S06 WILLIAM WATSON GOODWIN. 



The son of Hersey Bradford Goodwin (Harvard College 1826, 

 Harvard Divinity School 1829) and Lucretia Ann ^Yatson, he was born 

 May 9, 1831, at Concord, Mass., where his father was the colleague of 

 the Senior Minister, Dr. Ezra Ripley. Both his parents having died 

 during his infancy, he lived at Plymouth with his grandmother, 

 Lucretia Burr fSturges) Watson until he entered Harvard College in 

 1847. After receiving his Bachelor's degree in 1851 he lived in Cam- 

 bridge for two years as resident graduate taking a few private pupils, 

 (among others John C. Ropes), but devoting the major part of his 

 time to the pursuit of his own studies in company with Ephraim 

 \Yhitman Gurney and Henry Williamson Haynes. Finding, however, 

 that there was no opportunity for advanced study at Harvard (the 

 Graduate Department was unknown until 1872), he determined to 

 seek instruction in Gottingen, which had been the resort of many 

 Harvard men, such as Everett, Bancroft, Longfellow, Motley, and, 

 nearer his own day, Gould, '44, and Child and Lane (both '46), with 

 whom he was to be so long associated in Cambridge. He used to recall 

 with interest the fact that of the five holders of the Eliot Professorship 

 of Greek Literature, since its foundation, three had studied at the 

 Georgia-Augusta. The great classical scholars there in his day were 

 Schneidewin and K. F. Hermann, the latter the last of the encyclopae- 

 dists in classical philology. After studying in Gottingen, Bonn, and 

 Berlin for two years, he received the degree of Ph.D. from Gottingen 

 in 1855. His doctor's dissertation dealt with the Sea Power of the 

 Ancients (" De potentiae veterum gentium maritimae epochis apud 

 Eusebium"). During his stay abroad he visited Italy and Greece. 



Returning in 1856, Goodwin found that he had been made Tutor in 

 Greek and Latin at Harvard, a post he exchanged, in the following 

 year, for that of Tutor in Greek. In 1860, he succeeded Felton, who, 

 in that year, resigned the Eliot Professorship of Greek Literature to 

 become President of the College. For forty-one years Goodwin 

 was in active service; even after his resignation in 1901, when he 

 became Emeritus, his zeal did not permit him to se\er himself from 

 the work of actual instruction, and for seven years he continued to 

 lecture on Plato and Aristotle. From 1903 to 1909 he was Overseer 

 of the Uni\ersity, a distinction attained by relatively few of its 

 teachers. 



In the history of education in America few men have exceeded 

 Goodwin's period of service; and few have conferred greater distinc- 

 tion on American scholarship. His hfe is no exception to the rule that 

 the annals of a scholar's career are short and simple. His many years 



