HENRY ELLIOTT SHEPHERD

[1844

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MATTHEW PAGE ANDREWS

ENRY ELLIOTT SHEPHERD was born at Fayetteville, North Carolina, January 17, 1844. He was the son of Jesse George Shepherd, a prominent lawyer and jurist of his State. His mother was Catherine Dobbin, a sister of James C. Dobbin, Secretary of the Navy under Pierce at the time when the Japanese were first brought, through their famous treaty with the United States, to an appreciation of the superiority of Western civilization. As a youth in Fayetteville, Henry E. Shepherd had the privilege of tutelage under, and association with, this distinguished uncle, who had been. a foremost instrument in the world-policy of introducing to the nations the most remarkable people of the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Through him chiefly, and through others, the boy was imbued with a love of literature that was carried into his camp life as a mere stripling in the Confederate Army, and which burned as ardently through the darker days of reconstruction.

After a period of school life at Heymount and then at Donaldson Academy, the latter an institution following most rigidly the old classical type of instruction, Shepherd entered Davidson College at the age of fourteen. Subsequently, he left the college to go with his favorite teacher, Major D. H. Hill, to the military academy established by him at Charlotte. Here the pupils of the future Confederate leader received remarkable training for the "irrepressible conflict" through the very phraseology of the examples to be found in Major Hill's text-book on algebra.

From the military academy in the Old North State, Shepherd went to the University of Virginia, October 1, 1860, where he pursued literary, classical, and historical courses with distinction under Holmes, Dudley, Gildersleeve, McGuffey, and Schele De Vere, until the outbreak of the war.

When Virginia was invaded, Shepherd, then a youth of seventeen, enlisted under D. H. Hill at Yorktown, in 1861. But, because of his military training, he was soon detailed by the State of North Carolina to the drilling of raw recruits at Raleigh and other places. It has been said that when he was appointed to the First-Lieutenancy in the Forty-third North Carolina troops, he was the youngest com

missioned officer in the armies of the Confederacy. He served gallantly, and shortly after receiving the special commendation of his command, he was severely wounded and captured at Gettysburg, July 3, 1863. He was held as a prisoner until the close of the war, to go home to the scene of Sherman's desolation, far less embittered by war and the hardships of military prison than by the sight of this carnival of ruin and the mute agony of homeless women and children.

In the dark days that followed, he assiduously studied and taught as circumstances permitted. After teaching at Louisburg he went to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1868. At twenty-four, he was appointed head of the departments of English and history in the City College; and in 1875 he assumed the responsibility of the headship of public education in the city of Baltimore. He continued in office until his resignation, in 1882, to accept the presidency of the College of Charleston, South Carolina, where he accomplished a great work in upbuilding that institution. In 1897 he returned to Baltimore to take up independent work and to engage in original research in the realms of literature and history. He conducted a number of private classes in special work in this latter period, and was also engaged in lecturing in several states. He delivered the dedicatory oration at the unveiling of the monument to Edgar Allan Poe in Westminster Churchyard, Baltimore, in 1875. It should be said, in this connection, that another Southern poet, the immortal author of "Maryland, My Maryland!" had led the way in this earliest movement to honor Poe in American marble; and it was Dr. Shepherd who had the honor of delivering the principal address at the unveiling, thirty-four years later, of the portrait of James Ryder Randall in the State House at Annapolis, in January, 1909, one year after the death of the gifted Southern lyricist.

Dr. Shepherd received the degree of Doctor of Laws from Davidson College and the University of North Carolina in 1883, the degree of Master of Arts having been previously conferred upon him by Davidson and Lafayette. Not the least of his labors in the field of literary achievement are the publications from his active mind and pen, beginning with his 'History of the English Language,' published first in 1878, which ran through several editions in the six years thereafter. This volume, published at an early age, was in the nature of a pioneer work on philological study in America. In the publishing center of the more wealthy and populous North, the critics, curiously brought up in the belief that erudition and literary production were alike improbable in the South, where "slavery had been so long the inhibition of culture," the book seems not to have attained wide repute, however much it may have been

consulted in later works on similar lines. Philological research. has gone forward with leaps and bounds since the publication of Dr. Shepherd's 'History of the English Language'; but abroad the volume was given extended and complimentary notice in The Westminster Review as late as January, 1886.

Dr. Shepherd is also the author of the following books: 'A Study of Edgar Allan Poe'; Essays in Modern Language Notes; 'A Commentary upon Tennyson's "In Memoriam"'; and 'Life of Robert Edward Lee.'

