Holland, Josiah Gilbert

Josiah Gilbert (1819-1881), an American author and journalist. An English recipe for a brilliant man runs, "Give him parts and poverty." J. G. Holland had both, but he was neither a genius nor a pauper. Of New England ancestry and educated for medicine, he began practice in Springfield, Massachusetts, but he kept writing for papers until he was invited to become assistant editor of the Springfield Republican at forty dollars per month. Two years later a friend loaned him money to buy a third interest in the paper. Holland's first success was a series of sketches of towns in western Massachusetts. Timothy Titcomb's Letters on moral topics pleased the plain people. As some one says, while the New England coterie of great thinkers was writing in the Dial of the "Whichness of the What," Holland was telling Yankee farmers that they ought to provide their wives with something better to burn than green wood. After they had run in the Republican Charles Scribner brought out the Titcomb Letters in book form. The book met with immediate success. Gold Foil, Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects, the novels, Arthur Bonnicastle, Nicholas Minturn, Seven Oaks, and the narrative poems, Katrina and Bitter-Sweet, were all popular during their author's lifetime. Although less widely read since that time they are still favorites with many. They are all characterized by a natural and vivacious style, by a wholesome moral tone, and by great good sense. In 1867 Holland closed his connection with the Republican and went abroad. In Geneva he fell in with a former American acquaintance, a Mr. Roswell Smith. Standing on the bridge that spans the Rhone as it shoots like an arrow out of Lake Geneva, they discussed the founding of a new magazine of which Dr. Holland should be editor and Mr. Smith, manager. Returning to this country, they arranged with Mr. Charles Scribner for the publication of Scribner's Monthly, which Holland continued to edit for eleven years. October 11, 1881, he sat in the editorial office of Scribner's writing an article on Garfield's death for the November issue. The last written words of the article are, "his sympathy with the humble drew to him the hearts of the world." At six the next morning, Holland, never a strong man, was dead. He was buried at Springfield in sight of Mt. Holyoke. Washington Gladden wrote: