The History of Dartmouth College

by Baxter Perry Smith

"The ripe and rare scholarship of my beloved classmate and friend, John Newton Putnam, was the fruit of diligence and the love of study in one whose acquisitions were easily and rapidly made. Mr. Putnam never seemed to be a hard worker, but knowledge was continually flowing to him as by a process of absorption from his early childhood until he became the accomplished and brilliant scholar that he was as professor of Greek. His books were his constant companions, their society was his pleasure and pastime, he preferred it, even in his boyhood, to the sports and recreations for which most boys neglect their studies. When in college he sat up at night after other students were in bed to pursue the study of German and other modern languages not then required by the college course. This he did from the pure love of these studies, without the aid of a teacher, and without the social stimulus of any companionship in such pursuits. And he probably for the sake of study neglected needful bodily exercise every year of his life.

"In the study of languages he found a fascination. The marvelous Greek tongue was of course the richest field for him, the language of a people of the finest and subtlest intellect, and of the highest culture in the art of speech. He seemed at home in that wonderful language as much almost as if it had been his mother tongue. The elegance and vivacity, the felicity and energy of his translations from Thucydides or Plato showed that he not only comprehended his author and saw the subject as he saw it, but that he had fairly caught the glow of the author's mind from the page which he had written.

"So accomplished a student of language could not have been ignorant of his rank among his fellow students; but in all my intimacy with him, boarding at the same table, occupying for a few months the same room, and spending with him more or less time every day either in social intercourse or in the enjoyment of vocal or instrumental music, I never knew him to betray, by word or act or look, a consciousness of his superiority to the poorest scholar in the class.

"Oblivious as he was, apparently, of the deficiencies of others, he was quick enough to perceive their merits. A fine recitation or an eminently creditable performance of any college exercise, no matter by whom, gave him positive enjoyment, which in his nervous and emphatic way he was very apt to express. It is really not too much to say that he appeared to enjoy the successes of others as much as though they had been his own.

"What a help to any college class is the influence of one such man! His connection with the class of 1843, was, no doubt, the presentation to some of its members of an ideal such as they had not formed before; an ideal, not only of enthusiasm for the largest acquisitions and the finest culture, but of that enthusiasm sustained by the love of excellence for its own sake, and not alloyed by any merely selfish ambition to surpass others.

"A spirit of scholarship so high, so broad, so generous as this could be no mark for envy. None of us grudged our classmate his position or his honors. He was the beloved associate, and is now the warmly remembered friend of some of us, and no doubt many of us were more indebted to his example than we were aware of at the time for anything that was well and worthily done by us in our college days.

"I ought not to close this notice without speaking of Mr. Putnam's love of music. Music was born in him as much as Greek was, and he learned one as rapidly as he did the other. When in college he was a valuable member of the Handel Society, his influence being always in favor of the introduction for practice of the standard and classic authors. Haydn's 'Creation' and other works of that great composer were an unfailing source of delight to him. Their naturalness and spontaneity, their brightness and cheerfulness, their artistic finish and exquisite grace, met precisely the corresponding qualities in his own mind. As we often choose those authors who are most unlike ourselves, so he knew how to enjoy the rugged grandeur of less polished writers. He could listen to a mountain chain of choruses in 'Israel in Egypt,' or to a dark and mazy labyrinth of mingled harmony and discord in Beethoven, and wherever he saw the perfection of art or the power of genius, his soul was like a harp of a thousand strings every one of which was alive with vibration. I well remember with what elevation of feeling and intensity of utterance he used in the Handel Society to sing 'The Hallelujah Chorus,' and the concluding chorus of the Messiah, 'Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.' His deeply religious sympathies were touched by the sentiment of these great choruses, and on this account his enjoyment of them was more profound than his enjoyment even of the finished models of Haydn. He knew and felt that he was on a grander theme, and that Redemption was greater than Creation. And it is pleasant to think of him now as saying with a deeper meaning and a more rapturous devotion than he knew on earth, and may we add, a more thrilling musical delight, 'Worthy is the Lamb.'"

We append some of the closing lines of the venerable Dr. Thayer's most touching and eloquent tribute to the character of his beloved and honored pupil: "He did in quality, more than in quantity, beyond any I ever had to do with. He was under more stimulus than mere quiet pleasure in study. He had a most delicate sense of beauty to be gratified, a fine power of discrimination which sought objects for its exercise. Then his love for his mother was a very powerful motive; then too I think he thought of gratifying and honoring his teacher, who loved him and tried to make him a scholar. But better, he loved his Saviour and increasingly studied with humble loyalty to him. Still we must not put Putnam in a wrong place. He was preëminently made for a classical scholar."

Rev. Dr. Leeds adds:

"I became acquainted with Professor Putnam in the winter of 1860-61, and was on intimate terms with him up to the time of his death, more than two years later....