762 GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR. 



ber of Congress from 1835 to 1837, and was sent in 1844 by the Massa- 

 chusetts legislature to South Carolina on an unsuccessful mission before 

 the courts of that Southern State. George Frisbie Hoar's eldest brother 

 Ebenezer Rockwood, had also been a member of Congress in 1873-75 and 

 had been attorney-general of the United States. His grandfather and 

 great-grandfather were both in the Concord fight, and his maternal ances- 

 tor, Eo»er Sherman, signed the Declaration of Independence — lie who, as 

 Whittier has said, represented " tlie gentle craft of leather." Senator 

 Hoar became a resident fellow of this academy May 8, 1901 (Class III. 

 Sec. 1. Philosophy and Jurisprudence). He died of disease at Worces- 

 ter, Mass., September 30, 1904. 



The immediate family to which Mr. Hoar belonged has been for sev- 

 eral generations the most influential household in the most influential vil- 

 lage of eastern Massachusetts. Such an attitude produces a race of men 

 who are the counsellors and friends of their fellow townsmen and the rec- 

 ognized authority as to the character and claims of humbler men. This 

 decision may or may not be infallible. I remember when, after the death 

 of Henry Thoreau, I had applied in vain to his sister for leave to publish 

 something from his numerous volumes of journals and natural observa- 

 tions, now so largely in print, she had refused, and I applied confidently 

 to Judge Hoar. When I got through, the judge said placidly, between 

 puffs of his cigar, " Whereunto? You have not yet unfolded the pre- 

 liminary question. Why should any one wish to have a sentence of 

 Henry Thoreau's put in print ? " I am confident that no one in Con- 

 cord would have had the daring to ask that question in regard to any 

 member of the Hoar family, and it is clear that the author of the two stout 

 volumes of Senator Hoar's memoirs could at least have felt no such 

 solicitude in regard to himself. 



It embarrasses the historic position of a man, however eminent, 

 whenever he has recently published his autobiography. It may vindi- 

 cate him from some injustice, but is apt to place him at some disadvan- 

 tage. I knew a man who inscribed in his library, above the department 

 of biography, that fatal saying of Confucius, "How can a man be con- 

 cealed?" In many cases this unconscious revelation has its merits, but it 

 involves its perils. I think it was Senator Depew who once said with 

 much keenness that every man ought to write his own epitaph, because no 

 one else is usually so familiar with the virtues of the deceased. We rec- 

 0"nize this in Senator Hoar's memoirs, when, speaking of his service in 

 the Massachusetts legislature, he says, '• I suppose I may say without 

 arro-^auce that I was the leader of the Free Soil Party in each House 



