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| Classics at Columbia...in 1850 |
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| Classics at Columbia...in 1850 |
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Classics at Columbia... in 1850
Professor Alan Cameron, Charles Anthon
Professor of the Latin Language and Literature, entered “semi-retirement”
earlier this year after more than thirty years of service to the University and
the Department of Classics. A detailed look into the professorship’s namesake and
legacy was conducted.
Professor Charles Anthon faced his class
with his customary glower. He was seated in a raised, enclosed pulpit-like sanctum
sanctorium. His classroom was a rectangular chamber furnished with rows and
rows of long desks with a solitary chair in front, where the unfortunate scholar
would sit when called upon to perform, caught pincer-like between the baleful
glare of Professor Anthon and his silent, gawking classmates.
“Read!” Professor Anthon would command.
The scholar did so. “Badly read. Now
scan!” would be the next order. The scholar complied. “Shabby as usual. Now
translate.” Again, the scholar would obey. “Worth about two” would be a
generous assessment, which, if the scholar had performed impeccably, would be
followed by a swift “You may go!”
It was a different time. The year was
1850. The Columbia College campus – or rather, the Columbia College
building – was located in lower Manhattan, just west of Park Place. A
prospective scholar seeking admission
had to demonstrate to the President that he was “accurately acquainted with the grammar of both the
Greek and Latin tongues”, and following a successful exercise in Caesar, or
Sallust, or the New Testament, would be permitted to subscribe to the statutes
of the College and pay, in advance, the “annual tuition fee of ninety dollars”.
For the next four years, he would be subjected to the rigors of thirty-two courses,
of which at least fourteen were in Greek and Latin.
The student body back then was much
smaller both in size and in distribution, as rarely did a graduating class
exceed thirty seniors and rarely did a family name outside of New York’s Protestant elite wander into the
student rolls. The faculty, too, boasted only six professors. Described by Professor Robert McCaughey
as a place where “everyone was a legacy”, Columbia College might well be seen as a large family
– with Professor Charles Anthon as Captain von Trapp.
From when he was first appointed as
Adjunct Professor of Latin in 1820 to when a stroke forced his retirement just
weeks before his death in 1867, Professor Charles Anthon was the omnipresent
personification of Columbia College, described by his students as a “an absolute
monarch, a king of books and quills… with his learning his scepter, and his
works his crown”. Alumni who studied with Anthon in his early years might see –
and some did – their sons and grandsons do the same.
Anthon took “omnipresent” to mean just
that. In his forty-seven years of service, he rarely left the College grounds.
Prior to Columbia’s move to midtown in 1857, he literally
lived at the College – spacious apartments at College Hall were a faculty perk.
He studiously avoided public gatherings, commencement ceremonies, and all cause
for celebration, filling his days from four in the morning to nine at night
with reading, translating, lecturing, and scholarship, punctuated only by an
occasional stroll around the College green.
His personality, too, was a matter of
legend. Often seen around campus with his books and a “dreadful rattan” tucked
under his arm, he would alternately scowl at the younger students and wink at
seniors. To the upper classes, he was affectionately known as “Pop” Anthon. But
to the freshmen, sophomores, and unfortunate students of Columbia Grammar School (of which he also served as rector), he
was known by two things: his liberal application of his “dreadful rattan, to
communion with which a culprit was often invited to a private room”, and his
second nickname – “Bull” Anthon.
History, however, has not been kind to
Anthon. During his lifetime, he produced over fifty books, including dictionaries,
grammar references, commentaries, and translations – books that either did not
exist or existed in very poor and inadequate forms at the beginning of his
career. There are charges of embarrassing inaccuracies (he estimated the Alexandra
lighthouse to be visible at a distance of one hundred miles, which would have
required it to be ten times as tall as the Pyramids of Giza), plagiarism,
translations through intermediate languages (mostly German classical
scholarship), and a strange incident involving the Mormon Church where Church
authorities claimed he authenticated and translated a passage of “reformed Egyptian
hieroglyphics” from the Book of Mormom, but which Anthon himself maintains he
did no such thing.
The Classical Outlook, however, adopts
a more generous view of Anthon’s career. Anthon’s contemporaries were just as
guilty as he of questionable scholarship, and his books, while they did draw
heavily from German sources, nevertheless did become standard textbooks at English-speaking
universities around the world, including Oxford and Cambridge. Haste, combined with deadlines from
Harper’s, which pressured him to turn out volumes at the “speed of a serial novelist”,
rather than malicious and dishonest scholarship were his mortal sins.
Nevertheless, he did succeed in giving generations of American and
English-speaking students access to the great works of Greek and Roman writers,
when “help was not generally available from other quarters”. For that, he is
considered a Pioneer of Classical Studies in America by the American Classical League.
