110 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE KEGENTS. 



enabled me to form a definite opinion of the worth and services of one 

 whose death the country, in common with Massachusetts and with 

 Harvard University, deplores. 



Cornelius Conway Felton, the son of worthy but b}^ no means opu- 

 lent parents, was born at West Newbury, Massachusetts, November 

 6, 1807. The first decided impulse in the direction of scholarship and of 

 a taste for letters was given to him by Simeon Putnam, who kept a 

 private school at North Andover, with whom he remained as a pupil a 

 year and three months. In this year and a quarter prior to his entrance 

 into college, Putnam awakened so great an enthusiasm in the mind of 

 his pupil that the latter, according to a statement in manuscript 

 drawn up by one of his friends, "read Sallust four times, Cicero's 

 Orations four times, Virgil six times, Dalxel's Gra3ca Minora five or 

 six times, and the poetry of it till he could repeat nearly all of it from 

 memory, the Annals and History of Tacitus, Justin, Cornelius Nepos, 

 the Anabasis of Xenophon, four books of Robinson's Selections from 

 the Iliad, the Greek Testament four times, besides writing a trans- 

 lation of one of the Gospels, and writing a translation of the whole of 

 Grotius de Veritate, which he brought in manuscript to college ; alsO' 

 he wrote a volume of about three hundred pages of Latin exercises, 

 and one of about two hundred pages of Greek exercises, and studied 

 carefully all the mathematics and geography requisite to enter 

 college." That the severe study necessary in order to do all this 

 in so short a time might be detrimental to his health will be readily 

 believed. He suffered from these overstrained efforts during his resi- 

 dence in college and afterward. Still he continued his course of 

 earnest study through his college life, devoting a good deal of spare 

 time to extra Greek, and forming an acquaintance with several of the 

 modern languages and with the Hebrew. Besides which he con- 

 tributed to his own support in several ways, especially by keeping 

 school during parts of his sophomore and junior years, and in the 

 latter year by teaching mathematics for six months in the Round- 

 hill school at Northampton, under Messrs. Cogswell and Bancroft. 

 He was prepared, by this introduction into the art of teaching and 

 by his excellent scholarship, for the employment in which he was 

 engaged for two years from the time of his graduation — the charge 

 of a high school at Geneseo. New York, which he undertook in com- 

 pany with two of his classmates. From Geneseo he was called back, 

 in 1829, to his Alma Mater to fill the office of Latin tutor, from which 

 department he was transferred the next year to the Greek. His elec- 

 tion to the chair of college professor in 1832 showed the estimation 

 in which he was held by the authorities of the University. On the 

 resignation of Dr. Popkin in 1833, who had the chair of Greek lit- 

 erature upon the Eliot foundation, Mr, Felton was appointed his 

 successor, and continued in this professorship until his elevation ta 

 the presidency in 1860. Thus thirty years of his life were spent in 

 cultivating and teaching Greek letters. 



As a Greek scholar, he was not surpassed for breadth and accuracy 

 by any other in the land. His nature was many-sided, and he strove 

 after complete scholarship both in what pertained to the language 



