HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL American writer and physician, was born Aug. 29, 1809, at Cambridge (Mass.), one of the "Brahmin caste of New England." From Phillips (Andover) academy he entered Harvard in the "famous class of '29," made further illustrious by the charming lyrics which he wrote for the anniversary dinners from 1851 to 1889, closing with the touching "After the Curfew." Turning next to medicine, and convinced by a brief experience in Boston that he liked it, he went to Paris in March 1833, where he studied industriously, and in his vacations visited the Low Coun tries, England, Scotland and Italy. Returning to Boston at the close of 1835, filled with a high professional ambition, he sought practice, but achieved only moderate success. Social, brilliant in conversation, and a writer of gay little poems, he seemed to the grave Bostonians not sufficiently serious. He won prizes, how ever, for professional papers, and lectured on anatomy at Dart mouth college. He wrote two trenchant and witty papers on Homoeopathy and its Kindred Delusions (1842) ; also a valuable paper on the malarial fevers of New England. In 1843 he pub lished his essay on the Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, which brought upon him bitter personal abuse; but he maintained his position with dignity, temper, and judgment; and in time he was honoured as the discoverer of a beneficent truth. The volume of his medical essays holds some of his most sparkling wit, his shrewdest observations, his kindliest humanity. In 184o he mar ried Amelia Lee Jackson, a lady of rare charm alike of mind and character. In 1847 he was appointed professor of anatomy and physiology in the Medical school of Harvard university, the du ties involving the giving of instruction also in kindred depart ments, so that, as he said, he occupied "not a chair, but a settee in the school." He delivered the lectures on anatomy until Nov. 1882, and in later years these were his only link with the med ical profession. They were fresh, witty and lively; and the stu dents were sent to him at the end of the day, when they were fagged, because he alone could keep them awake. In later years he made few finished contributions to medical knowledge ; his eager and impetuous temperament caused him to leave more pa tient investigators to push to ultimate results the suggestions thrown out by his fertile and imaginative mind.
In 1836, being in that year the Phi Beta Kappa poet at Harvard university, he published his first volume of Poems. Among these earlier lyrics was "The Last Leaf," one of his most delicate com binations of pathos and humour. In 1856-57 James Russell Lowell agreed to edit a new magazine on condition that he could secure the assistance of Holmes. Holmes, who heretofore had stood rather outside the literary coterie of Cambridge and Bos ton, accepted with pleasure. He christened the publication The Atlantic Monthly; and, as Howells afterwards said, he "not only named but made" it, for in each number of its first volume there appeared one of the papers of the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. The opening of the Autocrat : "I was just going to say when I was interrupted" is explained by the fact that in the Old New England Magazine (1831-33) Dr. Holmes had published two Autocrat papers, which, by his wish, were never reprinted. In the commercial panic of 1857 the new magazine would inevitably have failed had it not been for these fascinating essays. Their orig inality of conception, their wit and humour, their suggestions of what then seemed bold ideas, and their expression of New Eng landism, all combined to make them so popular that the most harassed merchant in that gloomy winter purchased them as a dose of cheering medicine. The Atlantic Monthly in return made Dr. Holmes. A success so immediate and so splendid settled the rest of his career; he ceased to be a physician and became an author. These 12 papers were immediately (1858) published as a volume. No sooner was the Autocrat silent than the Professor (18 59) succeeded him at the breakfast table. The Professor was preferred by more thoughtful readers, though it has not been so widely popular as the Autocrat. Twelve years later, in 1871, the Landlady had another boarder, who took the vacant chair—the Poet (1872). But here Holmes fell a little short. In these three books, especially in the Autocrat and the Professor, Holmes wrote as he talked at many a dinner table in Boston, but not so well. The animation and clash of talk roused him. The dinners of the Saturday Club are among Boston's proudest tradition, as they were the chief pleasure of Holmes's life. There he met Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Sumner, Agassiz, Motley and many other charming talkers, and among them all he was admitted to be the best.
There were characters and incidents, but hardly a story, in the Autocrat and the Professor. Holmes had an ambition for more sustained work, and in 1861 his novel, Elsie Venner, at first called The Professor's Story, was published. This was illuminated throughout by admirable pictures of character and society in the typical New England town. But the rattlesnake element was un duly extravagant, and in other respects the book was open to criticism as a work of art. It was written with the same purpose which informed the greatest part of Holmes's literary work. By heredity he was a theologian ; no other topic enchained him more than did the stern and merciless dogmas of his Calvinist fore fathers. His humanity revolted against them, his reason con demned them, and he set himself to their destruction as his task in literature. In spite of attacks made on him as a free thinker and a subverter of Christianity, he returned six years later to the same line of thought in his second novel, The Guar dian Angel (1867). This, though not so well known as Elsie Ven ner, has some of the same merits. In 1884 and 1885 it was fol lowed by A Mortal Antipathy, an inferior production.
Holmes generally held himself aloof from politics, and from those "causes" of temperance, abolition and woman's rights which enthralled most of his contemporaries in New England. The Civil War, however, aroused him for the time ; finding him first a strenuous Unionist, it quickly converted him into an ardent ad vocate of emancipation. His interest was enhanced by the career of his elder son Oliver. Holmes wrote some ringing war lyrics, and in 1863 delivered the Fourth of July oration in Boston, which showed a masterly appreciation of the stirring public questions of the day. In 1878 he paid an affectionate tribute to one who had been his dear friend, the historian John Lothrop Motley. In 1884 he contributed the life of Emerson to the American "Men of Letters" series. He admired the "Sage of Concord," but was not quite in intellectual sympathy with him. Nevertheless in spite of this handicap the volume proved very popular. In 1888 he began the papers which he happily christened Over the Tea Cups. As a tour de force on the part of a man of nearly four score years they are very remarkable.
After his return from Paris in 1835 Dr. Holmes lived in Boston, with summer sojournings at Pittsfield and Beverly Farms, and oc casional trips to neighbouring cities, until 1886. He then under took a four months' journey in Europe, and in England had a sort of triumphal progress. On his return he wrote Our Hundred Days in Europe (1887), a courteous recognition of the hospitality and praise which had been accorded to him. During this visit Cam bridge university made him Doctor of Letters, Edinburgh uni versity made him Doctor of Laws, and Oxford university made him Doctor of Civil Law. Already, in 188o, Harvard university had made him Doctor of Laws. He died on Oct. 7, 1894, and was buried from King's Chapel, Boston, in the cemetery of Mount Auburn. (J. T. M.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Among the editions of Holmes's works are the Bibliography.-Among the editions of Holmes's works are the Riverside (13 vols., 1891) , The Standard Library (15 vols., including Morse's biography 1896) , and the Autocrat edition (13 vol., 1904). Holmes's Complete Poetical Works (1895) were edited by H. E. Scudder. The most complete edition of his Speeches is that published in 1913. Caroline Ticknor by a series of gleanings from his works presented Dr. Holmes's Boston (x915). The principal biography is by J. T. Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1896). Other monographs are by James Ball (1878), Emma E. Brown (1884), Samuel M. Crothers (1910), W. H. Schroeder (19o9), L. W. Town send (1909), Louis Vossion (1896) . See also the Bibliography by G. B. Ives (1907).