196 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS at the present day an almost embarrassing wealth of choice. But Mr. Brown- ing in his own sphere had no rival and no imitator. No other so boldly faces the problems of life and death, no other like him braces the reader as with the breath of a breeze from the hills, and no other gives like him the assurance that we have to do with a man. His last public words are the fit description of his strenuous attitude through all his literary work : " Strive and thrive ! " cry " Speed fight on, fare ever There as here ! " OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES By Francis H. Underwood (1809- i 894) that simple stanza unmoved. word could be changed any more than in " The Bugle Song." A braham Lincoln, it is said, was
- one day talking with a friend
about favorite poems, and repeated with deep feeling the well-known classic stanza : "The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom ; And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb." "That verse," he said, "was written by a man by the name of Holmes." If the manner of referring to the authorship was little flattering, the honest admiration of the great- hearted President might atone for it. An attorney in a country town in Illinois might well have been unac- quainted with the reputation of a poet away in Massachusetts, whose lines, perhaps, he had seen only in the newspapers. No reader of feeling ever passed It is for all time not to be forgotten. Not a Its pathos is all
