obstruction, here and there, from excess of material. Her autobiography,
entitled “Reminiscences,” might easily, in the hands of Mr. M. D.
Conway, for instance, have been spread out into three or four interesting
octavos; but in her more hurried grasp it is squeezed into one volume,
where groups of delightful interviews with heroes at home and abroad
are crowded into some single sentence. Her lectures are better arranged
and less tantalizing, and it would be hard to find a book in American
literature better worth reprinting and distributing than the little
volume containing her two addresses on “Modern Society.” In wit, in
wisdom, in anecdote, I know few books so racy. Next to it is the lecture
“Is Polite Society Polite?” so keen and pungent that it is said a young
man was once heard inquiring for Mrs. Howe after hearing it, in a country
town, and when asked why he wished to see her, replied, “Well, I did
put my brother in the poorhouse, and now that I have heard Mrs. Howe,
I suppose that I must take him out.” In the large collection of essays
comprised in the same volume with this, there are papers on Paris and on
Greece which are full of the finest flavor of anecdote, sympathy, and
memory, while here and there in all her books one meets with glimpses of
Italy which remind one of that scene on the celebration of the birthday
of Columbus, when she sat upon the platform of Faneuil Hall, the only
woman, and gave forth sympathetic talk in her gracious way to the loving
Italian audience, which gladly listened to their own sweet tongue from
her. Then, as always, she could trust herself freely in speech, for she
never spoke without fresh adaptation to the occasion, and her fortunate
memory for words and names is unimpaired at ninety.
Since I am here engaged upon a mere sketch of Mrs. Howe, not a formal
memoir, I have felt free to postpone until this time the details of
her birth and parentage. She was the daughter of Samuel and Julia Rush
(Cutler) Ward, and was born at the house of her parents in the Bowling
Green, New York city, on May 27, 1819. She was married on April 14, 1843,
at nearly twenty-four years of age, to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, whom
she had met on visits to Boston. They soon went to Europe,—the first of
many similar voyages,—where her eldest daughter, Julia Romana, was born
during the next spring. This daughter was the author of a volume of poems
entitled “Stray Clouds,” and of a description of the Summer School of
Philosophy at Concord entitled “Philosophiæ Quæstor,” and was the founder
of a metaphysical club of which she was president. She became the wife
of the late Michael Anagnos, of Greek origin, her father’s successor
in charge of the Institution for the Blind, and the news of her early
death was received with general sorrow. Mrs. Howe’s second daughter was
named Florence Marion, became in 1871 the wife of David Prescott Hall,
of the New York Bar, and was author of “Social Customs” and “The Correct
Thing,” being also a frequent speaker before the women’s clubs. Mrs.
Howe’s third daughter, Mrs. Laura E. Richards, was married in the same
year to Henry Richards, of Gardiner, Maine, a town named for the family
of Mr. Richards’s mother, who established there a once famous school, the
Gardiner Lyceum. The younger Mrs. Richards is author of “Captain January”
and other stories of very wide circulation, written primarily for her
own children, and culminating in a set of nonsense books of irresistible
humor illustrated by herself. Mrs. Howe’s youngest daughter, Maud,
distinguished for her beauty and social attractiveness, is the wife of
Mr. John Elliott, an English artist, and has lived much in Italy, where
she has written various books of art and literature, of which “Atalanta
in the South” was the first and “Roma Beata” one of the last. Mrs. Howe’s
only son, Henry Marion, graduated at Harvard University in 1869 and from
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1871, is a mining engineer
and expert, and is a professor in the School of Mines at Columbia
University. His book on “The Metallurgy of Steel” has won for him a high
reputation. It will thus be seen that Mrs. Howe has had the rare and
perhaps unequaled experience of being not merely herself an author, but
the mother of five children, all authors. She has many grandchildren, and
even a great-grandchild, whose future career can hardly be surmised.
