The Poet at the Breakfast-Table (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

This 1872 installment in Holmes’s popular Breakfast Table series is a fluent, gossipy exchange among the poet of the title and his breakfast companions—with the lion's share of conversation belonging to the poet, who delivers his somewhat eccentric and fitfully amusing opinions of books, people, and habits of thought. Written fifteen years after the start of the series, The Poet takes a comparatively calm and nostalgic tone.