HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL (ante). Dr. Holmes is the son of the rev. Abiei Holmes, D.D., long pastor of the First Congregational church in Cambridge and author of American Annals. He was bent in the old "gambrel-roofed" house to which ho makes frequent allusion in his works, and which is directly opposite the buildings of Harvard college, with which his relations have been intimate and almost continuous for more than fifty years. His earliest verses were written for the Collegian, a paper con ducted by "Harvard undergraduates. and many of his minor poems have been called forth by the anniversaries of the class of 1829, of which he is the most famous member, but which included Benjamin Pierce, the mathematician; justice Benjamin R. Curtis, of the supreme court; George T. Bigelow, chief-justice of Mass.; and among the living, James Freeman Clarke and William H. Chaining. On leaving college he read law for a time, but subsequently devoting himself to the study of medicine, became extremely skillful both in the theory and practice of his profession. The psychological problems raised by the interdependence of mind and matter have long occupied Holiness attention, and are scientifically discussed in his Currents and Countercurrents in Medical Science (1861), and in Mechanism and Morals. His romance Elsie Penner deals with the same sub
ject from an artistic standpoint. Ile was one of the founders of the Atlantic Monthly, to whose success his productions—and in particular his best prose work, the Autocrat oy the Breakfast Table—have largely contributed. Of his humorous verses the One Horse Shay and the September Gale are, perhaps, best known. The Nautilus amid Avis, among those in a serious vein, deserve mention. Dr. Holmes is the most graceful of American writers of yens dc societe. His more labored poems are written in pentameters, but he employs successfully a variety of lyric measures. Most of his later verse has been writ ten for special occasions. His most recent work is the Iron Gate (1880). Besides his contributions to medical periodicals, he has written for the .North American Review and the International Review.