Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 3.djvu/279

 PROMINENT PERSONS

239

to the Jesuit Fathers $300 to found a medal spent in travel and study in Berlin, KieU

for poetry. His lecture tour was unsuccess- Paris, and Athens. The outbreak of the

ful, and, in feeble health, he retired from civil war prevented the completion of his

ministerial work and settled in Biloxi, studies. He ran the blockade, and reached

Mississippi, giving himself to literary work, his home in 1862. He at once volunteered

Among his various volumes the one most for army service, and was assigned to duty

regarded is "Poems — Patriotic, Religious as lieutenant on Gen. J. E. B. Stuart's staflf,

and Miscellaneous" (1880), containing "The and later was transferred to the corps of

Sword of Lee," "The Lost Cause," and the engineers, and served as captain till the close

world-famous "Conquered Banner." He of the war. In the fall of 1865 h^ opened in

died in Louisville, Kentucky, April 22, 1886.

Davies, Samuel D., born near Petersburg, Virginia, March 21, 1839, son of Col. W'il- liam Davies and grandson of Samuel Da\ ies, president of Princeton College ; was edu- cated at William and Mary College. Wil- liamsburg, and was known as an enthusi- astic student of languages. During the civil war he served as a lieutenant on the staff of Gens. Pettigrew and Archer. After the war he was a constant contributor of both poetry and prose to the "Southern Literary Messenger," of Richmond ; the "Crescent Monthly," of New Orleans, and other per- iodicals. His published works include "Fine Arts of the South," "Satirical Romances," "Novels, and Novel Writing," "Subjective and Objective Poets," "Literary Ambition," ?nd "Review of Tannhauser." His poem, "An Evening Visit to the Lines Around Petersburg," written in 1865, won for him highest praise. At the time of his death he was a member of the board of visitors of William and Mary College.

Price, Thomas Randolph, born in Rich- mond, Virginia, in 1839, and died at his home in New York City, May 17, 1903. He en-

Richmond, with his old schoolmate, John M. Strother, a classical school for boys, and taught there until 1868, when he was called to a chair in Randolph-Macon College, and was thus at last fairly launched upon the work of his life. In 1876 the opening of Johns Hopkins University called his old master, Gildersleeve, to Baltimore, and Mr. Price was called to fill his chair at the Uni- versity of Virginia, and for the next six years served there as professor of Greek. A call to Columbia University was the re- ward of his success. To Price it seemed rich in beautiful possibilities — relief from much of the drudgery of his professional duties, opportunities for special study, time for original research, the artistic resources of urban life in a great city, and above all, ptrhaps, restoration to that work in Eng- lish which he particularly loved. He spent twenty-one years in Columbia, saw it grow into a great university, and when he died was sixth in official rank in that vast faculty. The courses offered by him covered a wide range — from Anglo-Saxon literature clown through Chaucer and Shakespeare, to Tennyson and Browning and Matthew Arnold. He never narrowed his field to that tered the University of Virginia, and was of the modern specialist. He was not a pro- graduated with the degree of Master of lific v/riter, and the works of his pen are few Arts in 1858. The next three years were in number and slender in volume. His