OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 559 



only to outsiders, but to New Englanders themselves, to stand for all 

 that was most their own. If a man can be said to be a community, 

 Holmes was New England. 



Recognition began, unlike the proverbial prophet, with those near- 

 est him. Chosen class-poet before graduation, he remained class-poet 

 his whole life long, poet of the now historic Class of '29. Distin- 

 guished as the class was, Holmes's verses have carved for it a peculiar 

 niche in the long gallery of commemorated class fame. These poems 

 form a remarkable anthology. They extend over a period of sixty 

 years, but the most striking point about them is the way in which each 

 falls naturally into its place in the series as if designed to do so. There 

 could be no greater witness to the fundamental fitness of each to its 

 occasion. Reflected there we seem to see the class grow up, grow on, 

 grow old. Pleasantry at the beginning slowly gives place to pathos 

 toward the close. Yet, true mirror of life, neither is wholly absent ; 

 it is but a little more of the one, a little less of the other, as the pro- 

 cession of the years passes on. In these verses, too, we note with pe- 

 culiar force that apotheosizing of the local which seems so easy and is 

 so hard. Written for his fellows, their tellingness at the time loses 

 none of its appositeness when retold in print to another generation of 

 men. It is this carrying quality in his verse that marks, not afore- 

 thought, but something much deeper, the unconscious fulness of the 

 thought itself. It was not meant to be universal : but it was univer- 

 sal because it was meant. 



Passing on to his poems generally, we find at every turn proof of 

 their New England stuff ; and, as New England was and largely still 

 is representative of America, proof of their national character. First, 

 in their wit. The New Englander is emphatically witty ; to him life 

 itself is a sort of do\ihle entente. " Maybe to say one thing and mean 

 another comes nat'ral to women " ; certainly to say a thing by not 

 saying it comes natural to the New Englander. Both quick and sen- 

 sitive, he shies from direct statement as being both dangerous and dull. 

 His conversation is of the nature of an intellectual wrestling match, in 

 which his chief object is to give no hold to his opponent. Further- 

 more, he lives in a new country, in which he is constantly encountering 

 the unexpected, and in consequence the unexpected reflects itself in 

 his speech. Now of this all-pervasive humor Holmes is the embodi- 

 ment. Of all our poets he most is the exponent of the unexpected. 

 Consult him passim for proof of it ; then compare him with others, 

 and the reader shall find that, to quote substantially unchanged his 

 own words about another, 



