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Personal Sketches and Tributes
Oliver Wendell Holmes

by John Greenleaf Whittier

     On the occasion of the seventy-fifth birthday of Dr. Holmes The
     Critic of New York collected personal tributes from friends and
     admirers of that author.  My own contribution was as follows:--


Poet, essayist, novelist, humorist, scientist, ripe scholar, and wise philosopher, if Dr. Holmes does not, at the present time, hold in popular estimation the first place in American literature, his rare versatility is the cause. In view of the inimitable prose writer, we forget the poet; in our admiration of his melodious verse, we lose sight of Elsie Venner and The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. We laugh over his wit and humor, until, to use his own words,

     "We suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot,
     As if Wisdom's old potato could not flourish at its root;"


and perhaps the next page melts us into tears by a pathos only equalled by that of Sterne's sick Lieutenant. He is Montaigne and Bacon under one hat. His varied qualities would suffice for the mental furnishing of half a dozen literary specialists.

To those who have enjoyed the privilege of his intimate acquaintance, the man himself is more than the author. His genial nature, entire freedom from jealousy or envy, quick tenderness, large charity, hatred of sham, pretence, and unreality, and his reverent sense of the eternal and permanent have secured for him something more and dearer than literary renown,--the love of all who know him. I might say much more: I could not say less. May his life be long in the land.

Amesbury, Mass., 8th Month, 18, 1884.



WORK #8 ==================

Longfellow

     Written to the chairman of the committee of arrangements for
     unveiling the bust of Longfellow at Portland, Maine, on the poet's
     birthday, February 27, 1885.


I am sorry it is not in my power to accept the invitation of the committee to be present at the unveiling of the bust of Longfellow on the 27th instant, or to write anything worthy of the occasion in metrical form.

The gift of the Westminster Abbey committee cannot fail to add another strong tie of sympathy between two great English-speaking peoples. And never was gift more fitly bestowed. The city of Portland--the poet's birthplace, "beautiful for situation," looking from its hills on the scenery he loved so well, Deering's Oaks, the many-islanded bay and far inland mountains, delectable in sunset--needed this sculptured representation of her illustrious son, and may well testify her joy and gratitude at its reception, and repeat in so doing the words of the Hebrew prophet: "O man, greatly beloved! thou shalt stand in thy place."
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