Memoirs of Pliny Earle, M.D : with extracts from his diary and letters (1830-1892) and selections from his professional writings ( 1839-1891) / Ed., with a general introduction, by F. B. Sanborn.

  • Sanborn, F. B. (Franklin Benjamin), 1831-1917
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoirs of Pliny Earle, M.D : with extracts from his diary and letters (1830-1892) and selections from his professional writings ( 1839-1891) / Ed., with a general introduction, by F. B. Sanborn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    And seemed by nature from improvement barred, With minds as callous as their frames were hard; Some, gentle forms, and delicately wrought. That scarcely seemed susceptible of thought, On trifling objects ever prone to dote,— Their only knowledge what they learned by rote ; And yet another class did there appear,— Their minds capacious, their perceptions clear; Like lightning's flash, they caught the vivid ray Which Learning shed on their illumined way. She next went on to mention the authors she read with her inti- mate cousin, Lavinia Buffum, after leaving school and before mar- riage : — There on the margin of the rippling brook We sat, and pored o'er some instructive book; Read Milton's page, wise, learned, and sublime. Or soared with Young beyond the bounds of time; With Thomson viewed the varied seasons roll, Or searched with Locke the mazes of the soul; With Goldsmith traversed realms and states unknown, Or bowed with Burke before the regal throne ; With Hervey pondered o'er the mighty dead. With Homer trod where Grecian heroes bled, etc. The same poem contains a tribute to the scholarship and piety of Elisha Thornton, the leading Quaker minister in New England in the period following the Revolution, and also a learned teacher, from whom Patience Buffum received instruc- tion : — Next the sage Tutor claims my humble lays, Mild in his manners, wise in all his ways. Easy of access, gentle, peaceful, kind, Endowed by nature with a vigorous mind. And when at times he bowed before the Throne Of the eternal, omnipresent One, In holy, awful, reverential prayer. It seemed as if the heavenly host were there. Dr. Earle goes on to say: — She commemorated, each by a poem, the arrival and the depart- ure of Lafayette on his visit to this country in 1S24-25. When we