About Oliver Wendell Holmes
 HOLMES was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 29, 1809, and died October 7, 1894.
At the age of twenty he graduated at Harvard University, then took up the study of law. This study, however, was soon abandoned for medicine. He studied in Europe for a short time, and took his degree as doctor of medicine at Cambridge, in 1836. Two years later he was appointed to the chair of Anatomy and Physiology in Dartmouth College. This position he held till 1847, when he accepted a similar position at Harvard, which he held till 1892. All of his literary work was performed in addition to the labors of a continuous professorship in college of about forty-seven years.
Holmes' literary tastes were early indicated by his comic and satiric verse contributed to "The Collegian." These were excellent of their kind. In his early works, the mirth so often outweighed the sentiment as to lessen the promise and the self-prediction of his being a poet indeed. While many of his youthful stanzas are serious and elegant, those which approach the feeling of true poetry are in celebration of companionship and good cheer. He seemed to exemplify what Emerson was wont to preach, that there is honest wisdom in song and joy. He contributed numerous pieces to American periodicals, and in 1836 collected his poems into a volume. His life was not marked by any noted events, but it was like the steady movement of a great river. It grew broader and deeper in each mile of its progress. "Holmes was a shining instance of one who did solid work as a teacher and practitioner, in spite of his success in literature." "Poetry," a metrical essay, was followed by "Terpsichore," a poem; in 1846, "Urania," in 1850, "Astreea," "The Balance of Allusions," a poem. These poems were first delivered before college and literary societies.
Though the most direct and obvious of the Cambridge group, the least given to subtleties, he was our typical university poet; the minstrel of the college that bred him, and within whose liberties he taught, jested, sung, and toasted, from boyhood to what in common folk would be old age. Alma Mater was more to him than to Lowell or Longfellow, and not until he came into her estate could Harvard boast a natural songster as her laureate. Two centuries of acclimation, and some experience of liberty, probably were needed to germinate the fancy that riots in his measures. Before his day, moreover, the sons of the Puritans hardly were ripe for the doctrine that there is a time to laugh, that humor is quite as helpful a constituent of life as gravity or gloom. Provincial-wise, they at first had to receive this in its cruder form, and relished heartily the broad fun of Holmes' youthful verse. Their mirth-maker soon perceived that both fun and feeling are heightened when combined. The poet of 'The Last Leaf' was among the first to teach his countrymen that pathos is an equal part of true humor; that sorrow is lightened by jest, and jest redeemed from coarseness by emotion, under most conditions of this our evanescent human life."
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