Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/283

 the ripest life.” At the bar, to which he had been admitted at an early age, “he stood in the very first rank of his profession, without any acknowledged superior.”

He filled the Royall Professorship with distinguished success. He was one of those rare and precious beings—a born teacher. He obtained a wonderful hold over the affections of his students. His lectures were notable for their clear grasp of the subject. “He possessed in a remarkable degree the faculty of analyzing a complicated case into its elements, and of throwing out at once all its accidental and unimportant ingredients. …His remarks were peculiarly sententious, terse and pithy, and sometimes quite epigrammatic.” He taught largely by recitations in the Socratic method, and took special pains to put his classes through frequent and searching oral examinations. His advanced position as an educator, as well as the quality of his work, may be inferred from the fact that in the curriculum of those primitive days he included a course of lectures on Medical Jurisprudence, of such value that they were published after his death. To quote further from Judge Story:

Although his learning was exceedingly various, as well as deep, he never assumed the air of authority. On the contrary, whenever a question occurred, which he was not ready to answer, he had no reserves, and no concealments. With the modesty, as well as the tranquil confidence, of a great mind, he would candidly say, “I am not