Thomas D. Seymour

“ As a teacher of advanced students, Mr. Whitney was exacting. A two-hour course under him in Sanskrit called for a larger outlay of time and effort than a four-hour course under most other teachers. He required precise knowledge of others as well as of himself. He was never deceived by glittering generalities, nor satisfied with approximate accuracy when absolute accuracy was attainable. ”

“ Day made the very wise answer that if a man had any exact and thorough knowledge, he was likely to be able to use it. As a Massachusetts man, the father turned naturally to Harvard as the proper place for his son's pursuit of advanced studies, but his pastor called his attention to the newly established department of Philosophy and the Arts at New Haven as the only definite arrangement yet made in this country for university work, and especially to the unique equipment of the special department of Oriental languages. ”

“ After graduation—at eighteen, the age when most now enter college—Mr. Whitney remained for three years in uncertainty with regard to his life-work, meanwhile busy as teller in his father's bank. He did not take an active part in the social life of the young people of Northampton, but employed himself in his own pursuits. His leisure time was given largely to the collection of birds and plants; a large and beautiful case of birds stuffed by him at this period is in the Peabody Museum at New Haven. His tastes for natural science were marked, and he was more than an amateur in that field. ”

“ George E. Day (for a quarter of a century after 1866 Professor of Hebrew at Yale, and at present Dean of the Yale Divinity School) , Mr. Whitney directed his attention to the study of Sanskrit, for which he found books in the library of his elder brother, who had recently returned from Europe. A really good mind can find pleasure and success in any one of several different fields of research. Not often, however, do we find such marked examples of men of real talent manifesting distinct tastes and power in widely different departments of learning as in the case of these two brothers. ”

“ Yale College has had another marked example of a scholar with equal ability and tastes for widely diverse studies, in Professor James Hadley, whose first published work was in the department of mathematics, and of whom a high authority said that the best [4] mathematician in the country was spoiled when Mr. Hadley devoted himself to Greek!
Mr. Whitney's practical banker father was not fully satisfied with his plan of giving himself to Oriental studies, and asked his pastor whether a man could support himself in life by studying and teaching Sanskrit. ”

“ I hope ere long Sanskrit studies will flourish in America more than in England, where with the only exception of the venerable and not-to-be-praised-enough Professor Wilson nobody seems to care for them so much as to devote his life to them. The East India Company certainly does all that is in its power to help the publication of the Vedic texts, but it does not find English hands to achieve it.... ”

“ It is certainly very discouraging to see that Professor Wilson during all the time since he got his professorship in Oxford, has not succeeded in bringing up even one Sanskrit scholar who might claim to be regarded as one who has done at least some little service to our Sanskrit philology.... I have to congratulate you most heartily on your countryman Mr. Whitney, who is now intensely engaged in the preparations for an edition of the Atharva Samhitā in union with Professor Roth of Tübingen. ”

“ Mr. W. D. Whitney certainly had great ability in the study of natural science. Doubtless the accident of his finding various linguistic books ready to hand, at the time when his mental powers were most actively developing, had much to do with his turning in the direction of philology. During the summer which he spent with his brother on Lake Superior he had a Sanskrit grammar with him, which he studied at odd moments when not engaged in collecting plants or computing barometrical observations. ”

“ Mr. J. D. Whitney went to Germany primarily in order to prepare himself for mineralogical and geological work, but became interested in the study of languages and attended (with but two fellow-listeners) a course of lectures on Sanskrit at Berlin. He himself says that he might have taken up philology in earnest, abandoning natural science altogether, if immediately after his return to his home he had not received an appointment to engage in a geological survey of a new and interesting region under United States authority. ”

“ In the death of William Dwight Whitney, this country has lost one of her most distinguished men, one who had been recognized throughout the world as one of the highest authorities in his department of learning, and who had been for forty years the leader of oriental and linguistic studies in America and the personal master of a majority of the American scholars in his department. Yale University has lost one of her most brilliant and able scholars, one of her wisest and most faithful teachers, [28] whose influence always made for diligent and honest research and statement. ”

“ In every such free and democratic body things are brought forward into public which might better have been kept back.... The classics, of course, will occupy the leading place; that department will be most strongly represented, and will least need fostering, while it will call for most careful criticism. The philology of the American aboriginal languages, on the other hand, demands, as it has already begun to receive, the most hearty encouragement.... ”

“ My besetting sin is burying myself in my books and papers, and too much overlooking all that is outside of them,—partly from natural tendencies, partly because I feel that in that way I shall on the whole do most good and give most pleasure to others. ”

“ Great Britain in this generation has had more than one scholar of note whose brilliant form of statement, ingenious theories, and varied attainments have sufficed to give them undue authority on subjects where they made some grievous errors. ”

“ He loved learning for its own sake and not for its reward of fame. The words which he wrote with regard to his friend Professor James Hadley are strikingly true of himself: "No one was ever more free from the desire to shine among his fellows. ”

“ Educational subjects also are closely bound up with philology, and will necessarily receive great attention; yet there should be a limit here; our special task is to advance the interests of philology only, confident that education will reap its share of the benefit." Mr. Whitney's services to the Association, and faithful attendance upon its meetings, may be estimated from the fact that the first sixteen volumes of the Transactions contain fourteen papers by him printed in full, while occasionally he presented communications which he did not care to print. ”

