An old author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of his early years.

Holmes is reflecting on the peculiar experience of aging as a writer: one’s youthful work survives as a kind of preserved specimen, while the author continues to change. Returning to early poems, essays, or lectures, the older author “rediscovers” earlier selves—ambitions, blind spots, stylistic habits—now partly alien. The phrase “more or less fossilized” suggests that published work fixes living thought into a static record, which can feel both instructive and embarrassing. The remark also hints at the continuity of identity across time: even as the author evolves, traces of the mature voice and character can be found embedded in early work, awaiting recognition.