OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

On the occasion of the seventy-fifth birthday of Dr. Holmes _The
Critic of New York_ collected personal tributes from friends and
admirers of that author. My own contribution was as follows:--

Poet, essayist, novelist, humorist, scientist, ripe scholar, and wise
philosopher, if Dr. Holmes does not, at the present time, hold in popular
estimation the first place in American literature, his rare versatility
is the cause. In view of the inimitable prose writer, we forget the
poet; in our admiration of his melodious verse, we lose sight of _Elsie
Venner_ and _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_. We laugh over his wit
and humor, until, to use his own words,

"We suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot,
As if Wisdom's old potato could not flourish at its root;"

and perhaps the next page melts us into tears by a pathos only equalled
by that of Sterne's sick Lieutenant. He is Montaigne and Bacon under one
hat. His varied qualities would suffice for the mental furnishing of
half a dozen literary specialists.

To those who have enjoyed the privilege of his intimate acquaintance, the
man himself is more than the author. His genial nature, entire freedom
from jealousy or envy, quick tenderness, large charity, hatred of sham,
pretence, and unreality, and his reverent sense of the eternal and
permanent have secured for him something more and dearer than literary
renown,--the love of all who know him. I might say much more: I could
not say less. May his life be long in the land.

Amesbury, Mass., 8th Month, 18, 1884.

LONGFELLOW

Written to the chairman of the committee of arrangements for
unveiling the bust of Longfellow at Portland, Maine, on the poet's
birthday, February 27, 1885.

I am sorry it is not in my power to accept the invitation of the
committee to be present at the unveiling of the bust of Longfellow on the
27th instant, or to write anything worthy of the occasion in metrical
form.

The gift of the Westminster Abbey committee cannot fail to add another
strong tie of sympathy between two great English-speaking peoples. And
never was gift more fitly bestowed. The city of Portland--the poet's
birthplace, "beautiful for situation," looking from its hills on the
scenery he loved so well, Deering's Oaks, the many-islanded bay and far
inland mountains, delectable in sunset--needed this sculptured
representation of her