As commonly happens in the solution of such problems,
it was not solved; he was very willing to take our minds upon it, and to
incur the risk, if we thought it well and were willing to share it.
We came away rejoicing, and the new series began with the new year
following. It was by no means the popular success that we had hoped; not
because the author had not a thousand new things to say, or failed to say
them with the gust and freshness of his immortal youth, but because it
was not well to disturb a form associated in the public mind with an
achievement which had become classic. It is of the Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table that people think, when they think of the peculiar
species of dramatic essay which the author invented, and they think also
of the Professor at the Breakfast Table, because he followed so soon; but
the Poet at the Breakfast Table came so long after that his advent
alienated rather than conciliated liking. Very likely, if the Poet had
come first he would have had no second place in the affections of his
readers, for his talk was full of delightful matter; and at least one of
the poems which graced each instalment was one of the finest and greatest
that Doctor Holmes ever wrote. I mean "Homesick in Heaven," which seems
to me not only what I have said, but one of the most important, the most
profoundly pathetic in the language. Indeed, I do not know any other
that in the same direction goes so far with suggestion so penetrating.
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