nd style of Holmes. The sensation was new,
like that of a sixth sense. The newspapers quoted from the "Autocrat;"
it was everywhere talked about, and in a short time its fame went
through the nation.

The "Autocrat" was succeeded by the "Professor" and the "Poet." The
talk of the "Professor" was somewhat more abstruse, though equally
interesting to cultivated readers. The "Poet" attacked the dogma of
the endless duration of future punishment. The "Autocrat" was easily
superior in freshness as in popularity.

Two novels also appeared--"Elsie Venner" and "The Guardian Angel."
They have undoubted merits, showing the keen thought, the descriptive
power, and the play of fancy which are so characteristic of the
author, and each has a subtle motive to which the characteristic
incidents are made subservient. But Dr. Holmes is not great as a
novelist as he is great in other things. The stories in one aspect are
ambulatory psychological problems, rather than fresh studies of
characters conceived without favoritism, with blended good and evil,
wisdom and weakness--as God creates them. To produce new types, of
universal interest, is given to few novelists. There have been
scarcely more than a score of such creators since Cadmus.

It was with some surprise that I read lately a lament that Dr. Holmes
had not written "a great novel"--a task which would have been as
unsuitable to him as to Dr. Johnson or to Montaigne. It is not a
question of a greater or less talent, but of a wholly different
talent--as distinct as metaphysics and portrait-painting. The same
critic complains because Holmes has not been "in earnest" like
Carlyle. While the genius of that great writer is indisputable, I
submit that one Carlyle in a generation is enough; another is
impossible. That rugged Titan did his appointed work with fidelity.
But is every author to lay about him with an iron flail? Is there no
place for playful satirists of manners, for essayists who dissolve
philosophy and science, who teach truth, manliness, and courtesy by
epigram, and who make life beautiful with the glow of poetry? The
magnolia cannot be the oak, although unhappy critics would have a
writer be something which he is not. It is enough that Holmes has
charmed myriads of readers who might never have felt his influence if
he had been grimly in "earnest," and that he has inculcated high
ideals of taste, character, and living.

By the time Holmes had reached his fiftieth year he