But Doctor Holmes's digressions are
infectious.
The "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" is an irregular panorama of human
life without either a definite beginning or end,--unless the autocrat's
offering himself to the schoolmistress (an incident which only took place
on paper) can be considered so; but it is by no means a patchwork. He
talks of horse-racing, the Millerites, elm trees, Doctor Johnson, the
composition of poetry and much else; but these subjects are introduced
and treated with an adroitness that amounts to consummate art. He is
always at the boarding-house, and if his remarks sometimes shoot over the
heads of his auditors, this is only because he intends that they should.
The first ten or fifteen pages of the "Autocrat" are written in such a
cold, formal and pedantic manner that the wonder is that Lowell should
have published it. After that the style suddenly changes and the Doctor
becomes himself. It is like a convention call which ends in a sympathetic
conversation.
Doctor Holmes's humor permeates every sentence that he wrote. Even in his
most serious moods we meet with it in a peculiar phrase, or the use of
some exceptional word.
Now and then his wit is very brilliant, lighting up its surroundings like
the sudden appearance of a meteor.
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