A Latin Curiosity

A Life of George Washington, Written by A Citizen of Ohio... in Latin

You never know what you’re going to find in the bottom of a box of books.

I had heard about Francis Glass. Studying with Fr. Reginald Foster, the famous Vatican Latinist, I was used to finding out about obscure Latin writers who composed long after Caesar and Cicero had exited the world stage.

One of these was Francis Glass, an impecunious pedagogue who in 1817 to escape creditors had left Philadelphia and taken up residence in the freshly minted (1803) state of Ohio. There he started a school, and in 1823 became the instructor of a young scholar at the Ohio State University unable to attend classes in the capital. This scholar, J. N. Reynolds, has left us a picture of Glass as a teacher:

The attainments and readiness of Glass seemed altogether superior to any thing I had witnessed. While reading Horace, for instance, the happy illustrations applied to each line, or word, gave an interest to my studies absolutely fascinating. Sometimes, when in a happy mood – and I soon learned that he was not always happy - he would hold me a delighted auditor, for a whole evening, while analyzing and pointing out the beauties of a single ode. The whole range of classic authors was at this tongue’s end, and he would recite from them with a facility and accuracy truly astonishing. Every thing, by way of illustration or comparison, was introduced, with such an inimitable and sweet simplicity, that, to me, it seemed as if I had never before understood the beauties of the authors I had been reading, or properly appreciated the flow, strength, and grandeur of the Latin tongue.

Glass had one great ambition, but it was frustrated by the work involved in keeping his school and supporting his wife and five children. He wanted to write a life of George Washington. And he wanted to write it in Latin. He was so fixated on the topic that Reynolds found some money and purchased the pedagogue’s time for a period of several months for Glass to work on his book. He finished a draft of the book, and Reynolds promised to find a publisher for it, but having much else to do, let it sit in a drawer. Glass died, impoverished and disappointed, shortly thereafter.

Reynolds was chagrined. He then brought it to men of learning – it is likely that Columbia Professor Charles Anthon was the key connection – and after compiling a small pile of appreciative testimonials – blurbs – he succeeded in getting Harper and Brothers to publish the book in 1835. It went through three editions in the next year, before lapsing back into obscurity.

One of the 1836 editions made its way to John Francis Latimer, a scholar at Washington University. Latimer found his possession of the book remarkable, because he could not remember where it came from and had no record of ever having acquired the book, despite being an assiduous notetaker. Nevertheless, he determined to reprint the book with a translation, commentary, and introduction for the nation’s bicentennial in 1976. Washington University Press published the book. This was the edition Foster owned and used for his classes, and in the days before the internet it was rather an unusual book to find in a bookshop. It is easier now, but copies are still scarce, and so Contubernales Press, whose books we stock here, this past year decided to issue a new edition of the original text, minus the scholarly apparatus of Latimer, which is still in copyright.

We stock the 2024 reprint; I had seen the 1976 reprint. But I had never seen a copy of the original Harper and Brothers 1830s edition, which must truly be a rarity, until I found one in a box of books here. This copy is also in the original binding, which is doubly unusual, first of all because the book was not durably bound at the time, and secondly because many copies were used in schools, which is hell to books. Our copy has some scattered pedagogical annotations, though its pages are generally bright and clean. The book really belongs in a museum, either of Washington history, or Ohio history, or Latin in America history.

Now it makes me want to visit German Township in Montgomery County in Ohio, between Dayton and Cincinnati, just to meditate on the life of Francis Glass, “a poor and almost friendless individual, whom a sound and liberal education had fitted for higher pursuits, but whom misfortune and disappointment had driven” at last to an untimely grave.

Among the testimonials in the 1836 edition we find this from former president John Quincy Adams, who calls it, “good, classical, Ciceronian Latin, not perhaps quite equal to Ernesti’s Dedication of his Cicero, but not inferior to any other Latin of a later age, or proceeding from any other source than the German universities.” “The fashion of the present day,” he continues, “is to depreciate the study of the dead languages, even of the Latin; and the youth of our country are told, that instead of turning over with the nocturnal and the diurnal hand the Greek exemplars, and their faithful followers of the golden age of Rome, they are to form their principles of taste, and eloquence, and poetry, from modern writers and orators in their own vernacular languages. I am not of that school.”

