The History of Dartmouth CollegeSmith, Baxter Perry
History
The History of Dartmouth College
Smith, Baxter Perry
Dartmouth College -- History
"In the study of languages he found a fascination. The marvelous Greek
tongue was of course the richest field for him, the language of a
people of the finest and subtlest intellect, and of the highest
culture in the art of speech. He seemed at home in that wonderful
language as much almost as if it had been his mother tongue. The
elegance and vivacity, the felicity and energy of his translations
from Thucydides or Plato showed that he not only comprehended his
author and saw the subject as he saw it, but that he had fairly caught
the glow of the author's mind from the page which he had written.
"So accomplished a student of language could not have been ignorant of
his rank among his fellow students; but in all my intimacy with him,
boarding at the same table, occupying for a few months the same room,
and spending with him more or less time every day either in social
intercourse or in the enjoyment of vocal or instrumental music, I
never knew him to betray, by word or act or look, a consciousness of
his superiority to the poorest scholar in the class.
"Oblivious as he was, apparently, of the deficiencies of others, he
was quick enough to perceive their merits. A fine recitation or an
eminently creditable performance of any college exercise, no matter by
whom, gave him positive enjoyment, which in his nervous and emphatic
way he was very apt to express. It is really not too much to say that
he appeared to enjoy the successes of others as much as though they
had been his own.
"What a help to any college class is the influence of one such man!
His connection with the class of 1843, was, no doubt, the presentation
to some of its members of an ideal such as they had not formed before;
an ideal, not only of enthusiasm for the largest acquisitions and the
finest culture, but of that enthusiasm sustained by the love of
excellence for its own sake, and not alloyed by any merely selfish
ambition to surpass others.
"A spirit of scholarship so high, so broad, so generous as this could
be no mark for envy. None of us grudged our classmate his position or
his honors. He was the beloved associate, and is now the warmly
remembered friend of some of us, and no doubt many of us were more
indebted to his example than we were aware of at the time for anything
that was well and worthily done by us in our college days.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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