As regards the form of his poetry, Holmes is a survival of the eighteenth century. In his boyhood, he was a devoted admirer of Pope, but instead of abandoning the style of the Augustans, as Bryant and Lowell abandoned or outgrew it, he chose rather to perfect himself in it; until, somewhat more plastic than it was in his models, somewhat modernised and provincial, that style became his normal accent. Having Holmes’ purpose in view, one may add that no poet in America has acquired a surer control over his medium. Within this medium he was able to unite sparkle, humour, clearness, good sense, and oratorical emphasis. It is the opinion of several very able critics that no one in his century can vie with him in the art of writing verses for an occasion. Here is the source not only of his strength but also of his weakness. A large proportion of his verse is of mainly local or temporary interest. The poems which he offered year by year at the exercises of the Harvard Commencement will year by year engender less enthusiasm. A constructive criticism, however, will lay stress, not on his inheritance of New England provincialism or his slight tendency to be flippant, but on his kindliness, his inexhaustible good humour, his quick and darting intellectual curiosity, and on the appeal which his sprightly moralising makes to the young. It is not a little thing to say of a wit and a power of epigram like his that they were ever genial, and ever on the side of something better than a merely conventional morality.