There was held, in honor of Mrs. Howe’s eighty-sixth birthday (May 27,
1905), a meeting of the Boston Authors’ Club, including a little festival
whose plan was taken from the annual Welsh festival of the Eistedfodd,
at which every bard of that nation brought four lines of verse—a sort
of four-leaved clover—to his chief. This being tried at short notice
for Mrs. Howe, there came in some sixty poems, of which I select a few,
almost at random, to make up the outcome of the festival, which last did
not perhaps suffer from the extreme shortness of the notice:—
BIRTHDAY GREETINGS, LIMITED
Why limit to one little four-line verse
Each birthday wish, for her we meet to honor?
Else it might take till mornrise to rehearse
All the glad homage we would lavish on her!
JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE.
THE “NONNA” OF MAGNA ITALIA
Within the glow shed by her heart of gold,
Warm Southern sunshine cheers our Northern skies,
And pilgrim wanderers, homesick and a-cold,
Find their loved Italy in her welcoming eyes.
VIDA D. SCUDDER.
FIVE O’CLOCK WITH THE IMMORTALS
The Sisters Three who spin our fate
Greet Julia Ward, who comes quite late;
How Greek wit flies! They scream with glee,
Drop thread and shears, and make the tea.
E. H. CLEMENT.
Hope now abiding, faith long ago,
Never a shadow between.
White of the lilacs and white of the snow,
Seventy and sixteen.
MARY GRAY MORRISON.
In English, French, Italian, German, Greek,
Our many-gifted President can speak.
Wit, Wisdom, world-wide Knowledge grace her tongue
And she is _only_ Eighty-six years young!
NATHAN HASKELL DOLE.
How to be gracious? How to be true?
Poet, and Seer, and Woman too?
To crown with Spring the Winter’s brow?
Here is the answer: _this_ is Howe.
MARY ELIZABETH BLAKE.
If man could change the universe
By force of epigrams in verse,
He’d smash some idols, I allow,
But who would alter Mrs. Howe?
ROBERT GRANT.
Lady who lovest and who livest Peace,
And yet didst write Earth’s noblest battle song
At Freedom’s bidding,—may thy fame increase
Till dawns the warless age for which we long!
FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES.
Dot oldt Fader Time must be cutting some dricks,
Vhen he calls our goot Bresident’s age eighty-six.
An octogeranium! Who would suppose?
My dear Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, der time goes!
YAWCOB STRAUSS (CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS).
You, who are of the spring,
To whom Youth’s joys _must_ cling,
May all that Love can give
Beguile you long to live—
Our Queen of Hearts.
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
H ere, on this joyous day of days,
O deign to list my skill-less praise.
W hate’er be said with tongue or pen
E xtolling thee, I cry “Amen.”
BEULAH MARIE DIX.
Mrs. Howe was not apprised of the project in advance, and certainly had
not seen the verses; but was, at any rate, ready as usual, and this
sketch may well close with her cheery answer:—
MRS. HOWE’S REPLY
Why, bless you, I ain’t nothing, nor nobody, nor much,
If you look in your Directory you’ll find a thousand such.
I walk upon the level ground, I breathe upon the air,
I study at a table and reflect upon a chair.
I know a casual mixture of the Latin and the Greek,
I know the Frenchman’s _parlez-vous_, and how the Germans speak;
Well can I add, and well subtract, and say twice two is four,
But of those direful sums and proofs remember nothing more.
I wrote a poetry book one time, and then I wrote a play,
And a friend who went to see it said she fainted right away.
Then I got up high to speculate upon the Universe,
And folks who heard me found themselves no better and no worse.
Yes, I’ve had a lot of birthdays and I’m growing very old,
That’s why they make so much of me, if once the truth were told.
And I love the shade in summer, and in winter love the sun,
And I’m just learning how to live, my wisdom’s just begun.
Don’t trouble more to celebrate this natal day of mine,
But keep the grasp of fellowship which warms us more than wine.
Let us thank the lavish hand that gives world beauty to our eyes,
And bless the days that saw us young, and years that make us wise.
