"Professor Price's efforts succeeded all the more easily in that they were seconded by his presiding officer, the Rev. Dr. James A. Duncan, a man of singular breadth and sympathy of mind, who had grouped about him, irrespective of church and denominational ties, a band of worthy associates. Price, as Professor of Greek and Latin, gave up the latter to his colleague, James A. Harrison, who had charge of the modern languages, and taking control of the English, developed it side by side with his Greek, so as to cover a course through four continuous years. This was the result of the work of two sessions, 1868-'70. The movement soon spread far and wide. Other institutions, impelled by the same needs, either imitated it outright—some of them actually going so far as always to unite the English department with the Greek, as if there were some subtle virtue in the connection (building possibly even wiser than they knew)—or developed out of their own necessities similar arrangements.
"After the men at Randolph-Macon had been drilled in the rudiments and given their primary inspiration, many of them were dispatched to Europe for further training, and returned Doctors of Leipzig and fired with a new zeal. In mere appearances, it should seem as if this Randolph-Macon migration to Leipzig was the beginning of the attraction exerted by that University on young Southern scholars, an attraction which has been rivalled in recent years only by that of the neighboring Johns Hopkins. The land lay open before these young men, and they proceeded to occupy it. Robert Sharp returned Doctor from Leipzig, and was soon called to Tulane; William M. Baskervill returned Doctor from Leipzig, and started an impulse at Wofford College, South Carolina, which he broadened and deepened after his transfer, in 1881, to Vanderbilt; Robert Emory Blackwell returned from Leipzig and succeeded Professor Price in his work at Randolph-Macon; Frank C. Woodward succeeded Baskervill at Wofford in 1881, and removed to the South Carolina College in 1887; W. A. Frantz has built up a following in Central College, Missouri; John R. Ficklen, having followed Dr. Price to the State University, has become associated with Sharp at Tulane. The English fever at Randolph-Macon became epidemic. Dr. James A. Harrison accepted a call, in 1876, to Washington and Lee as Professor of Modern Languages, and formed a new Virginian centre for specialists. Even Price's successor in the Greek chair at Randolph-Macon, Charles Morris, soon resigned to go to the University of Georgia as Professor of English. Nor has the manufacture of Randolph-Macon professors of English ever entirely ceased. Howard Edwards, formerly of the University of Kansas; J. L. Armstrong, late of Trinity College, North Carolina, and now of the Randolph-Macon Woman's College; John D. Epes, of St. John's College, Maryland; John Lesslie Hall, Ph. D. (Johns Hopkins), of William and Mary, are later accessions to a list by no means complete.
"It is very curious to trace these various ramifications of mutual influences, and to see them acting and interacting, crossing and recrossing. Three main lines may be detected. Just as the University of Virginia, through its graduates, became the pattern for many, especially State institutions, and Hampden-Sidney, Davidson, Central, and, particularly, Presbyterian colleges, felt the influence of the course at Washington and Lee; so Randolph-Macon affected, among others, Wofford, and then Vanderbilt, which, in turn, has become a new centre of activity.
"The transmission of this spirit to Wofford College, and thence to Vanderbilt University at Nashville, is peculiarly instructive. W. M. Baskervill, trained under Price and Harrison, and in Leipzig, came to Wofford in 1876, where he met with a sympathetic circle. The president, Dr. James H. Carlisle, had always been interested in English work, and was a close student of the history and meaning of words. Charles Foster Smith was fellow-professor with Baskervill, and James H. Kirkland, first an appreciative pupil, was afterwards colleague as Smith's successor. All three of these young scholars ultimately took their degrees in Leipzig, and were called to Vanderbilt University, of which Dr. Kirkland is the newly-elected Chancellor. The English language and letters have been steadily emphasized by the close sympathies uniting these three men in their common work in the department of languages. Kirkland's Leipzig dissertation was on an English subject, though he is now professor of Latin; Smith, the professor of Greek, has been a constant contributor on English points, and Baskervill is specifically professor in charge. Through the standard which their fortunate circumstances allowed them to set, a new centre of influence has been formed in Nashville.
[Illustration: REV. JOHN HANNON, A. M., D. D., Ukiah, California.]
"It was this Wofford influence, if I may be personal for a space, that had much to do with sending me to the University of Virginia to hear Price in Greek. And I but echo the feeling of many in Professor Price's class-room, that it was hard to know to which of the two languages his class leaned the more, Greek or English, so intimately upon one another, especially in the work of translating, did the two depend. At any rate, it is singular that his pupils, stirred by the Greek, just as at Randolph-Macon, have used this classical impulse to enter upon the keener study of their native language and literature. I was privileged to be in the last Greek class which Professor Price taught at the University of Virginia; and contemporaneous with me at the University were other pupils: Charles W. Kent, Ph. D., of Leipzig, just returned to his Alma Mater as Linden Kent Professor of English Literature; James Douglas Bruce, of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and the editor of this Review. Eventually Professor Price's strong predilections for English, and the memory of the work wrought while at Randolph-Macon, led, in 1882, to his acceptance of a call to the chair of English in Columbia College, New York, a change which, in the face of all he had accomplished at the South, many of his old pupils were selfish enough to regard with regret."
On the recommendation of the Faculty, the degree of A. M. was conferred on John Hannon, of Alabama, and William Waugh Smith, of Virginia.
The vacant chair of Modern Languages was filled by the election of Mr. James A. Harrison, of New Orleans. This officer proved to be a valuable accession to the Faculty, and his success at Randolph-Macon was the prophecy of further success at Washington and Lee University, and the University of Virginia, where he is at this writing.
In regard to the enterprise referred to at the last annual meeting, the
Board adopted the following resolutions:
"Whereas suitable halls for the literary societies of this College are imperatively necessary in the work of this institution; and whereas the Washington and Franklin Literary Societies have taken this enterprise in hand with commendable zeal and liberality: therefore,