THE AUTOCRAT AND BLOGS.

THE AUTOCRAT AND BLOGS. I should report on THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE because I doubt that any of you will read it. The Autocrat was simply Oliver Wendell Holmes as an essayist, even though the Autocrat purports to be a fictional character. THE AUTOCRAT has some of the tone of the American essayists who came after Holmes, from Mark Twain to Dave Barry. Like some blogs, it features minutiae about sports, in this case famous American trotting horses and their times in recent races. As with blogs, there are broad generalizations. The Autocrat argues that it is appropriate that America should excel at trotting horses and England at racing horses because trotting horses are useful whereas race horses are kept mainly by the very rich for gambling purposes. Gambling, on the great scale is not Republican. “Real Republicanism is stern and severe.” Some of the Autocrat’s assertions can be found on blogs today. “We are the Romans of the modern world—the great assimilating people.” In support, he argues that Americans share the same preference in weapons—the Roman gladius is like the Bowie knife. “The race that shortens its weapons lengthens its boundaries.” And as in a blog, there are moral precepts. The Autocrat says, over the objection of another boarder (“the angular female in black bombazine”), “Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues”; rather, your morality should consist of “active sympathetic benevolence.”