Professor Charles Anthon’s legacy of dedication
to Latin scholarship and commitment to the preservation and understanding of
ancient texts, but thankfully not his legacy of corporal punishment, lives on
in the person of Professor Alan Cameron, who for the past thirty years has served
as the Charles Anthon Professor of the Latin Language and Literature – a legacy
that began when Columbia College was only seventy years old, when the campus was
one building, and when everyone, everyone, was a Classics Major.
A 19th-Century CULPA Review
The following text was penned by Edgar
Allen Poe, who, during a visit to New York in 18XX, interviewed prominent members
of the “Literati”.
DOCTOR CHARLES ANTHON
is the well-known
Jay-Professor of the Greek and Latin languages in Columbia College, New York, and Rector of the Grammar School. If
not absolutely the best, he is at least generally considered the best
classicist in America. In England, and in Europe at large, his scholastic acquirements are
more sincerely respected than those of any of our countrymen. His additions to
Lemprière are there justly regarded as evincing a nice perception of method,
and accurate as well as extensive erudition, but his “Classical Dictionary” has
superseded the work of the Frenchman altogether. Most of Professor Anthon’s publications
have been adopted as text-books at Oxford and Cambridge — an honor to be properly understood only
by those acquainted with the many high requisites for attaining it. As a commentator (if not exactly as a critic)
he may rank with any of his day, and has evinced powers very unusual in men who
devote their lives to classical lore. His accuracy is very remarkable; in this
particular he is always to be relied upon. The trait manifests itself even in
his MS., which is a model of neatness and symmetry, exceeding in these respects
anything of the kind with which I am acquainted. It is somewhat too neat,
perhaps, and too regular, as well as diminutive, to be called beautiful;
it might be mistaken at any time, however, for very elaborate copperplate engraving.
But his chirography, although fully in
keeping, so far as precision is concerned, with his mental character, is, in
its entire freedom from flourish or superfluity, as much out of keeping
with his verbal style. In his notes to the Classics he is singularly Ciceronian
— if, indeed, not positively Johnsonese.
An attempt was made not long ago to
prepossess the public against his “Classical Dictionary,” the most important of
his works, by getting up a hue and cry of plagiarism — in the case of all
similar books the most preposterous accusation in the world, although, from its
very preposterousness, one not easily rebutted. Obviously, the design in any
such compilation is, in the first place, to make a useful school-book or
book of reference, and the scholar who should be weak enough to neglect this
indispensable point for the mere purpose of winning credit with a few bookish men
for originality, would deserve to be dubbed, by the public at least, a dunce.
There are very few points of classical
scholarship which are not the common property of “the learned” throughout the
world, and in composing any book of reference recourse is unscrupulously and
even necessarily had in all cases to similar books which have preceded. In
availing themselves of these latter, however, it is the practice of quacks to paraphrase
page after page, rearranging the order of paragraphs, making a slight
alteration in point of fact here and there, but preserving the spirit of the
whole, its information, erudition, etc., etc., while everything is so
completely re-written as to leave no room for a direct charge of
plagiarism; and this is considered and lauded as originality.
Now, he who, in availing himself of the
labors of his predecessors (and it is clear that all scholars must avail
themselves of such labors) — he who shall copy verbatim the passages to
be desired, without attempt at palming off their spirit as original with
himself, is certainly no plagiarist, even if he fail to make direct acknowledgment
of indebtedness — is unquestionably less of the plagiarist than the
disingenuous and contemptible quack who wriggles himself, as above explained,
into a reputation for originality, a reputation quite out of place in a case of
this kind — the public, of course, never caring a straw whether he be original
or not. These attacks upon the New York professor are to be attributed to a clique
of pedants in and about Boston, gentlemen envious of his success, and
whose own compilations are noticeable only for the singular patience and
ingenuity with which their dovetailing chicanery is concealed from the public
eye.
Doctor Anthon is, perhaps, forty-eight
years of age; about five feet eight inches in height; rather stout; fair
complexion; hair light and inclined to curl; forehead remarkably broad and
high; eye gray, clear and penetrating; mouth well-formed, with excellent teeth —
the lips having great flexibility, and consequent power of expression; the
smile particularly pleasing. His address in general is bold, frank, cordial,
full of bonhommie.
His whole air is distinigué in the
best understanding of the term — that is to say, he would impress any one at
first sight with the idea of his being no ordinary man. He has qualities, indeed,
which would have insured him eminent success in almost any pursuit; and there
are times in which his friends are half disposed to regret his exclusive
devotion to classical literature. He was one of the originators of the late “New
York Review,” his associates in the conduct and proprietorship being Dr. F. L.
Hawks and Professor R. C. Henry. By far the most valuable papers, however, were
those of Doctor A.
Edgar Allen Poe
The Literati: Some Honest Opinions about
Authorial Merits and Demerits
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