Mather act to inveigle the whole board of the college into a quasi sanction of the witchcraft delusion, in the circular inviting information touching "the existence and agency of the invisible world."* Driven from the old political assumptions by the new charter, the priestly party sought the control of the college, and a struggle ensued between rival theological interests. Increase Mather bound the government of the institution in a close corporation of his own selection, under a new charter from the General Court, which was, however, negatived in England. Before this veto arrived, it had conferred the first degree in the college, of Doctor in Divinity, upon President Mather in 1692. The Rev. Samuel Willard was for more than six years, from 1701 to 1707, vice-president of the college, an apparent compromise in the difficulties of the times. He was a graduate of Harvard, had been settled as a minister at Groton, and driven to seek refuge in Boston from the devastations of King Philip's war. He was a good divine of his day, and a useful head of the college. A story is told of his tact, not without humor. His sonin-law, the Rev. Samuel Neal, preached a sermon for him at his church which was much cavilled at as a wretched affair; when he was requested by the congregation not to admit any more from the same source. He borrowed the sermon, preached it himself, with the advantages of his capital delivery, and the same persons were so delighted with it that they requested a copy for publication. He was the author of a number of publications, chiefly sermons, and a posthumous work, in 1726, entitled a "Body of Divinity," which is spoken of as the first folio of the kind published in the country. He wrote on Witchcraft, and has the credit of having resisted the popular delusion on that subject. He was twice married, and had twenty children. He died in office, and was succeeded by John Leverett, who held the post till 1724. The latter has the reputation of a practical man, faithful to his office, and a liberalminded Christian. He was a grandson of Governor John Leverett, of Massachusetts. The long array of acts of liberality to the college by the Hollis family dates from this time. The great benefactor of the name was Thomas Hollis, a London merchant, born in 1659, who died in 1781. His attention was early attracted to Harvard, by being appointed trustee to his uncle's will, charged with a bequest to the college. In 1719 he made a first shipment of goods to Boston, the proceeds of which were paid over, and the first interest appropriated to the support of a son of Cotton Mather, then a student. A second considerable donation followed. His directions for the employment of the fund in 1721, constituted the Hollis Professorship of Divinity, to which, in 1727, he added a Professorship of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. At this time his pecuniary donations had brought to the college four thousand nine hundred pounds Massachusetts currency. He gave and collected books for the library with valuable counsel, and for warded, from a friend, a set of Hebrew and Greek types for printing. This liberality was the more praiseworthy since Hollis was a Baptist, a sect in no great favor in New England; but he was a man of liberal mind, and selected Harvard for the object of his munificent gifts, as the most independent college of the times. In founding his Divinity Professorship he imposed no test, but required only that Baptists should not be excluded from its privileges. His brothers, John and Nathaniel, were also donors to the college. Thomas Hollis, a son of the last mentioned, became the heir of his uncle, the first benefactor, and liberally continued his bounty. He conferred money, books, and philosophical apparatus. He survived his uncle but a few years, and left a son, the third Thomas Hollis. This was the famous antiquary and virtuoso, with a collector's zeal for the memory of Milton and Algernon Sidney. A rare menorial of his tastes is left in the two illustrated quartos of Memoirs, by Thomas Brand Hollis (who also gave books and a bequest), published in 1780, six years after his death. He sent some of its most valuable literary treasures to the Harvard library, books on religious and political liberty, all of solid worth, and sometimes bound in a costly manner, as became his tastes. It was his humor to employ various gilt emblems or devices to indicate the nature of the contents. Thus he put an owl on the back of one volume, to indicate that it was replete with wisdom, while he indicated the folly of another by the owl reversed. The goddess of liberty figured frequently. Many of the books contained citations from Milton, of whom he was an enthusiastic admirer, and occasional memoranda exhibiting the zeal of a bibliographer.t He collected complete series of pamphlets on controversies, and presented them bound. He also gave money freely in addition. His donations in his lifetime Quincy's Hist. of Harvard, 1. 