XXI
WILLIAM JAMES ROLFE
WILLIAM JAMES ROLFE
The “man of one book” (_homo unius libri_) whom St. Thomas Aquinas
praised has now pretty nearly vanished from the world; and those men
are rare, especially in our versatile America, who have deliberately
chosen one department of literary work and pursued it without essential
variation up to old age. Of these, Francis Parkman was the most
conspicuous representative, and William James Rolfe is perhaps the
most noticeable successor,—a man who, upon a somewhat lower plane than
Parkman, has made for himself a permanent mark in a high region of
editorship, akin to that of Furnivall and a few compeers in England. A
teacher by profession all his life, his especial sphere has been the
English department, a department which he may indeed be said to have
created in our public schools, and thus indirectly in our colleges.
William James Rolfe, son of John and Lydia Davis (Moulton) Rolfe, was
born on December 10, 1827, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, a rural city
which has been the home at different times of a number of literary and
public men, and is still, by its wide, elm-shaded chief avenue and ocean
outlook, found attractive by all visitors. Rolfe’s boyhood, however,
was passed mainly in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he was fitted for
college in the high school. He spent three years at Amherst College,
but found himself unable to afford to remain any longer, and engaged
in school-teaching as a means of immediate support. A bankrupt country
academy at Wrentham, about twenty-five miles from Boston, was offered to
him rent free if he would keep a school in it, and, for want of anything
better, he took it. He had to teach all the grammar and high school
branches, including the fitting of boys for college, and his pupils
ranged from ten years old to those two or three years older than himself.
He was the only teacher, and heard from sixteen to twenty classes a
day. Besides these, which included classes in Latin, French, Greek, and
German, he had pupils out of school in Spanish and Italian, adding to all
this the enterprise, then wholly new, of systematically teaching English
with the study of standard writers. This was apparently a thing never
done before that time in the whole United States.
So marked was the impression made by his mode of teaching that it led
to his appointment as principal of the pioneer public high schools at
Dorchester, Massachusetts. He there required work in English of all his
pupils, boys and girls alike, including those who had collegiate aims.
At this time no English, as such, was required at any American college,
and it was only since 1846 that Harvard had introduced even a preliminary
examination, in which Worcester’s “Elements of History and Elements of
Geography” were added to the original departments of Latin, Greek, and
mathematics. Rolfe’s boys enjoyed the studies in English literature,
but feared lest they might fail in the required work in classics unless
they were excused from English. To relieve their anxiety and his own,
their teacher wrote to Professor Felton, afterwards President of Harvard,
telling him what his boys were doing in English, and asking permission
to omit some portion of his Greek Reader then required for admission.
Professor Felton replied, in substance, “Go ahead with the English
and let the Greek take care of itself.” As a result, all four of the
boys entered Harvard without conditions, and it is worth noticing that
they all testified that no part of their preparatory training was more
valuable to them in college than this in English. It is also noticeable
that the late Henry A. Clapp, of Boston, long eminent as a lecturer on
Shakespeare, was one of these boys.
