MINUTE ON PROFESSOR LANE.

By the death of George Martin Lane, Pope Professor of Latin, Emeritus, which occurred on the morning of Commence ment Day this year, the University lost an honored teacher, who had been longest on its roll of officers, the last on that roll who had taught here in the first half of the century. Professor Lane was born in Charlestown December 24, 1824, and graduated from Harvard College in 1846, a classmate of Professors Child and Norton. In less than six months after taking his Bachelor's degree, early in 1847, he was appointed to take the College work of Professor Charles Beck, then University Professor of Latin, during the latter's absence in Europe. During the second term of 1846-1847, Mr. Lane taught the three upper classes in Latin, although a much older tutor was teaching the Freshmen. The impression which the young scholar made on the students in this trying position and the respect for his scholarship which he then gained, are still well remembered by his pupils of that day. Those of us who entered College in 1847 will never forget the smooth-faced, almost boyish-looking tutor who examined us in Latin Grammar in 24 University Hall, where we expected to find the Professor of Latin. In the autumn of 1847 he went to Germany to study Philogy, and he worked there steadily four years at different universities, chiefly at Gottingen, where he took the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1851. His doctor's dissertation, entitled "Smyrnaeorum Resgestae et Antiquitates," gained the rare compliment from one of his most distinguished teachers, Karl Friedrich Hermann of Gottingen, of being mentioned in his work on Greek Antiquities, in which these words still stand in the fifth edition: "Welche fleissige Arbeit alle sonstige Nachweisungen uber diese Stadt (Smyrna) unnothig macht." Another distinguished professor at Gottingen, Schneidenin, in the preface to an edition of Hyperides, thus alludes in 1853 to his two recent pupils, Lane and Gilder-sleeve: 'Vivorum juverum et candore animi praecellentium et ad ornandas in illo orbe litteras antiquitatis vatorum." Many interesting traditions, some of them perhaps slightly mythical, long survived in Germany, testifying to the high estimation in which Lane's scholarship and good fellowship were held, and to the strict conscientiousness with which he devoted himself, in season and out of season, to the study of his chosen profession. One of his German friends once said that it was not true that he could speak German like a native (as was sometimes reported), but that it was true that he could imitate a local German dialect so that a man from another part of the country would think it was his native tongue.

On his return from Germany, in 1851, he was made University Professor of Latin, as the successor of Professor Beck, who had held this office since 1832. In 1869 he was made Pope Professor of Latin. He resigned this professorship in 1894, after a continuous service of 43 years. He was then made Pope Professor of Latin, Emeritus; and at the Commencement of 1894 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University. After his retirement he gave valuable instruction in Latin to some of the most advanced students of the Graduate School. His two periods of service as teacher in the University thus covered a full half-century. During this half-century the improved methods of instruction which the elective system made possible, and the development of the Graduate School with its new class of students, greatly changed the character of his teaching and widened its scope. For five years he was the head of a Latin Department of two, who easily did all the work in Latin which was then expected in the University. When he resigned in 1894, he was at the head of a body of eight, of whom five were devoted wholly to teaching Latin and the others equally to teaching Latin and Greek. Although from his natural conservatism he had taken little interest in the reform by which the sphere of his power as a teacher was thus enlarged, he availed himself to the utmost of his new opportunities and opened his rich store of erudition without stint to all who were capable of appreciating them. His sparkling wit was ever ready to illuminate dark corners in even the abstrusest departments of learning, and he could make the dryest subject interesting by his skilful and original way of present-it. To his originality many scholars widely scattered through the land can bear testimony, recalling that it was he who first showed them that there were things to be learned which were not set down in any book,- that he initiated them, in fact, into modern methods of individual research and taught them to seek the truth for themselves. He made it clear that there were wide untrodden fields on every side, and tempted his pupils on to exploration.

Though he published little (very little for a man of such wide and varied learning) under his own name, he always put his best scholarship at the disposal of his friends. One of the best instances is the work which he gave to the revision of Lewis's (known as Harper's) Latin Lexicon, which, according to the editors preface, bears throughout the marks of his skill and critical scholarship. One of his smallest works, the pamphlet on Latin Proununciation, has indeed worked a revolution which even the learning of a Munro could never even begin in England.

Those who have known this Faculty only in later years can have no idea of the period when Professor Lane was one of its most important members and one of the most constant attendants at its weekly meetings. The Records of the Faculty during the years when he was its Registrar, and those of the Parietal Board when he was its Chairman, not only show his deep interest in the affairs of these boards, but contain many specimens of his humor, some of which now need a scholiast to elucidate them.

In parting with Professor Lovering, Torrey, Cooke, Child and Lane, we have within the last five years bidden farewell to the last of the great teachers who came down to us from the presidencies of Quincy, Everett and Sparks.