William Dwight Whitney

(T. D. Seymour)

WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY.[1]

Northampton, Massachusetts, half a century ago, was one of the best examples of a typical New England town—among stately hills, on the banks of the Connecticut River, with broad streets well shaded by great spreading elms, with large homesteads still occupied by the descendants of early settlers, with people of much culture and refinement who were given to "plain living and high thinking." It was the town of Edwards, of Dwight, of Hawley, of Stoddard, of Strong, and of many another worthy. It was the seat of the once famous Round Hill Academy. There, on February 9, 1827, William Dwight Whitney was born,—the second surviving son and fourth child of Josiah Dwight Whitney and Sarah Williston Whitney. His mother was a daughter of the Rev. Payson Williston (Yale, 1783), of Easthampton, and sister of the Hon. Samuel Williston, who founded Williston Seminary. His father was born in Westfield, Mass.,—the oldest son of Abel Whitney, who was graduated at Harvard in 1783.

No company of brothers and sisters of any American family has been so remarkable for scholarly attainments and achievements as that family in Northampton: Josiah D. Whitney, Jr. (Yale, 1839), Professor of Geology at Harvard; William D. Whitney, of Yale; James L. Whitney (Yale, 1856), of the Boston Public Library; Henry M. Whitney (Yale, 1864), Professor of English Literature at Beloit College; Miss Maria Whitney, the first incumbent of the chair of Modern Languages in Smith College.

William D. Whitney was fitted for college in his native town, and entered the Sophomore class of Williams College in 1842, at the age of fifteen. Tradition says that the studies of the college course were easy to him, and that he spent most of his time in wandering over the fields, studying geology and the habits of birds and of plants, although he maintained the first rank for scholarship in his class. On his graduation he pronounced the valedictory oration, on 'Literary Biography.'

After graduation—at eighteen, the age when most now enter college—Mr. Whitney remained for three years in uncertainty with regard to his life-work, meanwhile busy as teller in his father's bank. He did not take an active part in the social life of the young people of Northampton, but employed himself in his own pursuits. His leisure time was given largely to the collection of birds and plants; a large and beautiful case of birds stuffed by him at this period is in the Peabody Museum at New Haven. His tastes for natural science were marked, and he was more than an amateur in that field. He spent the summer of 1849 in the United States Survey of the Lake Superior region, conducted by his eminent brother, Josiah D. Whitney—having "under his charge the botany, the ornithology, and the accounts." In the summer of 1873, also, he was invited to take part in the Hayden exploring expedition in Colorado. The Report of the Survey says that he "rendered most valuable assistance ... in geographical work." His account of this expedition of 1873 was published in the New York Tribune, and afterwards was translated into French for a popular publication of that country, as giving a clear view of the work of such scientific parties. He had a brief article in the American Journal of Science for the same year on the U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories. He gave several months of his time just before leaving home for his last visit to Europe, to helping Professor J. D. Whitney put through the press the latter's work on 'The Metallic Wealth of the United States.'

His scientific experience stood him in good stead in more than one instance of philological research and discussion. He was not tempted to infer from linguistic data the order of succession of trees in forests, nor astronomical facts. He was a member for several years of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. One of his most important publications was the annotated translation of a Hindu treatise on astronomy—the Sūrya-Siddhānta, 1860—and one of the longest essays in his 'Oriental and Linguistic Studies' treats of the same subject.

In 1848, largely under the influence and with the encouragement of his father's pastor, the Rev. George E. Day (for a quarter of a century after 1866 Professor of Hebrew at Yale, and at present Dean of the Yale Divinity School), Mr. Whitney directed his attention to the study of Sanskrit, for which he found books in the library of his elder brother, who had recently returned from Europe. A really good mind can find pleasure and success in any one of several different fields of research. Not often, however, do we find such marked examples of men of real talent manifesting distinct tastes and power in widely different departments of learning as in the case of these two brothers. Mr. J. D. Whitney went to Germany primarily in order to prepare himself for mineralogical and geological work, but became interested in the study of languages and attended (with but two fellow-listeners) a course of lectures on Sanskrit at Berlin. He himself says that he might have taken up philology in earnest, abandoning natural science altogether, if immediately after his return to his home he had not received an appointment to engage in a geological survey of a new and interesting region under United States authority. His philological studies have borne fruit in his 'Names and Places—Studies in Geographical and Topographical Nomenclature,' published in 1888, and in the more than four thousand definitions he furnished to the Century Dictionary. Mr. W. D. Whitney certainly had great ability in the study of natural science. Doubtless the accident of his finding various linguistic books ready to hand, at the time when his mental powers were most actively developing, had much to do with his turning in the direction of philology. During the summer which he spent with his brother on Lake Superior he had a Sanskrit grammar with him, which he studied at odd moments when not engaged in collecting plants or computing barometrical observations. Yale College has had another marked example of a scholar with equal ability and tastes for widely diverse studies, in Professor James Hadley, whose first published work was in the department of mathematics, and of whom a high authority said that the best mathematician in the country was spoiled when Mr. Hadley devoted himself to Greek!

Mr. Whitney's practical banker father was not fully satisfied with his plan of giving himself to Oriental studies, and asked his pastor whether a man could support himself in life by studying and teaching Sanskrit. Dr. Day made the very wise answer that if a man had any exact and thorough knowledge, he was likely to be able to use it. As a Massachusetts man, the father turned naturally to Harvard as the proper place for his son's pursuit of advanced studies, but his pastor called his attention to the newly established department of Philosophy and the Arts at New Haven as the only definite arrangement yet made in this country for university work, and especially to the unique equipment of the special department of Oriental languages.

Before going to New Haven to study, Mr. Whitney prepared and published in the Bibliotheca Sacra an article (translated and abridged from von Bohlen) on the 'Grammatical Structure of the Sanskrit'; and in the same periodical, in the following year, he published a 'Comparison of the Greek and Latin Verbs.'

In the autumn of