John Torrey Morse

“ No more lifelike and charming picture of the society of the New England country-town of the middle third of the 19th century has ever been drawn, and every page sparkles with wit and humour. In 1884 and 1885 it was followed, still in the same line, by A Mortal Antipathy, a production inferior to its predecessors.
Holmes generally held himself aloof from politics, and from those “causes” of temperance, abolition and woman’s rights which enthralled most of his contemporaries in New England. ”

“ His humanity revolted against them, his reason condemned them, and he set himself to their destruction as his task in literature. The religious world of his time was still so largely under the control of old ideas that he was assailed as a freethinker and a subverter of Christianity ”

“ These twelve papers were immediately (1858) published as a volume. No sooner was the Autocrat silent than the Professor (1859) succeeded him at the breakfast table. The Professor was preferred by more thoughtful readers, though it has hardly been so widely popular as the Autocrat. Its theology, which seemed in those days audacious, frightened many of the strict and old-fashioned religionists of New England, though to-day it seems mild enough. Twelve years later, in 1871, the Landlady had another boarder, who took the vacant chair—the Poet (published 1872) . But here Holmes fell a little short. ”