The Arena | Page 6

other pages, of what I was born to say. Many things that I have said in my riper days have been aching in my soul since I was a mere child. I say aching, because they conflicted with many of my inherited beliefs, or rather traditions. I did not know then that two strains of blood were striving in me for the mastery--two! twenty, perhaps, twenty thousand, for aught I know--but represented to me by two--paternal and maternal. But I do know this: I have struck a good many chords, first and last, in the consciousness of other people. I confess to a tender feeling for my little brood of thoughts. When they have been welcomed and praised, it has pleased me, and if at any time they have been rudely handled and despitefully treated, it has cost me a little worry. I don't despise reputation, and I should like to be remembered as having said something worth lasting well enough to last."
There is much philosophy in "The Poet," and if it is less humorous than "The Autocrat," it is more profound than either of its fellows in the great trio. In it the doctor has said enough to make the reputations of half a dozen authors.
"One Hundred Days in Europe," if written by anyone else save Dr. Holmes, would, perhaps, go begging for a publisher. But he journeyed to the old land with his heart upon his sleeve. He met nearly every man and woman worth knowing, and the Court, Science, and Literature received him with open arms. He had not seen England for half a century. Fifty years before, he was an obscure young man, studying medicine, and known by scarcely half a dozen persons. He returned in 1886, a man of world-wide fame, and every hand was stretched out to do him honor, and to pay him homage. Lord Houghton,--the famous breakfast giver of his time, certainly, the most successful since the princely Rogers,--had met him in Boston years before, and had begged him again and again to cross the ocean. Letters failing to move the poet, Houghton tried verse upon him, and sent these graceful lines:--
"When genius from the furthest West, Sierra's Wilds and Poker Flat, Can seek our shores with filial zest, Why not the genial Autocrat?
"Why is this burden on us laid, That friendly London never greets The peer of Locker, Moore, and Praed From Boston's almost neighbor streets?
"His earlier and maturer powers His own dear land might well engage; We only ask a few kind hours Of his serene and vigorous age.
"Oh, for a glimpse of glorious Poe! His raven grimly answers 'never!' Will Holmes's milder muse say 'no,' And keep our hands apart forever?"
But he was not destined to see his friend. When Holmes arrived in England, Lord Houghton was in his grave, and so was Dean Stanley, whose sweetness of disposition had so charmed the autocrat, when the two men had met in Boston a few years before. Ruskin he failed to meet also, for the distinguished word-painter was ill. At a dinner, however, at Arch-Deacon Farrar's, he spent some time with Sir John Millais and Prof. John Tyndall. Of course, he saw Gladstone, Tennyson, Robert Browning, Chief Justice Coleridge, Du Maurier, the illustrator of Punch, Prof. James Bryce who wrote "The American Commonwealth," "Lord Wolseley," Britain's "Only General," "His Grace of Argyll," "Lord Lorne and the Princess Louise,"--one of the best amateur painters and sculptors in England,--and many others. Of all these noted ones, he has something bright and entertaining to say. The universities laid their highest honors at his feet. Edinburgh gave him the degree of LL.D., Cambridge that of Doctor of Letters, and Oxford conferred upon him her D. C. L., his companion on the last occasion being John Bright. It was at Oxford that he met Vice-Chancellor Benjamin Jowett, the Master of Balliol College, Prof. Max Müller, Lord and Lady Herschell, and Prof. James Russell Lowell, his old and unvarying friend. The account of his visit to Europe is told with most engaging directness and simplicity, and though the book has no permanent value, it affords much entertainment for the time.
The reader will experience a feeling of sadness, when he takes up Dr. Holmes' last book, "Over the Tea-cups," for there are indications in the work which warn the public that the genial pen will write hereafter less frequently than usual. It is a witty and delightful book, recalling the Autocrat, the Professor, and the Poet, and yet presenting features not to be found in either. The author dwells on his advancing years, but this he does not do in a querulous fashion. He speaks of his contemporaries, and compares the ages of old trees, and over the tea-cups a thousand quaint, curious, and splendid things are