ON THE KE-EEADING OF BOOKS 219 



that I recently opened the "Autocrat" after the 

 pages had been closed to me for over a quarter of a 

 century. To recover as far as possible the spirit of 

 the old days, I got out the identical numbers of the 

 " Atlantic " in which I had first read those sparkling 

 sentences. Life to me had the freshness and buoy- 

 ancy of the morning hours in those first years of the 

 great Boston magazine. I recall how impatiently I 

 waited for each number to appear, and how, on one 

 occasion at least, I ran all the way home from the 

 post-office with the new issue in my hand, so eager 

 was I to be alone with it in my room. I remember, 

 too, how I resented the criticism of a schoolmate, 

 then at Harvard College, who said that Holmes was 

 not the great writer I fancied him to be, but only a 

 Boston great writer. 



Well, I found places in the " Autocrat " that 

 would not bear much pressure, — thin places where 

 a lively rhetoric alone carried the mind over. And 

 I found much that was sound and solid, that would 

 not give way beneath one under any pressure he 

 could bring. 



When Dr. Holmes got hold of a real idea, as he 

 often did, he could exploit it in as taking a way as 

 any man who has lived ; but frequently, I think, he 

 got hold of sham or counterfeit ideas ; and these, 

 with all his skill in managing them, will not stand 

 the pressure of time. (His classing poems with 

 meerschaum pipes, as two things that improve with 

 use, is an instance of what I mean by his sham 

 ideas.) 