283. + Several notices of Hollis's books, with coples of his annota tions, may be seen in the Monthly Anthology for 1808. In one of his learned volumes he notes, on a loose slip of paper, which has retained its place for nearly ninety years, T. H. has been particularly Industrious in collecting Grammars and Lexicons of the Oriental Roor Languages, to send to Harvard College, in hopes of forming by that means, assisted by the energy of the loaders, always beneficent, a few PRIME scholars, honors to their country, and lights to mankind." pounds sterling. At this day, eighty years after his bequest of five hundred pounds to the library, half of the permanent income for the purchase of books is derived from that source. A full-length portrait of him, richly painted by Copley, at the instance of the corporation, hangs in the Gallery. When it was requested of him, he replied, in allusion to the works of his favorite English reformers, which he had sent, “the effigies which you desire may be seen at this time in your library, feature by feature." We have taken our engraving from a medallion head in the Hollis Memoirs. He was the friend not only of English but of American liberty, being instrumental in republishing the early political essays of Mayhew, Otis, and John Adams. Leverett was followed in the college presidency by Benjamin Wadsworth, from 1725 to 1737, a moderate, useful man. He published a number of sermons and religious essays. Edward Holyoke succeeded, and was president for nearly thirtytwo years, till 1769. Harvard prospered during his time, though the destruction of the old Harvard Hall by fire, in 1764, was a serious disaster, especially as it involved the loss of the library; but the sympathy excited new acts of friendship, On a winter's night in January some six thousand volumes were burnt in this edifice, including the Oriental library bequeathed by Dr. Lightfoot, and the Greek and Roman classics presented by Berkeley. CE Harvard Hall, built 1682, destroyed 1764. Among other additions to the college usefulness, the first endowment of special annual lectures was made at this period by the Hon. Paul Dudley, of great reputation on the Bench, who, in 1751, founded, by bequest, the course bearing his name. Four are delivered in succession, one each year, on Natural and Revealed Religion, the Church of Rome, and the Validity of Presbyterian Ordination. The first of these was delivered by President Holyoke, who had a rare disinclination among the New England clergy to appear in print, and his discourse was not published. He lived in the discharge of his office to the age of eighty, in a vigorous old age. He was amiable, generous, and unostentatious.* PIETAS ET GRATULATIO. During the Presidency of Holyoke the College gained distinguished honor by the publication, in 1761, of the Pietas et Gratulatio. This was an elegiac and complimentary volume, printed with much elegance in quarto, celebrating the death of George II. in the previous year, and the glorious accession of George III., not forgetting Epithalamia on the nuptials with the Princess Charlotte. A proposal was set up in the college chapel inviting competition on these themes from undergraduates, or those who had taken a degree within seven years, for six guinea prizes to be given for the best Latin oration, Latin poein in hexameters, Latin elegy in hexameters and pentameters, Latin ode, English poem in long verse, and English ode. These conditions were not all preserved in the preparation of the volume. Master Lovell, in its second ode, ascribes the first idea to Governor Bernard, who had then just entered on his office, which is confirmed by a resolution of the college corporation at the beginning of the next year, providing for a presentation copy to his new Majesty, who does not appear to have made any special acknowledgment of it. President Holyoke sent a copy to Thomas Hollis the antiquarian. "An attempt," he says, in his letter, "of several young gentlemen here with us, and educated in this college, to show their pious sorrow on account of the death of our late glorious king, their attachment to his