Our common love of poetry and our dawning interest in Latin hymnology—he had translated Bernard of Cluny and was trying his hand on the Dies Irae in those days—drew us closer together and gave our friendship an intellectual interest. When he left Tioga for Jersey City our intercourse became more fragmentary, but during his pastorate at Ann Arbor (1871-74) it was renewed by correspondence. He felt himself especially at home in the university city of Michigan, with a congregation composed largely of the students. Here he had the delight of welcoming Dr. George Macdonald to his pulpit, when the poet visited America in 1873. He worked hard to have me called to the Chair of English Literature in the University of Michigan, but did not succeed.
Chicago, 1874, Auburn, 1876, Altoona, 1878, and Bloomfield, 1882, were his subsequent pastorates; and in Bloomfield he remained until his death. In this New Jersey suburb of New York City he seemed to find himself especially at home. It was indeed the home of his early boyhood, for his father had been pastor of the same church from 1847 to 1852; he well remembered his playmates and schoolmates, and kept up his acquaintance by correspondence and visits, until he came among them as their pastor. He was near enough to the great city to find easy access to its libraries, especially the Astor Library and that of Union Seminary, and to enjoy the friendship of scholars of tastes similar to his own, especially that of Dr. Charles S. Robinson. He found a congenial people in his congregation. He took a lively interest in matters relating to the welfare of the town, was an active member of the Village Improvement Association, labored hard to establish a public library, and helped to set on foot a good weekly paper. He became Chaplain of the Fire Company, and preached a special sermon every year to its members. He spoke always with enthusiasm of his new environment, and seemed to look forward to many happy and useful years there. His home life, I shall only say, was especially happy and helpful to him. Among his delights was to watch the dawning powers of a daughter, who inherits all her father’s poetic gifts.
His best poetical work is still unpublished, except such parts of it as have appeared in the Sunday-School Times and other weeklies. His first venture was The Heavenly Land, from the Rhythm of Bernard of Morlaix (New York, 1867). His second and most characteristic book was Warp and Woof: A Book of Verse (1868), in which “Undergraduate Orioles” and some other pieces at once attracted attention by their felicitous beauty and genuineness. Along with his father, he prepared The Burial of the Dead (1882), a manual for use at funerals. In the long interval between these two dates he was already laboring at his book on the Latin hymn-writers. “During the years 1882-85,” writes Miss Day, “those of us who saw him most frequently on his way to and from the New York libraries came to recognize a large, square note-book and a green cloth bag as his inseparable Monday companions. Something of their contents we knew, for with his genial disposition he could not refrain from quoting snatches of the old Latin hymns with translations into musical English. But no one could appreciate the real worth of the knowledge concealed between cloth and board as did the student himself, who had spent the hours of leisure snatched from professional labors in the libraries, and among Latin quartos and folios, in search of the materials for his book. During the latter part of 1885 the Latin hymn-writers were laid aside for a while to give time for his work on English Hymns: Their Authors and History (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1886),” which was suggested by the appearance of Dr. Robinson’s Laudes Domini in 1884, and is mainly an account of the hymns included in that work, and of their authors. When this was finished he returned to his opus magnum, in the expectation of having it soon ready for the press. From our conferences and correspondence I was led to hope for its early appearance. But this was not to be. A failure of the vessels of the heart, evidently from some constitutional weakness, as he had been making no special exertion when it showed itself, was the beginning of the end. Twelve weary months of illness, spent partly in Bloomfield and partly at a watering-place, to which he had gone for change of air, were followed by his death on May 12th, 1887. He died as he had lived, in the full assurance of the Gospel, and looking for life everlasting in Jesus Christ.
The news of his death was received with grief by the whole community, especially by the young people, with whom he had so lively a sympathy. The Bloomfield Fire Company displayed their flag at half-mast, placed a guard of honor over his remains during the forty hours they lay at the church, and attended his funeral in a body. Signs of the general mourning were seen everywhere, and the town felt it had lost a public-spirited citizen, while his church had lost a faithful and devoted pastor. Mingled with memoranda for his book, I find in his note-books other indications of the breadth and energy of his work for the spiritual and intellectual improvement of his people, especially through his lectures before the Young People’s Society of the Westminster Church.
In the city of the dead at Detroit, where his kindred lie buried, there stands a memorial stone, which bears the inscription:
DILECTISSIMUS
EHEU PRAEMISSUS EST
QUANQUAM E VITAE INTEGRAE MEDIO
RAPTUS
AEVUM LONGISSIMUM PEREGIT
BEATO ILLI
PATER UXOR
MULTIS CUM LACRIMIS
HOC MARMOR
DEDICAVERE
Beside him lies now the mortal part of the much-loved father who wrote these words. Dr. George Duffield the younger died July 6, 1888.
INTRODUCTION.
The study of the Latin hymns is so much a thing of its own kind that one owes it to himself as well as to his readers to begin at the beginning. This beginning in the present instance happened to be on the North River, on a bright, fresh April morning in the year of grace 1882. It was at that time, with the clear sky overhead and the hearty breeze coming full in our faces from the Narrows, that my friend, the Rev. F. N. Zabriskie, D.D., broached the following proposition:
It was, he said, a matter of great surprise to him that no one had done for the Latin hymn-writers what had been done for those of later date. We had their hymns, but for his part he confessed to a love for the personality of the poets themselves, and for the circumstances which conspired to produce their poems. Now, if it seemed good to myself, who had already given time and study to the hymns, he would gladly open the columns of the Christian Intelligencer (the organ of the Reformed Church in America) to a series of articles bearing such a character. And there and then the book began.