Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[blocks in formation]

American Revolution - the funds he bequeathed were allowed to accumulate. Meanwhile, from 1785, by an adaptation of a founder's original purpose not unique in academic history," the duty of teaching the general principles of Grammar, particularly of the English language, and of instructing in English composition," was assigned to the Hancock Professor of Hebrew and other Oriental Languages. In 1804 the Boylston funds had accumulated enough to warrant the establishment of the Boylston Professorship, statutes for which-long since innocuously disregarded in detail were duly adopted.

[ocr errors]

John Quincy Adams was installed in this professorship two years later. He had already been United States Minister to The Hague and to Prussia, had practiced law in Boston, and had sat in the Massachusetts Senate and in the House of Representatives at Washington. Temporarily retired from political life, he combined with his practice the duties of his professorship, which by the terms of his acceptance "were limited to a course of public lectures to the resident graduates and the two senior classes of undergraduates, and to presiding at the declamations of those classes." In 1810 he resigned his office, to become United States Minister to Russia. His later history everybody knows. The monument of his professorship is a volume of lectures on Rhetoric, which remain an admirable example of the views on the subject held by the best learning of his time.

His successor, the Rev. Joseph McKean, was appointed in 1810. In approving his election, the Overseers voted that the Boylston Professor be required "to reside at Cambridge, near the College, to perform all the duties of his office, and to be a member of the immediate executive government whenever required by the Board of Overseers." The Reverend Joseph McKean, born in 1776, graduated at Harvard in 1794, pastor of the church at Milton from 1797 to 1804, and since that time in retirement because of ill health, held the professorship acceptably from 1810 until 1817. During this period he received the degree of LL. D. from Princeton, and that of S. T. D. from Allegheny. Compelled by illness to seek a milder climate, he died at Havana, in March, 1818. His memoir, in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society for 1819,1 shows him to have been a scholar of distinction. 1 Second Series, viii, 157 seq.

No characteristic anecdotes of him or of his methods, however, appear to survive.

With Edward Tyrrel Channing, the third Boylston Professor, the case is far different. Appointed to the chair in 1819, he held it for thirty-two years; and he is still remembered by the older graduates of Harvard, with varied affection to be sure, but with a distinctness to be accounted for only by remarkable individuality and vigor of character. Anecdotes of him still abound. The nickname given him by his pupils is still as familiar as the nicknames of living teachers. His work as Boylston Professor, too, has undoubtedly affected our traditions and teaching as lastingly as has that of any teacher in the college history. In Professor Channing's time the vices of fine writing characterized all American style. These he held in utter detestation; against them he waged unceasing war from 1819 to 1851. His victory was such that to this day, forty-four years after he retired from his work, fine writing has not dared show its head at Harvard. Whatever, since his time, has been done for the study of Rhetoric here, has been done in loyal obedience to the traditions he founded.

Francis James Child, his successor, held the Boylston Professorship from 1851 to 1876. Probably the most distinguished, scholarly master of the English language and of English literature whom America has yet produced, Professor Child never found congenial the rhetorical duties which he dutifully performed for twenty-five years. For the past nineteen years he has been able to devote himself altogether to linguistic and literary studies; and as one by one the older worthies of Harvard have passed from us, Harvard men feel more and more their privilege in still counting among their friends and teachers a scholar whom without hyperbole they may call great.

For nineteen years the Boylston Professorship has been held by Adams Sherman Hill. Bringing to the traditions founded by Professor Channing not only inexhaustible enthusiasm, but an experience of actual life rare in academic careers, Professor Hill has had the fortune to develop his chosen subject to a degree unprecedented in the history of American learning. He found it, for all the labors of his predecessors, a study of secondary importance. With the aid of the pupils whom year by year he has trained into teachers, and whom, with a tact peculiarly his own,

he has suffered to teach, without wandering from sound principle, each in his own way, he has established the study of Rhetoric and English Composition as a study of the first academic rank. In thus asserting the dignity of serious attention to our own living tongue, Harvard has taken the lead of all English-speaking universities; and Harvard has taken it under the leadership of the fifth incumbent of the professorship founded in 1771, by the will of Nicholas Boylston.

Barrett Wendell, '77.

HARVARD'S ATHLETIC POLICY.

IN 1890, after the breach with Princeton, Harvard made it her policy to form a "dual league" with Yale, in all four branches of intercollegiate sport, thus assuring for years to come a continuance of the great Harvard-Yale games which were the principal athletic events of the time. In 1895 all athletic arrangements between the two colleges are at an end, and there is no sign of their renewal. To those who are upon the ground, and know the underlying reasons, it is clear that this breach is not a mere quarrel, but an inevitable result of the difference in athletic policy in the two colleges. Perhaps a brief statement, based on authentic information, may be useful to Harvard men who live at a distance, or are befogged by contradictory newspaper opinions.

The present separation from Yale is not an accident, nor the chance result of an unfortunately worded letter; it is the culmination of difficulties which have been rolling up for the past three years, and for which the responsibility is divided. In 1892 the two baseball nines could not arrange to play off the tie; in 1893 a man was sent as a spy on the secret practice of the other side. It was in that same year that one of the football managements resorted to the unsportsmanlike, but, happily, futile surprise of the leather suits, being willing to win by having the best tailor if not the best team. In 1894 and again in 1895 in the track athletic contests there were several instances of gross violation of fair play. In November, 1894, charges of brutal play in the Springfield game were made and retorted. Finally, in June,

[blocks in formation]
« AnteriorContinuar »