Page:The Southern Literary Messenger - Minor.djvu/95

 Rh stirred up the wrath of some high official, so that he came after Harry very hotly. The Messenger admitted his reply; but had to expurgate his MS. However, Harry marshalled more facts and floored the aroused dignitary. At length Harry became known and the July number contains a sketch of M. F. Maury. It tells how sedulously he improved himself after he left the school of Bishop Jas. H. Otey, in Franklin, Tenn., and entered the U. S. N. But it omits one fact which had a blessed effect upon his subsequent career, beginning with his appearance as a writer for the great public. Whilst a mere midshipman and pursuing, with the aid of diagrams drawn on cannon balls, professional studies, he felt keenly his inferiority to his messmates and the ship's officers in Belles Lettres and resolved to make up his deficiencies. So he added good literature to his studies, in which he was generously aided by a brother of Washington Irving, who had a well selected library with him. Maury never after slighted good literature, though he may have somewhat undervalued the classical languages, which he would hardly have done had he remained with his great friend Bishop Otey, for he was devoted to the Classics and had taught them in the University of North Carolina. Indeed a writer from Frankfort, Ky., criticises Maury for