Holmes

and a machine shop. After attending the acade-
mies in Chester, Vt, and New Ipswich, N. H.,
Holmes went to Phillips Exeter Academy and
graduated from Harvard College in 1837. He
studied law in Maryland while doing private tu-
toring, and at the Harvard Law School, i83&-
39. After his admission to the Boston bar, he
moved to St. Louis, where he practised law until
1865. In 1846 he was city and county attorney,
and in 1853-54 counselor of the school board, In
1856 he became a charter member of the Acad-
emy of Science of St. Louis and was long its en-
ergetic corresponding secretary.

At the close of the Civil War, Missouri held a
constitutional convention, which not only estab-
lished a notorious test oath for all office-holders,
subsequently held void by the United States Su-
preme Court, but also with even more question-
able authority passed an ordinance ousting the
duly elected judges of the state supreme court
and directing the governor to appoint their suc-
cessors. Gov. T. C. Fletcher appointed Holmes
and two others. Two of the existing judges re-
fused to quit and obtained an injunction from the
St. Louis circuit court prohibiting Holmes's two
associates from disturbing the sessions of the
old supreme court The governor called in po-
lice who installed Holmes and his two associates
by forcibly removing their reluctant predeces-
sors. Shortly afterward, Holmes delivered a ju-
dicial opinion declaring the injunction invalid
(Thomas vs. Mead, 36 Mo., 232, discussed in the
American Law Register, October 1865, PP- 7°5~
22). These high-handed proceedings must have
been the only exciting event in Holmes's life.
He served on the court from 1865 until X868 and
with his two associates turned out a large vol-
ume of work. His many opinions are competent
but not distinguished, and none of his decisions
except that just mentioned has proved important
in the development of the law.

In 1868 Holmes resigned his judgeship to be-
come Royall Professor of Law at Harvard. The
invitation came from Prof. Theophilus Parsons,
who was undoubtedly drawn to Holmes by their
common zealous adherence to Swedenborgian-
isna. Harvard Law School then possessed two
eminent legal writers as professors, Parsons and
Emory Washburn, but the students remained
unstimulated by class-room discussion and un-
tested by examinations, and the library had be-
come very unsatisfactory. Holmes appears to
have accepted this situation without question,
and took no active part in the administration of
the school. His lectures on equity, bailments, and
domestic relations were not sufficiently note-
worthy to receive comment in the recollections

Holmes

of students of his time. In 1870 the new presi-
dent of Harvard, Charles W. Eliot, secured the
appointment of C. C. Langdell as dean, who com-
pletely reorganized the school by the introduc-
tion of written examinations and the case-meth-
od of instruction. Because of his inability to ac-
cept the new methods, Holmes resigned on May
6, 1872, at the request of the President and Fel-
lows. He returned to practice in St. Louis but
retired in 1883 and settled once more in Cam-
bridge, where he died.

Holmes did no legal writing, but was widely
interested in other subjects. His Realistic Ideal-
ism in Philosophy Itself (1888) exhibits exten-
sive philosophic and scientific reading but has
had no perceptible influence and now seems un-
readable. His only permanent contribution to
knowledge was The Authorship of Shakespeare,
which went into four editions (1866,1867, 1875,
1886). Holmes was the first writer after Delia
Bacon to support the Baconian hypothesis. He
uses no arguments about ciphers but furnishes
an exhaustive collection of parallel passages in
the plays and Bacon's writings. His scholarship
and fairness have been praised by his opponents.
In his old age he compiled "A Genealogy of the
Holmes Family of Londonderry, N. H./1 con-
taining garrulous sketches of his relatives and a
long autobiography. His career may be summed
up as that of a lawyer of the old school, whose
cultivation extended far beyond the limits of his
profession, but who had the misfortune to meet
opportunities too great for his abilities.

[Holmes's manuscript "Genealogy" is in the posses-
sion of the Peterborough Hist. Soc. Printed sources
include: Albert Smith, Hist, of Peterborough (1876);
Charles Warren, Hist, of the Harvard Law School
(1908), vol. II; Henry Williams, Memorials of the
Class of 1837 of Harvard Univ. (1887) ; personal rec-
ollections in Proc. Am, Acad. Arts and Sci., vol. XXXVI
(1901), and in Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis, vol. XI
(1901); and obituary in Boston Transcript, Feb. 28,
1901. There is a detailed account of the proceedings by
which the old supreme court in Missouri was ousted and
Holmes became judge in 35 Mo< Reports> iii; for his
opinions see 35-42 Mo. Reports. Until late in life
Holmes believed the date of his birth to have been
July 2, 1814. When he discovered a record of his par-
ents' marriage, which took place on Mar, 31, 1814, he
became convinced that he must have been born on
Jan. 2, 1815.] Z.CJr.

HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL (Aug. 29,
i8o9-0ct 7, 1894), essayist, poet, teacher of
anatomy, was born at Cambridge, Mass., where
his father, the Rev. Abiel Holmes [g.v.], was the
minister of the First Church, before its depar-
ture from Orthodoxy into Unitarianism. His
mother, Sarah (Wendell) Holmes, daughter of
Oliver Wendell, a Boston merchant, and de-
scended both from early Dutch settlers of Al-
bany and from the Boston families of Jackson

169