Whenever Holmes wrote to entertain, he did not aim to be deep or to
exercise the thinking powers of his readers. Much of his work skims the
surface of things in an amusing and delightful way. Yet he was too much of
a New Englander not to write some things in both poetry and prose with a
deeper purpose than mere entertainment. _The Chambered Nautilus_, for
instance, was so written, as were all of his novels. His genial humor is
thus frequently blended with unlooked-for wisdom or pathos.
Whittier has been called provincial because he takes only the point of view
of New England. The province of Holmes is still narrower, being mainly
confined to Boston. He expresses in a humorous way his own feelings, as
well as those of his fellow townsmen, when he says in _The Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table:_--
"Boston State House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that
out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out
for a crowbar."
Like Irving, Holmes was fond of eighteenth-century English writers, and
much of his verse is modeled after the couplets of Pope. Holmes writes
fluid and rippling prose, without a trace of effort.
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