Mr. Roswell Shurtleff was elected the second professor of Divinity in the college. We give some of the more important points in a published "Discourse," by Professor Long:
"Roswell Shurtleff, the son of William and Hannah (Cady) Shurtleff, was born at Ellington, then East Windsor, Ct., August 29, 1773. He was the youngest of nine children, two of whom died before he was born. From his earliest years he was fond of reading, and at school he was called a good scholar. His religious training was carefully attended to, and to this, and the Christian example which accompanied it, he ascribed his conversion, and the views he subsequently embraced of the Christian doctrines.
"When he was seven or eight years old he had many serious thoughts of God and duty. The requirement that he should give up all for God, as he understood it, filled him with gloom.
"During several of the subsequent years, the subject of religion dwelt on his mind, and he was occasionally deeply impressed. One of the difficult things was to comprehend the notion of faith. The promise was: 'He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.' He believed, as he supposed, and he had been baptized, but he could not feel that he was safe. Must he believe that he, personally, should be saved? But what if he mistook his own character, and believed what was false; would his opinion of his safety make him safe. He was ashamed to be known as a religious inquirer, and, therefore, remained longer in darkness. Finding that he had been observed by his father to have become a more diligent student of the Scriptures, he left the practice of reading them before the family. Sometimes, assuming a false appearance of indifference, he carried his difficulties to his mother, who was able to furnish a satisfactory solution. She seems to have been a person of unusual intelligence as well as goodness. Her memory was ever cherished by him with the most grateful affection, as it regarded his own spiritual progress. He believed that he suffered unspeakable loss from the concealment of his early feelings on the subject of religion, and did not doubt that many failed of conversion from this foolish reserve. It was not till a number of years after this that his religious life commenced.
"The only school which young Shurtleff had the opportunity of attending, before his eighteenth or nineteenth year, was the common school of the district. He made good proficiency, but nothing worthy of note occurred in relation to his studies till he was about fifteen years of age. He then began to think, as he says. Before that time, he had repeated by rote whatever he had been taught. The first impulse to reflection was a new discovery. He had been taught from childhood that accent is a stress of voice laid on some syllable or letter of a word. But this definition had not been illustrated by an example, and the classification of words by their accent, in the spelling-book, he had never understood. The definition had been to him an unmeaning collection of words. He now discovered what it meant. This was in itself a trifling event, but it led to the further discovery that other things, which he had been accustomed, parrot-like, to repeat memoriter, had a meaning; that the meaning of things was that which the student should be set to learn, and that his own education had, in this view, been greatly neglected. He says that a new world seemed to be opened to his view; that nothing now appeared so important as an opportunity to reflect on what he had learned, and that he was greatly displeased with the instructors by whom he had been so badly cheated. He resolved that, if ever he should be a teacher, he would propose it to himself, as his leading object, to make his pupils understand whatever they should study. This resolution he afterward had the opportunity of carrying into effect in five or six winter schools; and his attempt was attended with gratifying success.
"It was the opinion of Dr. Shurtleff, grounded on his own experience as learner and teacher, that too much importance is attached to the books used in schools; that the end to be reached is too generally regarded as the learning of the book rather than the mastery of the subject, and that books are too often prepared mainly with a view to abridge the labor of the teacher. He believed that, while the pupil might, through the text-book, possess himself of the knowledge of others, he was in danger of acquiring little which could be called his own.
"In consequence of using his eyes too soon, after his recovery from the measles, when he was about seventeen years old, Shurtleff was almost wholly cut off from the reading of books for two years, and he never afterward perfectly recovered from the injury resulting from this imprudence. He made some proficiency, however, by listening to the reading of others. About two years after this affliction he entered the academy at Chesterfield, N. H., whither his father's family had removed a few years before. He attended first to English studies. The weakness of his eyes continued, and he was considerably embarrassed for a time from the necessity of using the eyes of his friends. At length he commenced the study of Latin, going through Ross' Grammar, the only one then in use, in just two weeks, and then beginning to construe and parse in Corderius.
"He met, at the academy, one who had been his school-fellow and playmate, and with whom he was intimately associated from that time till the end of his college course,—the late Hon. Levi Jackson, who died at Chesterfield in 1821. They got out their lessons together, taking turns in looking out new words; and afterward, at college, where they were classmates and room-mates, continued the practice. Dr. Shurtleff felt under great obligations to this friend and helper, and said that 'few friendships among men had been more ardent, confiding and permanent.'
"Shurtleff had supposed, at first, that the Greek language was beyond his reach, on account of his infirmity of sight. But some improvement having taken place, he ventured to commence the study. He went through the Westminster Greek Grammar, the book then in use, in one week, and began to read the Gospel of John. Having completed the New Testament, and read several books of Homer's Iliad, he was reputed in the school as tolerably versed in Greek. He and Jackson studied from the love of study, and did not think of college till a year before they applied for admission, at Commencement, in 1797, and entered the Junior class in this institution.