In addition, he has contributed to 'The New English Dictionary,' The American Journal of Philology, and many other educational journals.

In all his career, Dr. Shepherd has always been an ever ready source of knowledge and assistance, not only to his numerous pupils, but to strangers as well. In fact, his course in this regard may be open to criticism in the light of advancing his own interests, from the standpoint of a coldly business view. A lawyer, a doctor, or any follower of a learned calling, would scarcely consider the free giving of professional advice to all who sought it. Yet such has ever been the case with Dr. Shepherd-his aid and encouragement may be had by the poorest comer.

Matthew Sage Andrews

CRITICAL STUDY OF "IN MEMORIAM"

From 'A Commentary upon Tennyson's "In Memoriam." Copyright, Neale Publishing Company, and used here by permission.

It is impossible to reveal in adequate form the genius of a great master of either prose or poetry by mere abstract description, however faithful in conception or forceful in presentation that description may be. The concrete study of the poets alone reveals their power-the power of Dante in the Divine Comedy, Goethe in Faust, Shakespeare in Hamlet, Milton in Lycidas, Tennyson in In Memoriam.

The first edition of In Memoriam was published in 1850, the year of Wordsworth's death and of Tennyson's accession to the office of Laureate. While many verbal or phrasal emendations have marked the fastidious revisions of the poet, there have been few additions to the body of the work. The most noteworthy of these is probably the section designated in later editions as No. 39, which was incorporated into the text in 1869. Among the supreme achievements of elegiac English poetry, In Memoriam assumes the first place. Those that precede it in point of time and form part of the series of masterpieces to which it belongs are Milton's Lycidas, 1638; Dryden's Ode In Memory of Mrs. Killigrew, 1686; Shelley's Adonais, 1821. Matthew Arnold's Thyrsis, a poem, inspired by the death of his cherished friend, Arthur Hugh Clough, did not appear until 1866, sixteen years later than In Memoriam. Its grace and delicacy of execution, as well as its tenderness and plaintiveness of tone, have won for it an abiding rank among the foremost elegies of our language. The elegies of the Elizabethan age and the age preceding—such as the tribute of the Earl of Surrey to his friend and co-worker, Sir Thomas Wyatt, or the many tributes evoked by the death of Sir Philip Sidney-need not be considered here.

Among the master elegies that have been named, Lycidas and In Memoriam probably sustain the most intimate relation, their points of affinity being marked, despite the differences of personal and historical surroundings that distinguish them. The circumstances of their composition, the characteristics of the times in which they were produced, and the relations sus

tained by the two poets to the heroes of the two elegies demand at least a moment's consideration before we pass to the critical and minute study of In Memoriam.

Lycidas was written in 1637, and was occasioned by the death of Edward King, who had been a college friend of Milton's at Cambridge. King was lost at sea in August, 1637. The poem was published in 1638 as a contribution to a volume of memorial verses issued by students of the university as an expression of regard for King, which possibly rose above the plane of the merely perfunctory and conventional.

In Memoriam, which appeared more than two centuries later, was occasioned by the death of Arthur Henry Hallam, a young man of twenty-two, of rare promise and a phenomenal range of acquirements, who had been Tennyson's friend at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was betrothed to a sister of the poet. To young Hallam, who was born February 1, 1811, Nature had been prodigal of her gifts. Despite an aversion to the science of mathematics, such as was characteristic of that other renowned pupil of Trinity, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and of Robert Lowe during his student life at Oxford, Hallam's critical, creative and acquisitive power was of an order that ranged him among the dawning lights of his generation. Though educated for the legal profession and admitted to the bar, the strong propensity of nature impelled Hallam to the study of literature and inspired him with a zealous devotion to the masters of Italian and Provençal poetry. His admiration for the Troubadours revealed itself in the affectionate assiduity which appeared in his exegesis of their lays. Of "the world-worn Dante" he was the skilful and scholarly interpreter, a circumstance which elicited the familiar allusion in section 89 of In Memoriam.

When we compare the inner life of Lycidas and of In Memoriam, we find that no such strong bond of friendship existed between John Milton and Edward King as knit the soul of Alfred Tennyson to the soul of Arthur Hallam. It is certain that King was more marked by sweetness of temper and purity of heart than by brilliancy of intellect. In poetic power he stood at an almost infinite distance from Milton. He is a mere accessory in Lycidas itself to the general presentation of the picture. The Puritan poet availed himself of