Part 19

Among the Memoirs of the American Academy, published in 1833, (Vol. I. New Series) is the Dictionary of the Abnaki Language, in North America, by Father Sebastian Rasles, with an Introductory Memoir and Notes by Mr. Pickering. The original manuscript of this copious Dictionary, commenced by the good and indefatigable Jesuit in 1691, during his solitary residence with the Indians, was found among his papers after the massacre at Norridgewock, in which he was killed, and, passing through several hands, at last came into the possession of Harvard University. It is considered one of the most interesting and authentic documents in the history of the North American languages. In the Memoir accompanying the Dictionary, Mr. Pickering, with the modesty which marked all his labors, says that he made inquiries for memorials of these languages, "hoping that he might render some small service by collecting and preserving these valuable materials for the use of those persons whose leisure and ability would enable them to employ them more advantageously than it was in his power to do, for the benefit of philological science."

The elaborate article on the Indian Languages of America in the Encyclopædia Americana is from his pen. The subject was considered so interesting, in regard to general and comparative philology, while so little was known respecting it, that a space was allowed to this article beyond that of other philological articles in the Encyclopædia. The forthcoming volume of Memoirs of the American Academy contains an interesting paper of a kindred character, one of his latest productions, on the Language and Inhabitants of Lord North's Island, in the Indian Archipelago, with a Vocabulary.

The Address before the American Oriental Society, delivered and published in 1843, as the first number of the Journal of that body, is an admirable contribution to the history of languages, presenting a survey of the peculiar field of labor to which the Society is devoted, in a style which attracts alike the scholar and the less critical reader.

Among his other productions in philology may be mentioned an interesting article on the Chinese Language, which first appeared in the North American Review for January, 1839, and was afterwards _dishonestly reprinted, as an original article_, in the London Monthly Review for December, 1840; also an article on the Cochin-Chinese Language, published in the North American Review for April, 1841; another on Adelung's "Survey of Languages," in the same journal, in 1822; a review of Johnson's Dictionary, in the American Quarterly Review for September, 1828; and two articles in the New York Review for 1826, being a caustic examination of General Cass's article in the North American Review respecting the Indians of North America. These two papers were not acknowledged by their author at the time they were written. They purport to be by KASS-_ti-ga-tor-skee_, or _The Feathered Arrow_, a fictitious name from the Latin CAS-_tigator_ and an Indian termination _skee_ or _ski_.

Even this enumeration does not close the catalogue of Mr. Pickering's productions. There are others--to which, however, we refer by their titles only--that may be classed with contributions to _general literature_. Among these is an Oration delivered at Salem on the Fourth of July, 1804; an article in the Encyclopædia Americana, in 1829, on the Agrarian Laws of Rome; an article in the North American Review for April, 1829, on Elementary Instruction; an Introductory Essay to Newhall's Letters on Junius, in 1831; a Lecture on Telegraphic Language, before the Boston Marine Society, in 1833; an article on Peirce's History of Harvard University, in the North American Review for April, 1834; an article on the South Sea Islands, in the American Quarterly Review for September, 1836; an article on Prescott's History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, in the New York Review for April, 1838; the noble Eulogy on Dr. Bowditch, delivered before the American Academy, May 29, 1838; and Obituary Notices of Mr. Peirce, the Librarian of Harvard College, of Dr. Spurzheim, of Dr. Bowditch, and of his valued friend and correspondent, the partner of his philological labors, Mr. Du Ponceau; also an interesting Lecture, still unpublished, on the Origin of the Population of America, and two others on Languages.

* * * * *

The reader will be astonished at these various contributions to learning and literature, thus hastily reviewed, particularly when he regards them as the diversions of a life filled in amplest measure by other pursuits. Charles Lamb said that his _real works_ were not his published writings, but the ponderous folios copied by his hand in the India House. In the same spirit, Mr. Pickering might point to the multitudinous transactions of his long professional life, cases argued in court, conferences with clients, and deeds, contracts, and other papers, in that clear, legible autograph which is a fit emblem of his transparent character.

His professional life first invites attention. Here it should be observed that he was a thorough, hard-working lawyer, for the greater part of his days in _full practice_, constant at his office, attentive to all the concerns of business, and to what may be called the humilities of the profession. He was faithful, conscientious, and careful; nor did his zeal for the interests committed to his care ever betray him beyond the golden mean of duty. The law, in his hands, was a shield for defence, and never a sword to thrust at his adversary. His preparations for arguments in court were marked by peculiar care; his brief was elaborate. On questions of law he was learned and profound; but his manner in court was excelled by his matter. The experience of a long life never enabled him to overcome the native childlike diffidence which made him shrink from public display. He developed his views with clearness and an invariable regard to their logical sequence,--but he did not press them home by energy of manner, or any of the arts of eloquence.