royal house, the joy they have in the accession of his present majesty to the British throne, and in the prospect they have of the happiness of Britain from the Royal Progeny which they hope for from his alliance with the illustrious house of Mechlenburg." The volume thus originated may compare, both in taste and scholarship, with similar effusions of the old world. Though rather a trial of skill than an appeal of sober truthfulness, the necessary panegyric is tempered by the good advice to the new King in the prefatory prose address, ascribed to Hutchinson or Bernard, which, if his Majesty had followed in its spirit, separation from the colonies might have been longer delayed. The inevitable condition of such a work as the Pietas is eulogy; Edward Augustus Holyoke, the centenarian and celebrated physician, of Salem, Mass., was the son of President Holyoke, by his second marriage. He was born_August_18, 1728, and became a graduate of Harvard of 1746. For nearly eighty years he was a practitioner at Salem, dying there in 1829. Ho was a man of character and probity in his profession, and a remarkable example of the retention of the powers of life. At the age of eighty his desire for knowledge was active as over. He kept up his familiarity with the classics, and the prestige of his parentage and college life, in liberal studies and acquaintance with curious things, in and out of his profes sion. He was well versed in scientific studies, and his case may be added to the long list of natural philosophers who have reached extreme age. He retained his faculties to the last, It had always been his habit to record his observations, and various voluminous diaries from his pen are in existence. After he completed his hundredth year, it is stated that "be commenced a manuscript in which he proposed to minute down some of the changes in the manners, dress, dwellings, and employments of the inhabitants of Salem."-Williams's Am Med. Blog; Knapp's Am. Blog. Pietas et Gratulatio Collegii Cantabrigiensis apud Novan glos, Bostoni-Massachusettensium. Typis J. Green & J. RusBoll. 1761. 4to. pp. 108. From a manuscript copy of the "Proposal," in the copy of the Pietan et Gratulatio in the library of Harvard College. 6 September 25, 1762, Hollis's Memoirs, 6 to 101. so the departing guest is sped and the coming welcomed, in the most rapturous figments of poetry. George II. is elevated to his apotheosis in the skies, in the long echoing wave of the exulting hexameter, while the ebbing flood of feeling at so mournful an exaltation is couched in the subdued expression of the sinking pentameter.* All nature is called upon to mourn and weep, and again to rejoice; all hearts to bleed, and again to live, as one royal monarch ascends the skies and another the throne. As this production really possesses considerable merit, as it brings together the names of several writers worthy of commemoration, and as the work is altogether unique in the history of American literature, it may be well to notice its separate articles with such testimony as we can bring together on the question of their authorship. By the kindness of Mr. Ticknor, the historian of Spanish Literature, we have before us his copy of the Pietas which once belonged to Professor Winthrop, with a manuscript letter from the antiquarian Thaddeus Mason Harris, who was librarian at Harvard from 1791 to 1793, which furnishes authorities named in Professor Sewall's copy presented to the writer; also a manuscript list of authors on the authority of Dr. Eliot. In the Monthly Anthology for June, 1809, we have a carefully prepared list, in an article written by A. H. Everett, and in the No. for July some suggestions for its emendation, by the Rev. Dr. Samuel Deane, of Portland, the only surviving contributor, and from another person, not known to us, who dates his note, July 13, 1809. There are thirty-one papers in all, exclusive of the introductory address to the King. The first is the Adhortatio Prasidis, a polished Latin ode, the ostensible composition of President Holyoke, who was then about seventy. It does credit to his taste and scholarship. It closes with a reference to the hopes of the future American song. Sic forsan et vos vestraque munera Miratus ignotas camœnas Sole sub Hesperio calentes. The second and twenty-fifth belong to John Lovell, to whom have also been ascribed by Deane the twenty-sixth and seventh, with the still further authority of Lovell's name at the end of these articles, in Winthrop's own copy. Lovell was a graduate of Harvard, and was master of