3.9. POEMS BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, AUTHOR OF "THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE." LONDON: JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY. 2812 f. 45. THIS little volume of humorous verses, by the author of the delightful Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, may be very appropriately introduced by a few biographical particulars. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1809. He was educated at Phillips' Academy, Exeter, and graduated at Harvard in 1829. In the following year the students of that university started the Collegian, a magazine possessing many of the peculiarities, but scarcely the talent, of our Etonian and Knight's Quarterly Magazine. Amongst its best papers were those from the pen of Holmes, who may be said to have been the Praed of the occasion. He contributed, amongst other humorous pieces, "Evening, by a Tailor," and "The Spectre Pig," both of which are given in the following pages. After six numbers of the magazine had appeared it experienced the fate common to all school journals, and came to a standstill. |