His mind was rather judicial than forensic in cast. He was better able to discern the right than to make the wrong appear the better reason. He was not a legal athlete, snuffing new vigor in the atmosphere of the bar, and regarding success alone,--but a faithful counsellor, solicitous for his client, and for justice too.

It was this character that led him to contemplate the law as a science, and to study its improvement and elevation. He could not look upon it merely as the means of earning money. He gave much of his time to its generous culture. From the walks of practice he ascended to the heights of jurisprudence, embracing within his observation the systems of other countries. His contributions to this department illustrate the turn and extent of his inquiries. It was his hope to accomplish some careful work on the law, more elaborate than the memorials he has left. The subject of the _Practice and Procedure of Courts_, or what is called by the civilians _Stylus Curiæ_, occupied his mind, and he intended to treat it in the light of foreign authorities, particularly German and French, with the view of determining the general principles, or natural law, common to all systems, by which it is governed. Such a work, executed with the fine juridical spirit in which it was conceived, would have been welcomed wherever the law is studied as a science.

It is, then, not only as lawyer, practising in courts, but as jurist, to whom the light of jurisprudence shone gladsome, that we are to esteem our departed friend. As such, his example will command attention and exert an influence long after the paper dockets in blue covers, chronicling the stages of litigation in his cases, are consigned to the oblivion of dark closets and cobwebbed pigeon-holes.

But he has left a place vacant, not only in the halls of jurisprudence, but also in the circle of scholars throughout the world, and, it may be said, in the Pantheon of universal learning. Contemplating the variety, the universality of his attainments, the mind, borrowing an epithet once applied to another, involuntarily exclaims, "The admirable Pickering!" He seems, indeed, to have run the whole round of knowledge. His studies in ancient learning had been profound; nor can we sufficiently admire the facility with which, amidst other cares, he assumed the task of lexicographer. Unless some memorandum should be found among his papers, as was the case with Sir William Jones,[150] specifying the languages to which he had been devoted, it might be difficult to frame a list with entire accuracy. It is certain that he was familiar with at least _nine_,--English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, German, Romaic, Greek, and Latin, of which he spoke the first five. He was less familiar, though well acquainted, with Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and Hebrew,--and had explored, with various degrees of care, the Arabic, Turkish, Syriac, Persian, Coptic, Sanscrit, Chinese, Cochin-Chinese, Russian, Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Malay in several dialects, and particularly the Indian languages of America and the Polynesian Islands.

[150] Sir William Jones had studied eight languages critically,--English, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Persian, Sanscrit; eight less perfectly, but all intelligible with a dictionary,--Spanish, Portuguese, German, Runic, Hebrew, Bengali, Hindi, Turkish; twelve least perfectly, but all attainable,--Tibetian, Pâli, Phalavi, Deri, Russian, Syriac, Æthiopic, Coptic, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, Chinese: in all twenty-eight languages.--TEIGNMOUTH, _Life of Jones_, p. 376, note.

The sarcasm of Hudibras on the "barren ground" supposed congenial to "Hebrew roots" is refuted by the richness of his accomplishments. His style is that of a scholar and man of taste. It is simple, unpretending like its author, clear, accurate, and flows in an even tenor of elegance, which rises at times to a suavity almost Xenophontian. Though little adorned by flowers of rhetoric, it shows the sensibility and refinement of an ear attuned to the harmonies of language. He had cultivated music as a science, and in his younger days performed on the flute with Grecian fondness. Some of the airs he had learned in Portugal were sung to him by his daughter shortly before his death, bringing with them, doubtless, the pleasant memories of early travel and the "incense-breathing morn" of life. A lover of music, he was naturally inclined to the other fine arts, but always had particular pleasure in works of sculpture.

Nor were those other studies which are sometimes regarded as of a more practical character foreign to his mind. In college days he was noticed for his attainments in mathematics; and later in life he perused with intelligent care the great work of his friend, Dr. Bowditch, the translation of the _Mécanique Celeste_. He was chairman of the committee which recommended the purchase of a first-class telescope for the neighborhood of Boston, and was the author of their interesting report on the use and importance of such an instrument. He was partial to natural history, particularly botany, which he taught to some of his family. In addition to all this, he possessed a natural aptitude for the mechanic arts, which was improved by observation and care. Early in life he learned to use the turning-lathe, and, as he declared in an unpublished lecture before the Mechanics' Institute of Boston, _made toys which he bartered among his school-mates_.

This last circumstance gives singular point to the parallel, already striking in other respects, between him and the Greek orator, the boast of whose various knowledge is preserved by Cicero: "Nihil esse ulla in arte rerum omnium, quod ipse nesciret: nec solum has artes, quibus liberales doctrinæ atque ingenuæ continerentur, geometriam, musicam, literarum cognitionem et poetarum, atque illa, quæ de naturis rerum, quæ de hominum moribus, quæ de rebuspublicis dicerentur; _sed annulum, quem haberet, se sua manu confecisse_."[151] The Greek, besides knowing everything, made the ring which he wore, as our friend made toys.

