The following tribute to one of Dartmouth's most eminent and honored teachers is from a "Discourse" by Professor (now President) Brown.
"Charles Bricket Haddock was born in that part of Salisbury, N. H., which is now Franklin, June 20, 1796. His mother was Abigail Webster, an older sister of Ezekiel and Daniel Webster. She had two children, Charles and William. She was a person of uncommon excellence and loveliness, a favorite with her brothers, who always spoke of her with great affection. She was a religious woman, and on her death-bed manifested great solicitude for her sons, especially dedicating the oldest, Charles, to the Christian ministry. This expression of feeling was almost the only recollection which Mr. Haddock had of his mother.
"The place of his birth was retired, but full of rural beauty; the rushing Merrimac-making sweet music of a summer evening, the broad intervals basking in the summer sun, the granite mountains 'dumbly keeping watch all round,' from whose summits, looking almost to the White Hills on one side, and almost to the sea on the other, you would behold a landscape picturesque and lovely beyond the power of description. The quiet scenes of his youth, the simple pleasures, and the common amusements of village life, varied with few excitements, could not have been without their effect upon the mind of a sensitive boy. To what age he was left to these alone, I do not know.
"He fitted for college mainly at the academy in Salisbury, and entered in 1812. Nature had done more for him than his instructors, and he very soon took the position, which he ever maintained, as intellectual leader in a class, which, though small, numbered among its members several young men of distinguished ability. In that little community he was at once the best scholar and the most popular man. 'In looks,' writes one of his class-mates,[41] 'Haddock was decidedly the most striking man in the class. He was tall and well-proportioned. He had an intellectual cast of features, a well-chiseled profile,—and altogether you might pronounce him a man intended for a scholar, and destined, if he lived, to make his mark in the world. I, who entered college a mere boy, singled him out the first day. He was always an industrious student. He never failed of a recitation, so far as I can remember, and he never failed to be prepared for it.'
[41] Professor Torrey, of Burlington.
"Adding thus to the distinction of attainment and scholarship so much beauty of person, so much modesty, gentleness, and propriety of demeanor, it was natural that he should be regarded as a model young man, nor was there wanting that profounder moral element, without which no character can be complete.
"The year 1815 was memorable in the religious history of the college. The period immediately preceding had been marked by unusual religious depression. In some classes only one person, and but a few in any of them, made profession of a serious religious purpose. Of this small number, there were some, however, whose feelings were deep, and whose lives were exemplary. To them,—not more, perhaps, than eight or ten in all,—was due, under the Divine favor, the moral regeneration of the college. First among those who, in that 'Great awakening,' avowed his purpose of a new life, was Mr. Haddock, then in the summer of his Junior year. The avowal was open, unreserved, and decisive, and, it is almost unnecessary to add, produced a strong sensation. From that time no one in college exerted a more positive influence in favor of personal religion, and not a few traced their own most serious thoughts to his example and to his faithfulness.
"This change in his feelings naturally determined his course in life, and immediately after taking his first degree he entered the seminary at Andover as a student in Theology. Here he pursued the profound and difficult studies of his profession with a more than ordinary breadth of scholarship, mingling classical and literary studies with those of theology, but entering with zeal and a chastened enthusiasm into all the duties and requirements of the place.
"He remained at Andover about two years, when, on account of a threatened pulmonary complaint, he made a journey to the South, going as far as Savannah, and spending the winter in various parts of the Southern States. Having performed a considerable part of the tour on horseback, he returned, in 1819, invigorated in health, and with a mind enlarged and liberalized by what were then quite unusual opportunities of observation and society, and was at once appointed to the newly established chair of Rhetoric, at the early age of twenty-three years. The college had but just gained the victory in its desperate struggle for existence. It was poor, but hopeful, and it moved forward with a policy of enlargement, determined to keep pace with all advancing learning and culture.
"Before that time, the duties of the new department had been distributed among all the college officers, and necessarily must have lacked something in fullness and method. No other New England college, except Harvard and Yale, then possessed such an officer, and the first appointment to the post in New Haven bears date but two years earlier."