Remarks on the Harvard triennial.

  • Dabney, J. P. (Jonathan Peele), 1793-1868.
Date:
[1847]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the Harvard triennial. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    We intend no proper dissection of the catalogue here. Space indeed would utterly fail us. We must pass over untouched the multitudinous cases, that are wide from truth not more than from one to five years ; in fact, the nature of the topic deters us from entering minutely into any, short of from a score to a half-century of years astray. Within stinted limits, as we are, we can do but poor justice to these. There is indeed a class of examples, whose unhappiness is not so much in any interval of years from truth, as in the ludicrous confusion of persons plainly made. Such a medley of fathers mistaken for sons, and sons for fathers, of uncles and nephews transposed, of two identical names shot down with the same date which belonged only to one, (to kill two birds of this sort with a stone will not do), and of persons never perchance within college walls, favoured with a sort of ad eundem on its roll,—is it possible elsewhere to find ? As to this blind-man's buff, this groping uncertainly among namesakes and relatives, there rushes at once to mind, by natural association, the pleasant story which is related somewhere by Scott ;—in allu- sion, very likely, to the long current imputation of his own novels to his brother Thomas in Canada. Sorry we are to mar, as we may, his graphic sketch by being driven to quote from memory. He tells of a sheriffs officer (probably enough, of the Emerald isle) entrusted with an execution, who, failing of his prey, made report on his return,—' We could n't find the fellow, we looked for, your honour ; but, that nothing may be lost, we laid hold of his brother, you see ; and that, we suppose, will do just as well.' Such seems to be the very accommodating principle of the college catalogue ;—any possessor of the name will serve to fill the blank, if the true man answer not to our call. Doubtless its remaining blanks will rapidly disappear. In the Preface to the late Triennial, if we mistake not, readers are notified, in relation to this new enterpiize, not to receive ' with implicit credence' [!} all the dates annexed, as a few slight errors were but the lot of humanity. Many an amateur of the catalogue has doubtless smiled ' in his sleeve' or out of it, at this considerate