In the summer of 1857 Mr. Rolfe was invited to take charge of the high
school at Lawrence, Massachusetts, on a larger scale than the Dorchester
institution, and was again promoted after four years to Salem, and the
next year to be principal of the Cambridge high school, where he remained
until 1868. Since that time he has continued to reside in Cambridge,
and has devoted himself to editorial and literary work. His literary
labors from 1869 to the present day have been vast and varied. He has
been one of the editors of the “Popular Science News” (formerly the
Boston “Journal of Chemistry”), and for nearly twenty years has had
charge of the department of Shakespeareana in the “Literary World” and
the “Critic,” to which he has also added “Poet-Lore.” He has written
casual articles for other periodicals. In 1865 he published a handbook
of Latin poetry with J. H. Hanson, A. M., of Waterville, Maine. In
1867 he followed this by an American edition of Craik’s “English of
Shakespeare.” Between 1867 and 1869, in connection with J. A. Gillet, he
brought out the “Cambridge course” in physics, in six volumes. In 1870
he edited Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” with such success that by
1883 he had completed an edition of all the plays in forty volumes. It
has long been accepted as a standard critical authority, being quoted
as such by leading English and German editors. He was lately engaged
in a thorough revision of this edition, doing this task after he had
reached the age of seventy-five. He has also edited Scott’s complete
poems, as well as (separately) “The Lady of the Lake” and “The Lay of
the Last Minstrel”; an _édition de luxe_ of Tennyson’s works in twelve
volumes, and another, the Cambridge Edition, in one volume. He has edited
volumes of selections from Milton, Gray, Goldsmith, Wordsworth, and
Browning, with Mrs. Browning’s “Sonnets from the Portuguese.” He is also
the author of “Shakespeare the Boy,” with sketches of youthful life of
that period; “The Satchel Guide to Europe,” published anonymously for
twenty-eight years; and a book on the “Elementary Study of English.” With
his son, John C. Rolfe, Ph. D., Professor of Latin in the University of
Pennsylvania, he has edited Macaulay’s “Lays of Ancient Rome.” He has
published a series of elementary English classics in six volumes. He has
also supervised the publication of the “New Century _édition de luxe_”
of Shakespeare in twenty-four volumes, besides writing for it a “Life
of Shakespeare” which fills a volume of five hundred and fifty pages,
now published separately. It is safe to say that no other American, and
probably no Englishman, has rivaled him for the extent, variety, and
accuracy of his services as an editor.
This work may be justly divided into two parts: that dealing mainly with
Shakespeare, and that with single minor authors whose complete or partial
work he has reprinted. In Shakespeare he has, of course, the highest
theme to dwell on, but also that in which he has been preceded by a vast
series of workmen. In these his function has not been so much that of
original and individual criticism as of judiciously compiling the work
of predecessors, this last fact being especially true since the printing
of the Furness edition. It is in dealing with the minor authors that he
has been led to the discovery, at first seeming almost incredible, that
the poems which most claimed the attention of the world have for that
very reason been gradually most changed and perverted in printing. Gray’s
“Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” for instance, has appeared in polyglot
editions; it has been translated fifteen times into French, thirteen into
Italian, twelve times into Latin, and so on down through Greek, German,
Portuguese, and Hebrew. No one poem in the English language, even by
Longfellow, equals it in this respect. The editions which appeared in
Gray’s own time were kept correct through his own careful supervision;
and the changes in successive editions were at first those made by
himself, usually improvements, as where he changed “some village Cato”
to “some village Hampden,” and substituted in the same verse “Milton”
for “Tully” and “Cromwell” for “Cæsar.” But there are many errors in
Pickering’s edition, and these have been followed by most American
copies. It may perhaps be doubted whether Dr. Rolfe is quite correct in
his opinion where he says in his preface to this ode, “No vicissitudes of
taste or fashion have affected its popularity”; it is pretty certain that
young people do not know it by heart so generally as they once did, and
Wordsworth pronounced its dialect often “unintelligible”; but we are all
under obligation to Dr. Rolfe for his careful revision of this text.
Turning now to Scott’s “Lady of the Lake,” which would seem next in
familiarity to Gray’s “Elegy,” we find scores of corrections, made in
Rolfe’s, of errors that have crept gradually in since the edition of
1821. For instance, in Canto II, l. 685, every edition since 1821 has had
“I meant not all my _heart_ would say,” the correct reading being “my
_heat_ would say.” In Canto VI, l. 396, the Scottish “_boune_” has been
changed to “_bound_” and eight lines below, the old word “_barded_” has
become “_barbed_”; and these are but a few among many examples.
When we turn to Shakespeare, we find less direct service of this kind
required than in the minor authors; less need of the microscope. At
any rate, the variations have all been thoroughly scrutinized, and no
flagrant changes have come to light since the disastrous attempt in
that direction of Mr. Collier in 1852. On the other hand, we come to a
new class of variations, which it would have been well perhaps to have
stated more clearly in the volumes where they occur; namely, the studied
omissions, in Rolfe’s edition, of all indecent words or phrases. There
is much to be said for and against this process of Bowdlerizing, as it
was formerly called; and those who recall the publication of the original
Bowdler experiment in this line, half a century ago, and the seven
editions which it went through from 1818 to 1861, can remember with what
disapproval such expurgation was long regarded. Even now it is to be
noticed that the new edition of reprints of the early folio Shakespeares,
edited by two ladies, Misses Clarke and Porter, adopts no such method.
