7467 (#273) ###########################################
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
7467
THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE
OR, THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS SHAY"
A Logical Story
H
AVE you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it—ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay:
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits-
Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five:
Georgius Secundus was then alive,—
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock's army was done so brown,
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.
Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always somewhere a weakest spot,—
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,- lurking still,
Find it somewhere you must and will,-
Above or below, or within or without,
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
That a chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out.
But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,
With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou")
He would build one shay to beat the taown
'N' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun';
It should be so built that it couldn' break daown:
«< Fur," said the Deacon, "t's mighty plain
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;
'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain,
Is only jest
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest. ”
## p. 7468 (#274) ###########################################
7468
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,—
That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees;
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"
Last of its timber, - they couldn't sell 'em,—
Never an axe had seen their chips,
And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Thoroughbrace, bison-skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he "put her through. ”
"There! " said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew. "
Do! I tell you, I rather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and deaconess dropped away,
Children and grandchildren where were they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake day!
-
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED; -it came and found
The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hundred increased by ten;-
"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came;-
Running as usual; much the same.
Thirty and forty at last arrive,
And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.
-
-
Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it. You're welcome. - No extra charge. )
## p. 7469 (#275) ###########################################
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
7469
FIRST OF NOVEMBER,- the Earthquake day:
There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay;
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local, as one may say.
There couldn't be,- for the Deacon's art
Had made it so like in every part
That there wasn't a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the whipple-tree neither less nor more,
And the back crossbar as strong as the fore,
And spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be worn out!
First of November, 'Fifty-five!
This morning the parson takes a drive.
Now, small boys, get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay,
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
"Huddup! " said the parson. -Off went they.
The parson was working his Sunday's text;
Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed
At what the-Moses-was coming next.
