Yale University - Banner / Pot Pourri Yearbook (New Haven, CT)

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Santipr anb Pot Pourrt THOMAS RAYNESFORD LOUNSBURY THE EDITORS of the Yale Banner and Pot Pourri do well in dedicating the volume to Thomas Raynesford Loiinsbury, for thirty-five years Professor of English in the Sheffield Scientific School. No man of his time has brought greater literary distinction to the University. He is the last of a notable group of scholars vphich included the elder Hadley, President Woolsey and William Dwight Whitney, with all of whom, especially Whitney; he was closely associated in the earlier days. Though Professor Lounsbury retired from active teaching several years ago, he has never gone into seclusion ; he is known to a large body of students, who meet him at the Elizabethan Club and elsewhere. For them he is a link between the new and the old Yale. Professor Lounsbury came to Yale from Ovid, New York, a small town lying in the beautiful district between Lakes Cayuga and Seneca, where his father was settled as pastor of the Presbj terian Church. At the average age he entered Yale College and graduated in 1859. His college career points backward to a literary home and looks forward to the career he chose after a little delay. Besides main- taining high standing in his general studies, he shared in all the official literary honors of his class, which may be enumerated as Sophomore prizes for English comjDOsition, the Junior Exhibition, and the Town send Speaking of Senior year. As an editor of the Lit., he wrote the first leader for his board, defining clearly the aim and purpose of the magazine. The editors of today might well turn back to that article. His other contributions to this college periodical gave evidence of that humor, unconventional treatment, and energy of style which we are now always sure of finding in one of his books. At the outbreak of the Civil War, lie heeded the call for young men to go to the front. He was commissioned first lieutenant in the 126th Regiment of New York Volunteers, and served to the end of the war, through many of the great battles, including Gettysburg. During a part of these eventful years, he kept a journal, from which he has often read to his friends and from which last year he published extracts in the Yale Review. It is a document of rare freshness, vigor, and humor. A few years after the war was over. Professor Lounsbury came to the Sheffield Scientific School as the sole instructor of English in that institution. Needless to say, perhaps, his promotion to a professorship was immediate. 7 .

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aimuprfiita. 1913-1314 Professor Lounsburj ' s appointment marks the beginning at Yale, and every- where else, of the study of English literature on lines since made familiar. At that time, instruction in English literature was given, in the main, indirectly, through rhetoric and historical manuals. In Yale College, whither Professor Beers had not yet come, all English instruction was brought under the name of rhetoric. In the Sheffield Scientific School, there was nothing but English composition. Professor Lounsbury at once broke completely with tradition. Choosing his own title, he became, not a professor of rhetoric or of oratory, but a professor of English. His contempt for formal rhetoric may be guessed from that delightfully formal saying of his which goes back, I think, to those days. Just as a man, somewhat like this the sentence runs, who hasn ' t money enough to found a college, founds a university; so a man who hasn ' t brains enough to write a grammar, writes a rhetoric. It was a startling innovation when he announced, in describing his first courses, that Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and Pope are the authors studied throughout this year. For it meant, not what somebody says about them, not reading them aloud for practice in elocution, but a direct and adequate study of those great writers themselves. How far the present method of English instruction in American colleges is due to the example of Professor Lounsbury, may not be easy to determine in detail. It is sufficient to say here that he set the clock to the new time. From all over the country, college teachers used to come to Yale to witness the experiment. As for myself, I never had the privilege of attending one of these recitations, as they were called before the days of quizzes ; but I have heard about them from visitors and students. The men were held down to a very close reading of the author in hand, but zest was given to the M ork by illuminating comment and humorous remarks addressed to the class. What happened on one occasion has been often repeated. It was near the close of the hour, so the story goes, and the class was showing some restlessness, which Professor Lounsbury observed, and thereupon remarked: Bear with me a little longer as I have a few more pearls to cast. Professor Lounsbury has declared the story apocryphal; but several of his students have asserted it to be true, naming time and circum- stance. The reader must decide for himself where the truth lies. It may be added that, on the advice of his friends. Professor Lounsbury no longer denies the tale. For the point in the jest, consult St. Matthew vii. 6. Professor Lounsbury has many books to his credit. There is, for example, that delightful Life of James Fenimore Cooper, based upon an intimate knowledge of Cooper ' s romances and the scenes in which Leather-Stocking played his part. Several epigrammatic sayings from the book passed into circulation, and are some-