Of course the objection to the process is on the obvious ground that
concealment creates curiosity, and the great majority of copies of
Shakespeare will be always unexpurgated, so that it is very easy to turn
to them. Waiving this point, and assuming the spelling to be necessarily
modernized, it is difficult to conceive of any school edition done more
admirably than the new issue of Mr. Rolfe’s volumes of Shakespeare’s
works. The type is clear, the paper good, and the notes and appendices
are the result of long experience. When one turns back, for instance,
to the old days of Samuel Johnson’s editorship, and sees the utter
triviality and dullness of half the annotations of that very able man,
one feels the vast space of time elapsed between his annotations and Dr.
Rolfe’s. This applies even to notes that seem almost trivial, and many a
suggestion or bit of explanation which seems to a mere private student
utterly wasted can be fully justified by cases in which still simpler
points have proved seriously puzzling in the school-room.
It has been said that every Shakespeare critic ended with the desire to
be Shakespeare’s biographer, although fortunately most of them have been
daunted by discouragement or the unwillingness of booksellers. Here,
also, Mr. Rolfe’s persistent courage has carried him through, and his
work, aided by time and new discoveries, has probably portrayed, more
fully than that of any of his predecessors, the airy palace in which the
great enchanter dwelt. How far the occupant of the palace still remains
also a thing of air, we must leave for Miss Delia Bacon’s school of
heretics to determine. For myself, I prefer to believe, with Andrew Lang,
that “Shakespeare’s plays and poems were written by Shakespeare.”
XXII
GÖTTINGEN AND HARVARD A CENTURY AGO
GÖTTINGEN AND HARVARD A CENTURY AGO
“Whene’er with haggard eyes I view
This dungeon that I’m rotting in,
I think of those companions true
Who studied with me at the U-
niversity of Göttingen,
niversity of Göttingen.”
To the majority of Harvard graduates the chief association with Göttingen
is Canning’s once-famous squib, of which this is the first verse, in the
“Anti-Jacobin.” But the historical tie between the two universities is
far too close to be forgotten; and I have lately come into possession
of some quite interesting letters which demonstrate this. They show
conclusively how much the development of Harvard College was influenced,
nearly a century ago, by the German models, and how little in comparison
by Oxford and Cambridge; and as the letters are all from men afterwards
eminent, and pioneers in that vast band of American students who have
since studied in Germany, their youthful opinions will possess a peculiar
interest.
The three persons through whom this influence most came were Joseph
Green Cogswell, Edward Everett, and George Ticknor, all then studying
at Göttingen. It happens that they had all been intimate in my
father’s family, and as he was very much interested in the affairs
of the college,—of which he became in 1818 the “Steward and Patron,”
and practically, as the Reverend A. P. Peabody assures us,[22] the
Treasurer,—they sent some of their appeals and arguments through him.
This paper will consist chiefly of extracts from these letters, which
speak for themselves as to the point of view in which the whole matter
presented itself.
It will be well to bear in mind the following details as to the early
history of these three men, taking them in order of age. Cogswell was
born in 1786, graduated (Harvard) in 1806, was tutor in 1814-15 (having
previously tried mercantile life), and went abroad in 1816. Ticknor was
born in 1791, graduated (Dartmouth) in 1807, went to Germany in 1815, and
was appointed professor of Modern Languages at Harvard in 1817. Everett
was born in 1794, graduated (Harvard) in 1811, and went abroad on his
appointment as Greek professor (Harvard) in 1815.
The first of these letters is from George Ticknor, and is a very
striking appeal in behalf of the Harvard College Library, which then
consisted of less than 20,000 volumes, although the largest in the United
States, with perhaps one exception.
GÖTTINGEN, May 20, 1816.