The prize testimonial comes from The Southern Literary Messenger. That magazine to a lover of American letters can mean only one thing, and sure enough the author of this review – not ascribed here by name, as the name then meant nothing – was none other than Edgar Allan Poe:

We may truly say that not for years have we taken up a volume with which we have been so highly gratified, as with the one now before us. A Life of Washington, succinct in form, yet in matter sufficiently comprehensive, has been long a desideratum: but a Life of Washington precisely such as a compendious Life of that great man should be — written by a native of Ohio — and written too, in Latin, which is not one jot inferior to the Latin of Erasmus, is, to say the least of it, — a novelty.

We confess that we regarded the first announcement of this rara avis with an evil and suspicious eye. The thing was improbable, we thought. Mr. Reynolds was quizzing us — the brothers Harper were hoaxed and Messieurs Anthon and Co. were mistaken. At all events we had made up our minds to be especially severe upon Mr. Glass, and to put no faith in that species of classical Latin which should emanate from the back woods of Ohio. We now solemnly make a recantation of our preconceived opinions, and so proceed immediately to do penance for our unbelief.

Mr. Reynolds is entitled to the thanks of his countrymen for his instrumentality in bringing this book before the public. It has already done wonders in the cause of the classics; and we are false prophets if it do not ultimately prove the means of stirring up to a new life and a regenerated energy that love of the learned tongues which is the surest protection of our own vernacular language from impurity, but which, we are grieved to see, is in a languishing and dying condition in the land.

We have read Mr. R's preface with great attention; and meeting with it, as we have done, among a multiplicity of worldly concerns, and every — day matters and occurrences, it will long remain impressed upon our minds as an episode of the purest romance. We have no difficulty in entering fully with Mr. Reynolds into his kindly feelings towards Mr. Glass. We perceive at once that we could have loved and reverenced the man. His image is engraven upon our fancy. Indeed we behold him now — at this very moment — with all his oddities and appurtenances about him. We behold the low log-cabin of a school-house — the clap-board roof but indifferently tight — the holes, yeleped windows, covered with oiled paper to keep out the air — the benches of hewn timber stuck fast in the ground the stove, the desk, the urchins, and the Professor. We can hear the worthy pedagogue's classical ‘Salves,’ and our ears are still tingling with his hyperclassical exhortations. In truth he was a man after our own heart, and, were we not Alexander, we should have luxuriated in being Glass.

A word or two respecting the Latinity of the book. We sincerely think that it has been underrated. While we agree with Mr. Reynolds, for whose opinions, generally, we have a high respect, that the work can boast of none of those elegancies of diction, no rich display of those beauties and graces which adorn the pages of some modern Latinists, we think he has forgotten, in his search after the mere flowers of Latinity, the peculiar nature of that labor in which Mr. Glass has been employed. Simplicity here was the most reasonable, and indeed the only admissible elegance. And if this be taken into consideration, we really can call to mind, at this moment, no modern Latin composition whatever much superior to the Washingtonii Vita of Mr. Glass.

Only Poe could have wished to be an impecunious Latin teacher in frontier Ohio fleeing from his creditors and helpless before the demands of his family! This says much about Poe. Yet it is a delight to hold this old book in my hands and know that Poe sat himself down with a copy as well, some autumn evening almost two hundred years ago; indeed it might have been this very copy! (Though there is no evidence of such). The years seem to vanish, and distant things draw near, with such thoughts.

In the same box of books we discovered the complete three-volume set of the materials produced by Latimer in his 1976 edition: not only the facsimile printing with its new scholarly introduction, but the translation and commentary in their separate volumes, all signed by Latimer.

We have decided to sell all these books together. To this we are adding the 2024 Contubernales edition, to make a set of all the principal editions of this work, for $600. It’s a piece of American history, and deserves to be treated with reverence.