The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

THE interruption referred to in the first sentence of the first of
these papers was just a quarter of a century in duration.

Two articles entitled "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" will be
found in the "New England Magazine," formerly published in Boston
by J. T. and E. Buckingham.  The date of the first of these
articles is November 1831, and that of the second February 1832.
When "The Atlantic Monthly" was begun, twenty-five years
afterwards, and the author was asked to write for it, the
recollection of these crude products of his uncombed literary
boyhood suggested the thought that it would be a curious experiment
to shake the same bough again, and see if the ripe fruit were
better or worse than the early windfalls.

So began this series of papers, which naturally brings those
earlier attempts to my own notice and that of some few friends who
were idle enough to read them at the time of their publication.
The man is father to the boy that was, and I am my own son, as it
seems to me, in those papers of the New England Magazine.  If I
find it hard to pardon the boy's faults, others would find it
harder.  They will not, therefore, be reprinted here, nor as I
hope, anywhere.

But a sentence or two from them will perhaps bear reproducing, and
with these I trust the gentle reader, if that kind being still
breathes, will be contented.

- "It is a capital plan to carry a tablet with you, and, when you
find yourself felicitous, take notes of your own conversation." -

- "When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my Dictionary.
The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences.
The author may arrange the gems effectively, but their fhape and
luftre have been given by the attrition of ages.  Bring me the
fineft fimile from the whole range of imaginative writing, and I
will fhow you a fingle word which conveys a more profound, a more
accurate, and a more eloquent analogy." -

- "Once on a time, a notion was ftarted, that if all the people in
the world would fhout at once, it might be heard in the moon.  So
the projectors agreed it fhould be done in juft ten years.  Some
thousand fhip-loads of chronometers were diftributed to the
selectmen and other great folks of all the different nations.  For
a year beforehand, nothing else was talked about but the awful
noise that was to be made on the great occafion.  When the time
came, everybody had their ears so wide open, to hear the universal
ejaculation of BOO, - the word agreed upon, - that nobody spoke
except a deaf man in one of the Fejee Islands, and a woman in
Pekin, so that the world was never so ftill fince the creation." -

There was nothing better than these things and there was not a
little that was much worse.  A young fellow of two or three and
twenty has as good a right to spoil a magazine-full of essays in
learning how to write, as an oculist like Wenzel had to spoil his
hat-full of eyes in learning how to operate for cataract, or an
ELEGANT like Brummel to point to an armful of failures in the
attempt to achieve a perfect tie.  This son of mine, whom I have
not seen for these twenty-five years, generously counted, was a
self-willed youth, always too ready to utter his unchastised
fancies.  He, like too many American young people, got the spur
when he should have had the rein.  He therefore helped to fill the
market with that unripe fruit which his father says in one of these
papers abounds in the marts of his native country.  All these by-
gone shortcomings he would hope are forgiven, did he not feel sure
that very few of his readers know anything about them.  In taking
the old name for the new papers, he felt bound to say that he had
uttered unwise things under that title, and if it shall appear that
his unwisdom has not diminished by at least half while his years
have doubled, he promises not to repeat the experiment if he should
live to double them again and become his own grandfather.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
BOSTON.  NOV. 1ST 1858.

CHAPTER I

I WAS JUST going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the
many ways of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical
and algebraical intellects.  All economical and practical wisdom is
an extension or variation of the following arithmetical formula:
2+2=4.  Every philosophical proposition has the more general
character of the expression A+B=C.  We are mere operatives,
empirics, and egotists, until we learn to think in letters instead
of figures.

They all stared.  There is a divinity student lately come among us
to whom I commonly address remarks like the above, allowing him to
take a certain share in the conversation, so far as assent or
pertinent questions are involved.  He abused his liberty on this
occasion by presuming to say that Leibnitz had the same
observation. - No, sir, I replied, he has not.  But he said a
mighty good thing about mathematics, that sounds something like it,
and you found it, NOT IN THE ORIGINAL, but quoted by Dr. Thomas
Reid.  I will tell the company what he did say, one of these days.