[151] De Oratore, Lib. III. cap. 32.

As the champion of classical studies, and a student of language, or philologist, he is entitled to be specially remembered. It is impossible to measure the influence he has exerted upon the scholarship of the country. His writings and his example, from early youth, pleaded its cause, and will plead it ever, although his living voice is hushed in the grave. His genius for languages was profound. He saw, with intuitive perception, their structure and affinities, and delighted in the detection of their hidden resemblances and relations. To their history and character he devoted his attention, more than to their literature. It is not possible for this humble pen to determine the place which will be allotted to him in the science of philology; but the writer cannot forbear recording the authoritative testimony to the rare merits of Mr. Pickering in this department, which it was his fortune to hear from the lips of Alexander von Humboldt. With the brother, William von Humboldt, that great light of modern philology, he maintained a long correspondence, particularly on the Indian languages; and his letters will be found preserved in the Royal Library at Berlin. Without rashly undertaking to indicate any scale of pre-eminence or precedence among the cultivators of this department, at home or abroad, it may not be improper to refer to his labors in those words of Dr. Johnson with regard to his own, as evidence "that we may no longer yield the palm of philology, without a contest, to the nations of the Continent."[152]

[152] Preface to Dictionary.

If it should be asked by what magic Mr. Pickering was able to accomplish these remarkable results, it must be answered, By the careful husbandry of time. His talisman was industry. He delighted in referring to those rude inhabitants of Tartary who placed idleness among the torments of the world to come, and often remembered the beautiful proverb in his Oriental studies, that by labor the leaf of the mulberry is turned into silk. His life is a perpetual commentary on those words of untranslatable beauty in the great Italian poet:--

"Seggendo in piuma, In fama non si vien, nè sotto coltre: Sanza la qual, chi sua vita consuma, Cotal vestigio in terra di se lascia, Qual fumo in aere od in acqua la schiuma."[153]

[153] Divina Commedia, _Inferno_, Canto XXIV. vv. 47-51.

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.

The death of one thus variously connected is no common sorrow. Beyond the immediate circle of family and friends, he will be mourned by the bar, among whom his daily life was passed,--by the municipality of Boston, whose legal adviser he was,--by clients, who depended upon his counsels,--by good citizens, who were charmed by the abounding virtues of his private life,--by his country, who will cherish his name more than gold or silver,--by the distant islands of the Pacific, who will bless his labors in the words they read,--finally, by the company of jurists and scholars throughout the world. His fame and his works will be fitly commemorated, on formal occasions, hereafter. Meanwhile, one who knew him at the bar and in private life, and who loves his memory, lays this early tribute upon his grave.

THE SCHOLAR, THE JURIST, THE ARTIST, THE PHILANTHROPIST.

AN ORATION BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, AT THEIR ANNIVERSARY, AUGUST 27, 1846.

Then I would say to the young disciple of Truth and Beauty, who would know how to satisfy the noble impulse of his heart, through every opposition of the century,--I would say, Give the world beneath your influence a _direction_ towards the good, and the tranquil rhythm of time will bring its development.--SCHILLER.

In this Oration, as in that of the 4th of July, Mr. Sumner took advantage of the occasion to express himself freely, especially on the two great questions of Slavery and War. In the sensitive condition of public sentiment at that time, such an effort would have found small indulgence, if he had not placed himself behind four such names. While commemorating the dead, he was able to uphold living truth.

The acceptance of this Oration at the time is attested by the toast of John Quincy Adams at the dinner of the Society:--

"The memory of the Scholar, the Jurist, the Artist, the Philanthropist; and not the memory, but the long life of the kindred spirit who has this day embalmed them all."

This was followed by a letter from Mr. Adams to Mr. Sumner, dated at Quincy, August 29, 1846, containing the following passage:--

"It is a gratification to me to have the opportunity to repeat the thanks which I so cordially gave you at the close of your oration of last Thursday, and of which the sentiment offered by me at the dinner-table was but an additional pulsation from the same heart. I trust I may now congratulate you on the felicity, first of your selection of your subject, and secondly of its consummation in the delivery.... The pleasure with which I listened to your discourse was inspired far less by the success and _all but_ universal acceptance and applause of the present moment than by the vista of the future which is opened to my view. Casting my eyes backward no farther than the 4th of July of last year, when you set all the vipers of Alecto a-hissing by proclaiming the Christian law of universal peace and love, and then casting them forward, perhaps not much farther, but beyond my own allotted time, I see you have a mission to perform. I look from Pisgah to the Promised Land; you must enter upon it.... To the motto on my seal [_Alteri sæculo_] add _Delenda est servitus_."