OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES is a son of the late ABIEL HOLMES, D. D., and was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the twenty-ninth day of August, 1809. He received his early education at the Phillips Exeter Academy, and entered Harvard University in 1825. On being graduated he commenced the study of the law, but relinquished it, after one year's appplication, for the more congenial pursuit of medicine, to which he devoted himself with ardour and industry. For the more successful prosecution of his studies, he visited Europe in the spring of 1833, passing the principal portion of his residence abroad at Paris, where he attended the hospitals, acquired an intimate knowledge of the language, and became personally acquainted with many of the most eminent phy sicians of France.

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He returned to Boston near the close of 1835, and in the following spring commenced the practice of medicine in that city. In the autumn of the same year he delivered a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University, which was received with extraordinary and merited applause. In 1838 he was elected Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the medical institution connected with Dartmouth College, but resigned the place on his marriage, two years afterward. voting all his attention to his profession, he soon acquired a large and lucrative practice, and in 1847 he succeeded Dr. WARREN as Professor of Anatomy in the medical department of Harvard University. His principal medical writings are comprised in his" Boylston Prize Essays," "Lectures on Popular Delusions in Medicine," and the "Theory and Practice," by himself and Dr. BIGELOW. His other compositions in prose consist of occasional addresses, and papers in the North American Review.

The earlier poems of Dr. HOLMES appeared in "The Collegian." They were little less distinguished for correct and melodious versification than his more recent and most elaborate productions. They attracted attention by their humour and originality, and were widely republished in the periodicals. But a small portion of them have been printed under his proper signature.

In 1831 a small volume appeared in Boston, entitled Illustrations of the Athenæum Gallery of Paintings," and composed of metrical pieces, chiefly satirical, written by Dr. HOLMES and EPES SARGENT. It embraced many of our author's best humorous verses, afterward printed among his ac

"The Collegian" was a monthly miscellany published in 1830, by the undergraduates at Cambridge. Among the editors were HOLMES, the late WILLIAM H. SIMMONS, who will be remembered for his admirable lectures on the poets and orators of England, and JOHN O SARGENT, who has distinguished himself as a lawyer and as a political writer.

knowledged works. His "Poetry, a Metrical Essay," was delivered before a literary society at Cambridge. It is in the heroic measure, and in its versification it is not surpassed by any poem written in this country. It relates to the nature and offices of poetry, and is itself a series of brilliant illustrations of the ideas of which it is an expression. Of the universality of the poetical feeling he says:

There breathes no being but has some pretence
To that fine instinct call'd poetic sense;
The rudest savage, roaming through the wild,
The simplest rustic, bending o'er his child,
The infant, listening to the warbling bird,
The mother, smiling at its half-formed word;
The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand
The vote that shakes the turrets of the land;
The slave, who, slumbering on his rusted chain,
Dreams of the palm-trees on his burning plain;
The hot-cheek'd reveller, tossing down the wine,
To join the chorus pealing "Auld lang syne;"
The gentle maid, whose azure eye grows dim,
While Heaven is listening to her evening hymn;
The jewell'd beauty, when her steps draw near
The circling dance and dazzling chandelier;
E'en trembling age, when spring's renewing air
Waves the thin ringlets of his silver'd hoir-
All, all are glowing with the inward flame,
Whose wider halo wreathes the poet's name,
While, unembalm'd, the silent dreamer dies,
His memory passing with his smiles and sighs!
The poet, he contends, is

He, whose thoughts differing not in shape, but dress
What others feel, more fitly can express.

In another part of the essay is the following
fine description of the different English measures:
Poets, like painters, their machinery claim,
And verse bestows the varnish and the frame;
Our grating English, whose Teutonic jar
Shakes the rack'd axle of Art's rattling car,
Fits like Mosaic in the lines that gird
Fast in its place each many-angled word;
From Saxon lips ANACHREON'S numbers glide,
As once they melted on the Teian tide,
And, fresh transfused, the Iliad thrills again
From Albion's cliffs as o'er Achain's plain;
The proud heroic, with its pulse-like beat,
Rings like the cymbals, clashing as they meet;
The sweet Spenserian, gathering as it flows,
Sweeps gently onward to its dying close,
Where waves on waves in long succession pour,
Till the ninth billow melts along the shore;
The lonely spirit of the mournful lay,
Which lives immortal in the verse of GRAY,
In sable plumage slowly drifts along,
On eagle pinion, through the air of song;
The glittering lyric bounds elastic by,
With flashing ringlets and exulting eye,
While every image, in her airy whirl,
Gleams like a diamond on a dancing girl!