- If I belong to a Society of Mutual Admiration? - I blush to say
that I do not at this present moment.  I once did, however.  It was
the first association to which I ever heard the term applied; a
body of scientific young men in a great foreign city who admired
their teacher, and to some extent each other.  Many of them
deserved it; they have become famous since.  It amuses me to hear
the talk of one of those beings described by Thackeray -

"Letters four do form his name" -

about a social development which belongs to the very noblest stage
of civilization.  All generous companies of artists, authors,
philanthropists, men of science, are, or ought to be, Societies of
Mutual Admiration.  A man of genius, or any kind of superiority, is
not debarred from admiring the same quality in another, nor the
other from returning his admiration.  They may even associate
together and continue to think highly of each other.  And so of a
dozen such men, if any one place is fortunate enough to hold so
many.  The being referred to above assumes several false premises.
First, that men of talent necessarily hate each other.  Secondly,
that intimate knowledge or habitual association destroys our
admiration of persons whom we esteemed highly at a distance.
Thirdly, that a circle of clever fellows, who meet together to dine
and have a good time, have signed a constitutional compact to
glorify themselves and to put down him and the fraction of the
human race not belonging to their number.  Fourthly, that it is an
outrage that he is not asked to join them.

Here the company laughed a good deal, and the old gentleman who
sits opposite said, "That's it! that's it!"

I continued, for I was in the talking vein.  As to clever people's
hating each other, I think a LITTLE extra talent does sometimes
make people jealous.  They become irritated by perpetual attempts
and failures, and it hurts their tempers and dispositions.
Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak
flavor of genius in an essentially common person is detestable.  It
spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the
rinsings of an unwashed wineglass spoil a draught of fair water.
No wonder the poor fellow we spoke of, who always belongs to this
class of slightly flavored mediocrities, is puzzled and vexed by
the strange sight of a dozen men of capacity working and playing
together in harmony.  He and his fellows are always fighting.  With
them familiarity naturally breeds contempt.  If they ever praise
each other's bad drawings, or broken-winded novels, or spavined
verses, nobody ever supposed it was from admiration; it was simply
a contract between themselves and a publisher or dealer.

If the Mutuals have really nothing among them worth admiring, that
alters the question.  But if they are men with noble powers and
qualities, let me tell you, that, next to youthful love and family
affections, there is no human sentiment better than that which
unites the Societies of Mutual Admiration.  And what would
literature or art be without such associations?  Who can tell what
we owe to the Mutual Admiration Society of which Shakspeare, and
Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members?  Or to that of
which Addison and Steele formed the centre, and which gave us the
Spectator?  Or to that where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and
Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell, most admiring among all
admirers, met together?  Was there any great harm in the fact that
the Irvings and Paulding wrote in company? or any unpardonable
cabal in the literary union of Verplanck and Bryant and Sands, and
as many more as they chose to associate with them?

The poor creature does not know what he is talking about, when he
abuses this noblest of institutions.  Let him inspect its mysteries
through the knot-hole he has secured, but not use that orifice as a
medium for his popgun.  Such a society is the crown of a literary
metropolis; if a town has not material for it, and spirit and good
feeling enough to organize it, it is a mere caravansary, fit for a
man of genius to lodge in, but not to live in.  Foolish people hate
and dread and envy such an association of men of varied powers and
influence, because it is lofty, serene, impregnable, and, by the
necessity of the case, exclusive.  Wise ones are prouder of the
title M. S. M. A. than of all their other honors put together.

- All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called
"facts."  They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.
Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact
or two which they lead after them into decent company like so many
bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or
convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy?  I allow no "facts"
at this table.  What!  Because bread is good and wholesome and
necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust a crumb into my windpipe
while I am talking?  Do not these muscles of mine represent a
hundred loaves of bread? and is not my thought the abstract of ten
thousand of these crumbs of truth with which you would choke off my
speech?

[The above remark must be conditioned and qualified for the vulgar
mind.  The reader will of course understand the precise amount of
seasoning which must be added to it before he adopts it as one of
the axioms of his life.  The speaker disclaims all responsibility
for its abuse in incompetent hands.]

This business of conversation is a very serious matter.  There are
men that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day's
fasting would do.  Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as
good as a working professional man's advice, and costs you nothing: