This text is part of:
[58]
rebelled against some of his rules, contending in a letter of selfvindication that they were begotten of fastidiousness, particularly in excluding words which were technical and half technical, or of Latin origin, and new words formed by the writer according to the analogies of the language.
Sumner often revised Dr. Howe's writings, and only regretted that with reference to their full and permanent effect the Doctor did not take more care in matters of style and arrangement.
He wrote concerning one of then: ‘I have read your manuscript carefully.
It is full of beautiful thoughts, often beautifully expressed.
The truths you seek to impress must prevail; but I am sure that they will sooner prevail if you will revise your copy before sending it to the printer. . . Your reports are classical documents.
If I regarded them only as commonplace documents I should be less sensitive to any defects of manner.’
Dr. Howe wrote as to one of his reports as superintendent of the Blind Asylum, which Sumner had revised: ‘I want you to point out to me every fault, even to be more severe than you have ever been; for I am conscious that if I ever attain to any merit of composition, it will be through a perseverance on your tart in the friendly criticisms you have already vouchsafed to me.’1 But even the Doctor, while gratefully acknowledging his service as critic, thought him wanting in the mirthful faculty, and in danger of ‘turning purity of style into purism.’
Sumner was in 1849-1850 a visitor at the Harvard Law School, the scene of his early studies.
On behalf of the visitors he made the report in which he stated the methods, advantages, endowments, and history of the School, and the unexampled services of Judge Story as teacher and author,—in gratitude for which a new professorship, to be called ‘the Story Professorship of Commercial Law and the Law of Nations,’ was recommended.2 His letter of July 15, 1851, to the Story Association,3 in which he recalls his loved teacher, as also two friends whom he had made in Europe,—Thibaut and Mittermaier,—marks the period of the end of his legal studies and his final withdrawal from the
1 The writer of this Memoir several times had returned to him papers and addresses of his own already in print, which he had sent to Sumner, and was appalled to find them covered with corrections,—his ‘intrusive pencil marks’ as he called them.
2 Works, vol. II. pp. 377-392. It was the first formal visitation of the School, and President Sparks suggested to Sumner that a report of the kind be made.
3 Works, vol. II. pp. 442, 443. Sumner would not attend the oration or the dinner, being advised that Choate was to defend the Fugitive Slave Act. Adams's ‘Biography’ of Dana, vol. i. p. 199.
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.