Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

He was not merely a professional man. His culture was wide for a person of his years and labors. Besides his college acquaintance with the classics,—which he kept up to a considerable extent,—he was in a measure familiar with the literature of France and Germany, and was also, about the time he entered the army, studying Italian, that he might enjoy the poets of that language in their original tongue. In matters of art his taste was pure and classic. His power of versification was considerable; and he was not without some skill as a draughtsman, which, under cultivation, might have ripened into an ability above mediocrity.

He had a strong taste for authorship; and, after spending many months in preparation, he had carried one manuscript to an advanced stage, without the knowledge of any one save those whom he was obliged to consult, and had made a contract for its publication, just as the war broke out. His desire to see this launched was the strongest obstacle to his entering the service, though it caused no hesitation in his conduct. It was an account of printers and printing in this country prior to the Revolution, with a catalogue of publications, revised and extended from Isaiah Thomas's ‘History of Printing.’ His manuscript is now in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society, and it is hoped that it may yet be published.

How industriously he pursued his studies was never understood until an examination of his papers after his death revealed it. Among them were found copious and careful notes upon a variety of subjects, evincing a wonderful degree of assiduity and thoroughness. That this was not appreciated in his lifetime is due to his exceeding reticence and to his peculiar methods of labor. It was one of his frequent remarks, that he must work in his own way or he could do nothing, and his own way was usually an original method.

But overtopping his intellectual abilities and aesthetic