James Bradstreet Greenough

Background

James Bradstreet Greenough was born on May 4, 1833 in Portland, Maine, the son of Janies and Catherine Greenough.

Education

James was educated at the Boston Latin School and Harvard College, graduating in 1856.

Career

For some years James practised law in Marshall, Michogan. He took part in the political events of 1860, chiefly by writing verses for campaign songs. In November 1862 he was appointed commissioner of the circuit court in Marshall, and later commissioner of drafting for Calhoun County, Michigan.

After a European tour in 1864, he accepted (1865) a post as tutor in Latin at Harvard.

He became assistant professor in 1873, and was elected professor of Latin in 1883. Inspired by the work of Bopp and Schleicher in Germany, he studied Sanskrit; he was the first to teach that language and comparative philology at Plarvard. Through Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb (1860), by William W. Goodwin, he was led to a study of Latin syntax, which bore fruit in his Analysis of the Latin Subjunctive (1870).

This became the source of all subsequent treatments of the Latin moods, anticipating at many points Delbriick’s Conjunctiv und Optativ. Greenough’s criticism of this work in the North American Review and Delbriick’s appreciative answer constitute a pleasing incident in scholastic comity. In association with Joseph Henry Allen, he published Allen and Greenough’s Latin Grammar, by which, in that and later editions, the results of his original studies in syntax became accessible alike to scholars and schoolboys.

A talented writer of verse, he was also an excellent actor. For private theatricals he produced The Queen of Hearts and Blackbirds', a Latin version of G. M. Lane’s Lone Fish Ball; a dramatic adaptation of The Rose and the Ring; and an operetta, Old King Cole, with Frederic De Forest Allen. One of his best known translations is his rendering in Ciceronian Latin of Theodore Roosevelt’s The Strenuous Life. Toward the end of his life he issued, with G. L. Kittredge, Words and their Ways in English Use. He was devoted to the woods and streams of the Canadian seigniory which belonged to him and his elder brother.

Achievements

• Greenough assisted in the founding of Radcliffe College. His genius for teaching led him to the preparation of much-needed text-books. Alone or in collaboration with others he published editions of Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Livy, Ovid, and Sallust, all revealing his own research. The last edition of the Ccesar was largely based on a special exploration of the sites and routes of Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul. Greenough’s original monographs and reviews make a long list. He was the chief force which moved his classmates and other friends to found the Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. He had a share in planning the organization of advanced studies for women in Cambridge, thus helping to found the institution which later grew into Radcliffe College.

Works

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  • Allen and Greenough's Latin Grammar: For Schools and Colleges; Founded on Comparative Grammar (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Allen and Greenough's Latin Grammar: For Sch...)

  • Caesar's Gallic War: (Allen and Greenough's Edition)

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • A Manual of Instruction in Latin: On the Basis of Allen & Greenough's Latin Method

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Latin Composition: An Elementary Guide to Writing in Latin, Part 1

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Words and Their Ways in English Speech: By James Bradstreet Greenough ... and George Lyman Kittredge ...

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The Latin Play at Harvard (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Latin Play at Harvard In 1579 the trage...)

  • Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges: Founded on Comparative Grammar

    (This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 19...)

  • Words and Their Ways in English Speech

    (This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 19...)

  • An Elementary Guide to Writing in Latin

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

Views

Quotations: “Nothing steadies a man like a few sound prejudices. ”

Personality

In the classroom he was eager, vigorous, lucid; his illustrations were taken from all aspects of life, often with comic aptness; but the logical continuity of his exposition was never lost in his discursiveness.

A brilliant teacher, an entertaining companion, an alert inquirer, he embodied the full scope of the term philologist, as understood by the Greeks.

He was never contentious nor dogmatic, and his facile mind was capable of infinite patience in research and thinking.

Connections

On November 26, 1860 he married Mary Battey Ketchum, by whom he had two sons. She died on July 19, 1893, and on December 21, 1895, he married Harriet Sweetser Jenks.

Father:

Janies Greenough

Mother:

Catherine Greenough

Spouse:

Harriet Sweetser Jenks

Spouse:

Mary Battey Ketchum