the Boston Latin school for forty years from 1734 to 1775 (succeeding to the afterwards famous Jeremiah Gridley, a great lawyer in his prime, and an elegant writer in his newspaper, the Rehearsal, in his younger days, in 1731), when he became a loyalist refugee, and went with the British troops to Halifax, where he soon after • Coleridge has most happily, in his translation of Schiller's couplet, "described and exemplified" the Ovidian Elegiac metre. In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column; + The writer in the Monthly Anthology for June, 1809, suggests that he was assisted in it by Master Lovell It has also been ascribed to Bernard. The Rehearsal was a weekly paper in Boston, on a half sheet follo, published from 1781-85, when it was merged in the Boston Evening Post. In Gridley's hands it was written in rather an ornamental style. Thomas's list of Print, IL 898. Mass, Hist, Boo, Coll, First Bories, v. 918. died, in 1778. Though a rigid teacher, Lovell is said to have been an agreeable companion; and though a tory, he educated many of the whig leaders. He delivered the first published address in Faneuil Hall, a funeral oration on its founder in 1742. In the close of this he uttered the memorable sentence, "May this hall be ever sacred to the inte rests of truth, of justice, of loyalty, of honor, of liberty. May no private views nor party broils ever enter these walls." Lovell's Latin ode (11.) to Governor Bernard is forcible and elegant, and its concluding simile of the torn branch in Virgil's descent to Hades, as applied to the royal succession, happy. Sic sacra sævæ dona Proserpina Silva iterum renovatur auro. His second composition (xxv.) is an Epithalamium in English heroics, descriptive of the embarcation of Charlotte on the Elbe. Rocks, sands, winds, and Neptune are invoked to give safe conduct to the marriage party; and Neptune responds in the most cordial manner. XXVI. and XXVII. are, the one in Latin, the other in English, commemorations of the astronomical incident of the year, the transit of Venus, which had just been observed by Professor Winthrop, of the College at St. John's. XXVIL While Halley views the heavens with curious eyes, Seven of the compositions are given to Stephen Sewall, whom Harris has called "the most accomplished classical scholar of his day which our college or country could boast." These papers are the m., in Latin hexameters; v., an English_ode; x., & Latin elegiac; XIV., an elegant Latin sapphic ode, exulting over the prospects of the royal grandson, and prematurely rejoicing in the peaceful reign: Ipse sacratum tibi JANE! templum Manuscript letter to Prof. George Ticknor, Dorchester, April, 1898. Hinc quies orbi; studiis juvamen; Gaudium musis; thalamí puellis; Omnibus passim hinc oriatur amplo Copia cornu. Prata pubescunt gregibus superba; Cuncta subrident redimita sertis. Num rogas unde hæc REGIT his GEORGUS xv. and xvI. are a Greek elegy and sapphic. XXIII. is a Latin sapphic ode addressed to the new sovereign, elegant and spirited, setting all the powers of nature ringing in with great joy and hilarity the coming of the new sovereign. Sewall was born at York, in the district of Maine, in 1734, and was brought up as a joiner, his industry in which calling gave him the means of entering Harvard at the age of twenty-four. He was Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages, in which he was a proficient, at Harvard, from 1765 to 1785. His lectures were models of English composition. He published a Hebrew Graminar in 1763; a Latin oration on the death of President Holyoke; an oration on the death of Professor Winthrop; Scripture Account of the Schekinah, 1774; History of the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, 1776; a translation of the first book of Young's Night Thoughts into Latin verse, and Carmina Sacra.* In the college library is a "Syriac and Chaldee Grammar and Dictionary" in MS., prepared by him for publication; also a "Treatise on Greek Prosody," and part of a Greek and English Lexicon.t He died in 1804, in his seventy-first year. John Lowell, of Newbury, on the testimony of the Anthology and Dr. Eliot, was the author of No. VII., a not very remarkable eulogy of the two sovereigns in English heroics. Lowell had been graduated the year before, and was about to lay the foundation of those legal attainments which made him a constitutional authority in his own State, and Judge of the Federal Court in Massachusetts, under the appointment of Washington. VIII, IX., and XVII., are ascribed, in Sewall's