Page:The Whitney Memorial Meeting.djvu/33

Rh in widely diverse fields which appears in his elaborately annotated translation of the famous Sanskrit astronomical treatise called Sūryasiddhānta, and which, again, he brought to bear upon his criticisms of earlier and later attempts to determine the age of the Veda by its references to solar eclipses, and by its alleged implications respecting the place of the equinoctial colures.

But not only in respect of contents were Whitney's writings of conspicuous merit; he had also the sense of form and proportion,—that sense for lack of which the writings of many a scholar of equal learning are almost nugatory. At twenty-two, his English style had the charms of simplicity, clearness, and vigor, and they held out to the last. And what could be more admirable than his beautiful essay,—a veritable classic,—"The Vedic Doctrine of a Future Life"? His subjects, indeed, if treated seriously, do not lend themselves to the graces of rhetorical or ornate writing; and his concise and pregnant periods sometimes mock the flippant or listless reader. But his presentation, whether of argmnent or of scientific generalization, is always a model of lucidity, of orderly exposition, and of due subordination of the parts. This was a matter on which he felt deeply; for his patience was often sorely tried by papers for whose slovenliness in diction, arrangement, and all the externals of which he was a master, the authors fondly thought that their erudition was forsooth an excuse.

Indeed, for the matter of printer's manuscript, more than once has Boehtlingk, the Nestor of Indianists, taxed him home with making it too good, declaring