In one of them he says, "Please give me your
grandpaternal council." But I have quoted enough upon this head to
give an idea of the kind and busy brain not too deeply immersed in its
own projects to have a tender regard for those of others. Meanwhile
his own work was continually progressing. Lowell had already made him
feel that he was the mainspring of the "Atlantic," which at the time
of the war attained the height of its popularity, and achieved a
position where it found no peer. The care which Dr. Holmes bestowed
upon the finish of his work, the endless labor over its details, are
almost inconceivable when we remember that "this power of taking
pains," which Carlyle calls one of the attributes of genius, was
combined with a gay, mercurial temperament ready to take fire at every
chance spark.
One Sunday afternoon in the sad spring of 1864, during the terrible
days of the war, he came in to correct a poem. "I am ashamed," he
said, "to be troubled by so slight a thing when battles are raging
about us; but I have written:--
Where Genoa's deckless caravels were blown.
Now Columbus sailed from Palos, and I must change the verse before it
is too late."
This habit of always doing his best is surely one of the fine lessons
of his life. It has given his prose a perfection which will carry it
far down the shores of time. The letter sent during the last summer of
his life to be read at the celebration of Bryant's birthday was a
model of simplicity in the expression of feeling.
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