copy, and by Deane, to the elder Bowdoin. The first two are Latin epigrams; the last is an English iambic in the good round measure of the author, whom we shall meet again in his moral poem on the Economy of Life. Bowdoin was The Night Thoughts were published in a small 18mo. of 21 pages, in 1786. Nocte Cogitata, Auctore, Anglice Scripta, Young, D.D., que Lingua Latil Donavit America_Carolop pidi: Typis Allen & Cushing, Massachusettenslum. The motto Is from Virgil-Sunt lachryma rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt. The dedication is to John Hancock, President of Congress-Nomen præ se ferre gestit. It thus renders Young's famous opening lines: Somnus, qui fessos reficit mitissimus artus! The Carmina Sacra que Latine Græceque Condidit America was published in a neat small quarto form of eight pages, Wigornim, Massachusettensis, typis Isale Thomas, 1789. It gives versions of the 23d and 184th Psalma, the first nine verses of the 4th chapter of the Song of Solomon, and a Greek Ode on the Day of the Last Judgment. The Canticles com mence: En venusta es, cara mihi, en venusta es, + MS. list of Sewall's writings by T. M. Harris. at this time a graduate of some sixteen years' standing. Samuel Deane, who wrote the English ode X., as appears by his own authority, was a Bachelor of Arts of the year before. He was of the class of 1760 of the college, its Librarian and Promus,— a species of steward. He became noted as the minister of Portland, Maine. He died in 1814, having published an Election Sermon and the New England Farmer or Georgical Dictionary. XI., one of the longest English poems, was written by Benjania Church, of whom we say something elsewhere; and Iv., in English rhyme, may also be given to him, on the authority of a marked copy in the Harvard Library. XIII. and xxvII., English odes, belong to Dr. Samuel Cooper, then in his established pulpit reputation, having left college eighteen years before. XVIII., XIX., XX., XXXI., on the Anthology authority, may be set down to Governor Francis Bernard, who may have been the writer also of VI., a Latin elegiac. President Quincy assigns five contributions to Bernard. The first two are brief Greek and Latin epitaphs, of which the third is an English translation. Thirty-one is the Epilogue, a Latin sapphic ode, prophetic of the future glories of the American muse. It is not often that the world gets so good an ode from a Governor, but Bernard had kept up his old Oxford education, and had a decided taste in literature, knowing Shakspeare, it is said, by heart.* Attamen, si quid studium placendi, Dum regit mundum occiduum BRITANNUS, Dum DEUS pendens agitationes XXI., XXII., are Latin sapphics of which the author is unknown; nor has any name been assigned to the spirited Latin epithalamium XXIV., worthy to have been penned by Lovell or Sewall. • Allen's Biographical Dictionary. XXIX. of the Pietas et Gratulatio, in English blank verse, is assigned by the Anthology lists to Thomas Oliver, who had graduated eight years before, and who was then living in retirement, to be disturbed afterwards by his lieutenant-governorship and loyalist flight to England. Peter Oliver, to whom this has also been ascribed, had graduated thirty-one years before, and was then a Judge of the Superior Court of Massachusetts. The English poem xxx. may have been written by Bowdoin. We have now enumerated each item of this meritorious production, which is well worthy of learned and antiquarian annotation at the hands of some competent son of Old Harvard. The writers were nearly all alumni of the college, and though not all fresh from its halls at the date of this composition, the fact that they were scholars, whose taste and literature had been thus far preserved, is the more creditable to both parties, when we consider how soon such accomplish ments generally fade amidst the active affairs of the world. Samuel Locke was the successor of Holyoke for more than three years, when he resigned the office. He made no particular mark in his college government. He is said to have been a man of talents, wanting knowledge of the world, which the situation in those revolutionary days demanded. From 1774 to 1780 the chair was occupied by Samuel Langdon, whose ardent Whig politics, while the public was pleased, hardly compensat ed for his lack of judgment. He retired to the duties of a country parish. Joseph Willard was elected in 1781, and continued till his death, in 1804. "Having been called to the President's chair in the midst of the revolutionary war, when the general tone of morals was weak, and the spirit of discipline enervated, he sustained the authority of his station with consummate steadfastness and prudence. He found the seminary embarrassed, he left it free and prosperous."