In 1843 Dr. HOLMES published "Terpsichore," a poem read at the annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society in that year; and in 1846, "Urania, a Rhymed Lesson," pronounced before the

Mercantile Library Association. The last is a collection of brilliant thoughts, with many local allusions, in compact but flowing and harmonious versification, and is the longest poem Dr. HOLMES has published since the appearance of his " Metrical Essay" in 1835.

Dr. HOLMES is a poet of wit and humour and genial sentiment, with a style remarkable for its purity, terseness, and point, and for an exquisite

ON LENDING A PUNCH-BOWL.

THIS ancient silver bowl of mine-it tells of good old times

Of joyous days, and jolly nights, and merry Christnas chimes;

They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true,

That dipp'd their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new.

A Spanish galleon brought the bar-so runs the ancient tale;

"T was hammer'd by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail;

And now and then between the strokes, for fear his strength should fail,

He wiped his brow, and quaff'd a cup of good old Flemish ale.

"T was purchased by an English squire to please his loving dame,

Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a longing for the same;

And oft, as on the ancient stock another twig was found,

"T was fill'd with caudle spiced and hot, and handed smoking round.

But, changing hands, it reach'd at length a Puritan divine,

Who used to follow Timothy, and take a little wine, But hated punch and prelacy; and so it was, perhaps,

He went to Leyden, where he found conventicles and schnaps.

And then, of course, you know what's next: it left the Dutchman's shore

With those that in the May-Flower came—a hundred souls and more

Along with all the furniture, to fill their new abodes

To judge by what is still on hand, at least a hundred loads.

'Twas on a dreary winter's eve, the night was closing dim,

When old MILES STANDISH took the bowl, and

finish and grace. His lyrics ring and sparkle like cataracts of silver, and his serious pieces-as successful in their way as those mirthful frolics of his muse for which he is best known-arrest the attention by touches of the most genuine pathos and tenderness. All his poems illustrate a manly feeling, and have in them a current of good sense the more charming because somewhat out of fash ion now in works of imagination and fancy.

And one by one the musketeers-the men that fought and pray'd—

All drank as 't were their mother's milk, and not a man afraid.

That night, affrighted from his rest, the screaming eagle flew :

He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the soldier's wild halloo;

And there the sachem learn'd the rule he taught to kith and kin:

"Run from the white man when you find he smells of Hollands gin!"

A hundred years, and fifty more, had spread their leaves and snows,

A thousand rubs had flatten'd down each little cherub's nose;

When once again the bowl was fill'd, but not in mirth or joy

"Twas mingled by a mother's hand to cheer her parting boy.

"Drink, JOHN," she said, "'t will do you good; poor

child, you'll never bear

This working in the dismal trench, out in the midnight air;

And if God bless me-you were hurt, 't would keep away the chill."

So JOHN did drink-and well he wrought that night at Bunker's hill!

I tell you, there was generous warmth in good olá

English cheer;

I tell you, 't was a pleasant thought to drink its symbol here.

'Tis but the fool that loves excecs: hast thou a drunken soul!

Thy bane is in thy shallow skull-not in my silver bowl!

I love the memory of the past-its press'd yet fragrant flowers

The moss that clothes its broken walls, the ivy on its towers

Nay, this poor bauble it bequeath'd: my eyes grow moist and dim,

To think of all the vanish'd joys that danced around its brim.

Ther fill a fair and honest cup, and bear it straight

to me;

The goblet hallows all it holds, whate'er the liquid be; And may the cherubs on its face protect me from

the sin

That dooms one to those dreadful words- My dear, where have you been?"