Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/41

 Ticknor 453 mouth in 1807, he read Greek and Latin authors for three years with the rector of Trinity Church, Boston, a pupil of Samuel Parr. From 18 10 Ticknor read law and in 18 13 was admitted to the bar, but he gave up practice in a year. The country, he thought, "would never be without good lawyers," but would urgently need "scholars, teachers, and men of letters." From Madame de Stael's De VAllemagne (1813) Ticknor had got an intimation of the intellectual mastery of the Germans; he elected therefore to study in Germany, and particularly at Got- tingen. Through the summer and autumn of 18 14 he worked hard at German, borrowing a grammar from Edward Everett, sending to New Hampshire, where he "knew there was a Ger- man dictionary," and translating Werther from John Quincy Adams's copy, stored at the Athenaeum. Before going abroad, though, he must make the American grand tour to Washington and Virginia. During the winter of 1 8 14-15 he travelled by slow stages and sometimes under difficulties as far as Richmond, everywhere supplied with in- troductions to and from eminent persons such as John Adams, President Madison, and Thomas Jefferson. He met, among others, Eli Whitney, Robert Lenox, John Randolph, and Charles Carroll of CarroUton; attended the Hartford Convention; saw the ruins of Washington, then recently burned by the British ; and at Monticello got the news of their defeat at New Orleans. Already he was exhibiting the social gifts which later distin- guished him — a power of holding substantial conversation when that was in order; a tact that kept him wisely and quizzi- cally silent during an outburst of bad temper on the part of Adams, and in the presence of Jefferson's philosophical oddi- ties; together with a cool sub-acid judgment in estimating and reporting such phenomena as these and the ways of men in general. He made an especially favourable impression upon Jefferson, who twice — in 181 8 and again in 1820 — ^invited him to a chair at the University of Virginia. In April, 1815, Ticknor sailed for Liverpool with Edward Everett and several other friends. At Liverpool and on the way to London he paid his respects to Roscoe arid to Dr. Parr. In London he met Hallam, and various lesser scholars. At Gottingen Ticknor settled down to a monastic regimen of study, specializing in Greek. He met the Homeric Wolf, ' ' coryphaeus