* Samuel Webber, before his presidency, from 1806 to 1810, had been Professor of Mathematics in the college. He had been a farmer's boy, and had entered the university at twenty. He published a work on Mathematics in two volumes octavo, which was much used in the early part of the century. He was succeeded in the government of the college by John Thornton Kirkland, who held the office from 1810 to 1828, and whose honored memory is fresh in the hearts of the present generation. All of these Presidents, from the commencement to the time of Quincy, were clergymen or preachers, as they have always been graduates of the college from the days of President Hoar. From Kirkland, in 1829, the office passed to Josiah Quincy, who held it till 1845; when he was succeeded by Edward Everett, 1846-19; and Jared Sparks from that year till 1858, when the present incumbent, James Walker, was called from his chair of Moral Philosophy. His reputation as a thinker and preacher was established by his pulpit career at Charlestown, and the discharge of the duties of his professorship; and • Quincy's Hist. 11. 988, | though fastidious in avoiding publication, by his occasional discourses and articles in the Christian Examiner, during his editorship of the journal with the Rev. Dr. Greenwood. He has published, as a college text-book, an edition of Reid "On the Intellectual Powers," with notes, also an edition of Dugald Stewart's "Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers," and has delivered a course of Lowell lectures on "The Philosophy of Religion." Having brought the line of Presidents to the present day, we may now notice a few incidental points connected with the history of the college. In 1814 a Professorship of Greek Literature was founded by Samuel Eliot, a merchant of Boston, who liberally appropriated twenty thousand dollars for the purpose. The gift was anonymous, and the professorship did not bear his name till his death in 1820. Edward Everett was the first incumbent; and C. C. Felton, since 1834, has done much to make the title known. In Astronomy and Mathematics, Benjamin Peirce, since 1842; Dr. Gray, the successor of Nuttall in Natural History, in 1842; and Louis Agassiz, in Zoology and Geology, since 1847, have extended the reputation of the college among men of science throughout the world. An important addition has been made to the higher educational facilities of Cambridge in the foundation, by the Hon. Abbott Lawrence, of the Scientific School bearing his name. Its faculty consists of the president and ten professors; the most important chairs, those of chemistry, geology, and engineering, are at present occupied by Horsford, Agassiz, and Eustis. Students are not admitted under the age of eighteen. An attendance of at least one year on one or more of the courses of lectures, and a satisfactory examination on the studies pursued, entitle the student to the degree of Bachelor in Science cum laude. To attain the highest grade, summa cum laude, a more rigorous examination, exceeding in thoroughness, it is said by those who have been subjected to it, the celebrated examinations at West Point, must be passed. A Museum of Natural History, under the supervision of the professors, has been commenced on a scale commensurate with the extended instructions of the school. * The Institution, besides the eminent professors whom we have mentioned, enumerates amongst its graduates and officers, the names of the Wigglesworths, the Wares, Woods, Channing, Buckininster, Norton, Palfrey, Noyes, Francis, in theology and sacred literature; Edward Everett, Popkin, and Felton, in classic literature; Ticknor, Follen, and Longfellow, in the languages of continental Europe; Winthrop, Webber, Bowditch, Safford, Farrar, Peck, Cogswell, Nuttall, Harris, Wyman, in the departments of mathematics, natural history, and philosophy; Isaac Parker, Parsons, Stearns, Story, Ashmun, Greenleaf, Wheaton, William Kent, and Joel Parker, in the school of jurisprudence; and the best talent of the time and region in medicine and anatomy. Other A Memorial of the Rev. John Enelling Popkin was edited by Professor Felton, in 1852. He was a man of a dry humor and of sterling character. His lectures on classical subjects, of which several are published, show him to have been a good scholar and a polished man of his times, |