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 equaled by that of Sterna's sick
Lieutenant.
He is
Montage 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
