The Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Or.) 1862-1899, 1881-11-18

where even Longfellow and Whittier
sold by twos and threes. He newt
ably reaped his reward, not merely
in fortune and fame, but in that
which his conscientious nature priced
even more--a great personal infiu-
.ence over an enormous constituency.
1t is also to be remarked .hat this
great popularity was not won by the
slightest conscious or unconscious
sacrifice. There was no deliberate
lowering of aim or intellectual stan
dard. lie did not make that sad
discovery which Goethe and Schiller
confided to each other: "We make
money by our poor books.'' DR..
Holland made money by all his
books, and not one of them was,
from his point of view, a poor one.
No doubt, this easy fame effected his
estimate, and he was little tempted
to assume that, if any author was less
popular than himself, it was the
authors fault. Still there were traces
both IN his writing and in his con-
versation of an ambition not quite
satisfied. There is reason to think
that, having conquered the many, he
would like to end by conquering the
few. 1t is probable that the classi-
tication made by critics did not quite
suit him; no man permanently enjoys
being ranked with Tupper. But it
is hard for any very successful author
to rise far above the level of his copy
right rccount; after all, one writes
to be read, and is not that the best
writing which has the most
readers? Add to this that Holland
had no quick sense of humor; he
sometimes gambolled little in his
writings, but the really funny things
in them were often those most
seriously written-as where, in one
of his longer poems, he follows up a
pretty little lyric about the baby in
the cradle with some dreamy, and
ideal verses about the salt pork in
the barrel Now no man without
a sense of humor can properly calcu-
late the difference of altitude beteen
himself and Shakespeare.
The real etrength of DIR. Holland
that which made even his most
mediocre works respectable-was in
his moral nature. Everthing he did
was thoroughly and earnestly done.
In his literary work he had the
method of man of business; and
all his business ambition was to create
i'll the United States an honest and
conscientious national literature.
He never sighted anything he did,
and he was always trying-though
always on his own plane-to improve
and enlarge his work. All his enovls
had pnrpose, and so had all his
e lifting. He showed real moral
courage both in the liberal way in
which he constructed his own evan.
gelical creed and in the frankness
with which he admitted into his
magazine some papers-as those of
DIR. which were at the
time censured as heretical. Rec
ogniziDg that most of his literary
fellow workers held creeds less con.
servative than his own, be yet tried
very hard to do justice to them;
although in the case of some, as of
Thoreau, he found this constitution
ally hard. some of his most intimate
associates were moreover those
whose intellectual tastes and methods
were quite unlike his own, and here
also he was manly and tolerant. He
was thoroughly conscientious in a,
his personal standards; he stood at
the opposite extreme from all the
traditional weaknesses and irregu
larities of the literary class; and yet
he was never pharisaical or uncharit-
able. This is saying great deal,
and one of whom it can be said de-
served to be remembered. 1t is not
probable that much of his purely
literary work will long survive him.
His fame is likely to decline rapidly,
now that he is gone, like that of the
late Henry Theodore Tuckerman,
with whom he is in some respects to
be classed, and of whom it is now
almost impossible to believe that he
died only ten years ago. But the
service rendered by DR.. Holland to
American literature by the fidelity
and high purpose of his life was out
of all proportion to either his genius
or his permanent laurels.-New York
Post.
I heard Thackery thank Heaven
for the purity of Dickens. I