“ Secretary of the American Oriental Society, and (to use Mr. Whitney's words) "for some ten years Professor Salisbury was virtually the Society, doing its work and paying its bills. He gave it standing and credit in the world of scholars, as an organization that could originate and make public valuable material; after such a start, it was sure of respectful attention to whatever it might do." The Society had published nothing before he took charge of this office. Professor Salisbury also secured valuable Arabic and Sanskrit manuscripts and books from De Sacy's library and elsewhere in Europe ”

“ No company of brothers and sisters of any American family has been so remarkable for scholarly attainments and achievements as that family in Northampton: Josiah D. Whitney, Jr. (Yale, 1839) , Professor of Geology at Harvard; William D. Whitney, of Yale; James L. Whitney (Yale, 1856) , of the Boston [2] Public Library; Henry M. Whitney (Yale, 1864) , Professor of English Literature at Beloit College; Miss Maria Whitney, the first incumbent of the chair of Modern Languages in Smith College. ”

“ His services and generosity in procuring fonts of Oriental type, and his wisdom in bringing the Oriental Society into close connection with the studies of foreign missionaries, should not be forgotten. He was the only trained Orientalist in this country, until Mr. Whitney's return in 1853, and had an admirably equipped library. In the Yale catalogue of 1841-42, Professor Salisbury's name appears for the first time in the list of the faculty as Professor of the Arabic and Sanskrit Languages and Literature. ”

“ From the time of the preparation of those lectures, Mr. Whitney seems to have devoted to this subject more attention than he had given before. In 1875 he published in the International Scientific Series a similar book, in somewhat more compendious form, on the 'Life and Growth of Language: an outline of linguistic science,' 326 pages. This was translated into German, French, Italian, Netherlandish, and Swedish. This last book grew out of his lectures to academic senior classes.
No one has done so much as Mr. Whitney to teach sound views of linguistic science. ”

“ It is both useful and pleasant to have to do more directly with the young men in college, and there is also the chance of influencing one and another of them to devote his attention to higher philological study."
During and after the Civil War, the ordinary expenses of life increased, and Mr. Whitney's family was growing. The income which had sufficed for the young and unmarried professor in 1854 had become entirely insufficient for his needs, with six [11] children, in 1870. ”

“ Whitney was the only "University professor," not only at Yale, but in the whole country. One who is everywhere recognized as a leader in education then wrote: "I am confident that there is no one whose intellectual influence over the younger officers of the college is so great as Mr. Whitney's.... I have greatly admired his influence in promoting fidelity, truth, justice, and industry among the students, as well as his skill in promoting their intellectual character." Another of his colleagues wrote: "I have never known the college men so moved. The danger of losing so eminent a man as Mr. ”

“ The first volume contained papers on the Veda, the Avesta, the science of language; the second, on the British in India, China and the Chinese, religion and mythology, orthography and phonology, Hindu astronomy. The author's regard for his earliest teacher in Sanskrit is marked by his dedication of the first of the two volumes to "Professor Edward Elbridge Salisbury, the pioneer and patron of Sanskrit studies in America." The second volume "is affectionately dedicated" to "Professors Rudolf Roth and Albrecht Weber, my early teachers and lifelong friends." ”

“ Whitney's constancy in attendance on their gatherings. In November, 1875, he apologized to the Oriental Society for his absence from the May meeting (caused by his visit to Europe in the interest of the edition of the Atharva-Veda) , and added that it was his second absence in twenty-one years from a meeting of the Society! His devoted fidelity to the little Classical and Philological Society at Yale was just as marked. A quarter of a century ago, he with Professor Hadley and Professor Packard made that small gathering a deep source of inspiration. ”

“ Whitney said that he had never lost from view the completion of the plan of publication as originally formed. "In 1875 I spent the summer in Germany chiefly engaged in further collating at Munich and at Tübingen the additional manuscript material which had come to Europe since our text was printed; and I should probably have soon taken up the work seriously, save for having been engaged while in Germany to prepare a Sanskrit grammar, which fully occupied the leisure of several following years. ”

“ We gratefully acknowledge the obligation under which he has laid us by his diligent attendance at the meetings, by his unstinted giving of time and of labor in editing the publications and maintaining their high scientific character, by the quality and amount of his own contributions to the Journal—more than half of volumes VI-XII [15] coming from his pen—and above all by the inspiration of his example. ”

“ Mr. Whitney's release from drudgery with undergraduates enabled him also to enrich his Sanskrit and linguistic courses. In the catalogue of 1870-71 we read: "In Philology, a somewhat regular course of higher study, extending through two years, and leading to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, is offered. The leading studies of the first year will be The general principles of linguistic science, under Professor Whitney; the Sanskrit language, under Professor Whitney; the older Germanic languages, especially Gothic and Anglo-Saxon, under Professor Hadley and Mr. ”

“ The first great work of Mr. Whitney's scholarship was the publication of the Atharva-Veda-Sanhitā, undertaken in 1852 with Professor Roth. The first volume of 458 pages, royal octavo, was published in 1855-56. In connection with this, he prepared and published in Weber's Indische Studien (vol. IV, pp. 9-64) in 1857 an 'Alphabetisches Verzeichniss der Versanfänge der Atharva-Samhitā'; in the Journal of the American [17] Oriental Society in 1862 (vol. VII, pp. 333-616) the 'Atharva-Veda-Prātiçākhya,' with text, translation and notes ”