Cotal vestigio in terra di se lascia,
Qual fumo in aere od in acqua la schiuma."[153]
With a mind thus deeply imbued with learning, it will be felt that he was formed less for the contentions of the forum than for the exercises of the academy. And yet it is understood that he declined several opportunities of entering its learned retreats. In 1806 he was elected Hancock Professor of Hebrew and other Oriental Languages in Harvard University; and at a later day he was invited to the chair of Greek Literature in the same institution. On the death of Professor Ashmun, many eyes were turned towards him, as fitted to occupy the professorship of law in Cambridge, since so ably filled by Mr. Greenleaf; and on two different occasions his name was echoed by the public prints as about to receive the dignity of President of the University. But he continued in the practice of the law to the last.
He should be claimed by the bar with peculiar pride. If it be true, as has been said, that Serjeant Talfourd has reflected more honor upon his profession by the successful cultivation of letters than any of his contemporaries by their forensic triumphs, then should the American bar acknowledge their obligations to the fame of Mr. Pickering. He was one of us. He was a regular in our ranks; in other service, only a volunteer.
The mind is led instinctively to a parallel between him and that illustrious scholar and jurist, ornament of the English law, and pioneer of Oriental studies in England, Sir William Jones, to whom I have already referred. Both confessed, in early life, the attractions of classical studies; both were trained in the discipline of the law; both, though engaged in its practice, always delighted to contemplate it as a science; both surrendered themselves with irrepressible ardor to the study of languages, while the one broke into the unexplored fields of Eastern philology, and the other devoted himself more especially to the native tongues of his own Western continent. Their names are, perhaps, equally conspicuous for the number of languages which occupied their attention. As we approach them in private life, the parallel still continues. In both there were the same truth, generosity, and gentleness, a cluster of noble virtues,—while the intenser earnestness of the one is compensated by the greater modesty of the other. To our American jurist-scholar, also, may be applied those words of the Greek couplet, borrowed from Aristophanes, and first appropriated to his English prototype: "The Graces, seeking a shrine that would not decay, found the soul of Jones."
While dwelling with admiration upon his triumphs of intellect and the fame he has won, we must not forget the virtues, higher than intellect or fame, by which his life was adorned. In the jurist and the scholar we must not lose sight of the man. So far as is allotted to a mortal, he was a spotless character. The murky tides of this world seemed to flow by without soiling his garments. He was pure in thought, word, and deed; a lover of truth, goodness, and humanity; the friend of the young, encouraging them in their studies, and aiding them by wise counsels; ever kind, considerate, and gentle to all; towards children, and the unfortunate, full of tenderness. He was of charming modesty. With learning to which all bowed with reverence, he walked humbly before God and man. His pleasures were simple. In the retirement of his study, and the blandishments of his music-loving family, he found rest from the fatigues of the bar. He never spoke in anger, nor did any hate find a seat in his bosom. His placid life was, like law in the definition of Aristotle, "mind without passion."
Through his long and industrious career he was blessed with unbroken health. He walked on earth with an unailing body and a serene mind; and at last, in the fulness of time, when the garner was overflowing with the harvests of a well-spent life, in the bosom of his family, the silver cord was gently loosed. He died at Boston, May 5, 1846, in the seventieth year of his age,—only a few days after he had prepared for the press the last sheets of a new and enlarged edition of his Greek Lexicon. His wife, to whom he was married in 1805, and three children, survive to mourn their irreparable loss.
The number of societies, both at home and abroad, of which he was an honored member, attests the widespread recognition of his merits. He was President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; President of the American Oriental Society; Foreign Secretary of the American Antiquarian Society; Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Ethnological Society, the American Philosophical Society; Honorary Member of the Historical Societies of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Maryland, and Georgia; Honorary Member of the National Institution for the Promotion of Science, the American Statistical Association, the Northern Academy of Arts and Sciences, Hanover, N.H., and the Society for the Promotion of Legal Knowledge, Philadelphia; Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, the Oriental Society of Paris, the Academy of Sciences and Letters at Palermo, the Antiquarian Society at Athens, and the Royal Northern Antiquarian Society at Copenhagen; and Titular Member of the French Society of Universal Statistics.
For many years he maintained a copious correspondence, on matters of jurisprudence, science, and learning, with distinguished names at home and abroad: especially with Mr. Du Ponceau, at Philadelphia,—with William von Humboldt, at Berlin,—with Mittermaier, the jurist, at Heidelberg,—with Dr. Prichard, author of the Physical History of Mankind, at Bristol,—and with Lepsius, the hierologist, who wrote to him from the foot of the Pyramids, in Egypt.