American Classics

The following post is by Andrew Gaudio, Classics, Medieval Studies, Linguistics specialist in the Researcher Engagement & General Collections Division and currently on detail in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. 

 

During the 17^th and 18^th centuries, classical languages were an important component of education in the North American colonies. Knowledge of Latin, in particular, allowed individuals access to pan-European conversations on topics involving science, medicine, and religious studies. Greek, while its use was not as widespread as that of Latin, was, nevertheless, a language that afforded its reader the opportunity to engage with ancient authors as well as biblical scholars. Consequently, the books printed in the British-American colonies were not printed exclusively in English but in classical languages as well. The works highlighted in this blog post seek to furnish a brief, sometimes amusing, and often touching history of classical studies in early America through the material history of printing.

The Latin grammar book pictured below was one of the earliest schoolbooks written in the American colonies. First printed in Boston in 1709, the text went though more than 20 editions before the final printing in 1838. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division’s copy is from the third edition, which was printed in 1724 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Until the 1950’s, this book was thought to have been written by the famed colonial school master Ezekiel Cheever (1615-1707), who first started teaching Latin from his home in New Haven, Connecticut after emigrating from London in 1637. Relocating to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1650, he continued teaching Latin in Ipswich until 1670, when he was invited to become headmaster of the Boston Latin School which was established in 1635. Cheever was famous enough that the title page of the third edition reads: “Being the accidence abbridg’d [sic] and compiled in that most easy and accurate method, wherein the famous Mr. Ezekiel Cheever taught; and which he found the most advantageous by seventy years experience.”

However, in 1951, classicists John Latimer and Kenneth Murdock made a strong case for the authorship of Nathaniel Williams, who had been Cheever’s assistant. It is likely that it was William who actually compiled the book from Cheever’s teachings and notes. Since the circumstances which led to this book’s creation were closely linked with Cheever — it was dependent upon his teachings and was marketed by explicitly stating the famous Cheever name — the schoolmaster became designated as the book’s author by default despite not having an author’s name listed.

Authorial attribution is not the only error associated with the Rare Book and Special Collections Division’s copy of A Short Introduction to the Latin Tongue, which has an early mark of ownership. A former owner, presumably named Thomas Howland, attempted to translate the common Anglophone possessive “Thomas Howland His Book” into Latin by writing “Thomas Howland Eius Liber” on the title page in ink. The inscription was written in a lovely, legible hand. Humorously, poor Tom’s penmanship was better than his Latin. Had he studied a little harder, he might have realized that he should have chosen the reflexive pronoun: “Thomas Howland Liber Suus.” As a result, the Library of Congress now has a copy of a popular colonial American Latin textbook with an ownership inscription in poor Latin.

Should Thomas Howland have wished to attend college, he would have needed to improve his Latin prior to applying. During this period of American history, proficiency in Latin and Greek was a requirement of entry into Harvard College (now Harvard University). As a reminder of this entry requirement, the Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds a compilation of poems written in English, Greek, and Latin by members or graduates of Harvard College celebrating the accession of King George III (r. 1760-1820) to the English throne. The Latin title page and English dedication (images below) are reminders that in 1761, Harvard College in Cambridge Massachusetts was a colony of the British crown, but in terms of philological printing history in America, it is the Greek poems that are the most interesting.

From the inception of printing in 1640 with the Bay Psalm Book to the printing of this book of poems in 1761, almost no Greek text had been printed in British North America at all. The first occurrence of printed Greek in the colonies appeared in Urian Oakes’ sermon, New-England pleaded with and pressed to consider the things which concern her peace… . Printed in 1673, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the sermon pictured below is printed in English but contains a handful of Greek words. The Greek type can be difficult to distinguish on the dense page of English text, but a careful observer will spot Greek characters printed in lines 7, 19, 20, and 23. Due to a lack of Greek type in colonial British America, most printers seeking the inclusion of Greek in their publications did so by using Greek words which were transliterated into the Roman alphabet, making this imprint especially rare.

The compilation of laudatory poems from Harvard in 1761, Pietas et Gratulatio Collegii Cantabrigeiensis apud Novanglos (referenced above but pictured below), includes two complete poems printed in Greek type. This set of Greek type was not the property of the book’s printers, John Green and John Russell, but belonged to Harvard College itself. The type was given to the college in 1718 by Thomas Hollis of London, and this publication is the only known use of this Greek typeface, because a fire burned much of Harvard College in 1764, and the Greek type was destroyed. In terms of the history of typography in America, the Greek poems make this book a rare treasure. 

While the subject of the above poems, King George III, became an unpopular figure in the colonies around the time of the American Revolution, George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and the new nation’s first president, emerged as a leader worth memorializing for pedagogical purposes in the early American Republic. Francis Glass (1790-1825), a schoolteacher living on the margins of the western frontier in Miami County, Ohio, composed a biography of the life of George Washington for his students. Written entirely in Latin during the winter of 1823-1824, this monument to the pater patriae (father of the fatherland) was crafted for a dual purpose: to eulogize Washington’s achievements and pivotal role in America’s founding and to transmit this legacy in a form that would bolster Latin reading comprehension.

Unfortunately, then as now, teaching was not a lucrative profession. Glass spent most of his life in poverty, itinerantly teaching Latin and Greek to schoolboys throughout western Pennsylvania and Ohio. Lacking the means to publish his work, Glass entrusted a visiting scholar, J.N. Reynolds, with his manuscript in 1824. Almost a decade later, in 1835, Reynolds managed to publish Glass’s work. In the preface, Reynolds describes the rustic frontier school in which this text was created:

I found him [Glass] in a remote part of the county, in a good neighborhood of thrifty farmers, who had employed him to instruct their children, who, in general, were then acquiring the simplest rudiments of an English education. The schoolhouse now rises fresh on my memory. It stood on the banks of a small stream, in a thick grove of native oaks, resembling more a den for Druidical rites, than a temple of learning. The building was a low log-cabin, with a clapboard roof, but indifferently tight — all the light of heaven, found in this cabin, came through apertures made on each side in the logs, and these were covered with oiled paper to keep out the cold air, while they admitted the dim rays.

The seats, or benches, were of hewn timbers, resting on upright posts, placed in the ground to keep them from being overturned by the mischievous urchins who sat on them. In the centre was a large stove, between which and the back part of the building, stood a small desk, without lock or key, made of rough plank, over which a plane had never passed; and, behind this desk, sat Professor Glass when I entered his school.

Glass never saw his Life of Washington (Washingtonii Vita) come off the press. He died in Dayton, Ohio in 1825 at the young age of 35, but his efforts are preserved in the copy now kept in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. This work and other notable American imprints in Latin and Greek are on display in the Reading Room for the month of October. Come to LJ-239 to view them in person, or send our reference staff a note through Ask-A-Librarian to learn more.

 

Sources: 

Glass, Francis. Washingtonii Vita. New York. Harper & Brothers. 1842. Perseus Digital Library.

Latimer, John F., and Kenneth B. Murdock. “The ‘Author’ of Cheever’s Accidence.” The Classical Journal 46, no. 8 (1951): 391–97.

 

 

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