A Study of the Anglo-Saxon Poem, the Harrowing of Hell: Grein's Höllenpahrt Christi; Dissertation for the Acquisition of the Degree of Doctor of ... the University of Leipzig (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from A Study of the Anglo-Saxon Poem, the Harrowi...)
Excerpt from A Study of the Anglo-Saxon Poem, the Harrowing of Hell: Grein's Höllenpahrt Christi; Dissertation for the Acquisition of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy From the University of Leipzig
Codex Exoniensis. A Collection of anglo-saxon Poetry, from 3. Ms. In the Library Of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, with an English Translation, by Benj. Thorpe. London, 1842.
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James Hampton Kirkland was an American educator. He served as the second chancellor of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee from 1893 to 1937.
Background
James Hampton Kirkland was born on September 09, 1859 in Spartanburg, South Carolina, United States, the youngest in a family of eight children of William Clarke and Virginia Lawson (Galluchat) Kirkland. His father, of Scottish descent, was a Methodist pastor; his mother was a daughter of Joseph Galluchat, whose family had fled from Paris during the Reign of Terror, settling eventually in Charleston. Kirkland's father died in 1864.
Education
Despite the economic hardships of the Reconstruction era Virginia Kirkland managed to put her youngest son James through Wofford College in Spartanburg. At Wofford, where he received the Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees (1877 and 1878), Kirkland encountered two younger professors who gave him an idea of what thorough and technical scholarship could mean: Charles Forster Smith in Greek and Latin and William Malone Baskervill in English. These two, in turn, recognized the superior intellect of young Kirkland, and on their recommendation he became in 1878 an instructor in classics at Wofford and in 1881 professor of Greek and German. After saving enough money, he spent three years in Germany (1883 - 1886), where he took the fundamental courses in classical, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic philology and received the Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of Leipzig in 1885, followed by a semester at the University of Berlin.
Career
In 1886 Kirkland was appointed professor of Latin at Vanderbilt University, where Smith and Baskervill were now faculty members. He was an able teacher and, until administrative duties claimed his full time, an active scholar; his edition of the Satires and Epistles of Horace was published in 1893. Meanwhile Vanderbilt was in the throes of educational reform--a faculty-led movement that resulted in higher entrance requirements, the organization of the curriculum of required and elective studies on a well-articulated four-year plan, and a general raising of academic standards. Kirkland immediately became involved in this movement, demonstrating such a grasp of educational problems that in 1893, when Chancellor Landon Cabell Garland resigned, he was elected to fill his place, although he was then only thirty-four years old.
Kirkland's forty-four-year administration at Vanderbilt may be divided into two well-marked periods. In the first, from 1893 to 1914, he was laying foundations, making the best use of every resource at his command, meeting difficulties that were almost insurmountable. The shrinkage of income from invested funds, the failure of the Southern Methodist Church (with which the university had long been affiliated) to render financial assistance, the unwillingness of the Vanderbilt family to continue in any large way the support of the university which Cornelius Vanderbilt had begun, a fire in 1905 that destroyed the main building with the library and apparatus of all kinds, the lack of any organized and sustained support by the alumni, the irresponsiveness of the Nashville community to his various appeals--all these might have driven a less courageous man to despair. Yet he made progress in cultivating all sources of possible cooperation, and he united the various professional schools under a central administration. Not only did the Methodist Church fail to give financial assistance, but it sought to assert control over the university.
In 1910 the Methodist General Conference elected three trustees to fill expired memberships and ordered a lawsuit to be brought to establish two facts: first, that the General Conference had a right to elect trustees; and second, that the bishops had a right to veto any action of the trustees. Kirkland contested this step, and in 1914 the Tennessee Supreme Court gave a decision denying both claims. With its freedom guaranteed, Vanderbilt now began a new era and the second period of Kirkland's administration.
Kirkland's long fight for academic standards and academic freedom had won widespread confidence, and in 1915-1916 he was able to raise $1, 000, 000 for the improvement of the college of arts and sciences, with William K. Vanderbilt and the General Education Board each contributing nearly a third. Meanwhile, on the basis of Abraham Flexner's report on the medical schools of America, Vanderbilt had been chosen by the General Education Board as the best institution in the South to build a first-rate medical school. The Board's initial appropriation (1919) of $4, 000, 000 was more than tripled by later grants. Fearing that Vanderbilt might become known primarily as a medical school, Kirkland in 1925 launched a successful campaign for $4, 000, 000 for the academic department, especially for the building of laboratories and the expansion of graduate work.
Kirkland's educational leadership extended beyond the confines of Vanderbilt. Early in his administration he realized that cooperation was needed among institutions of higher learning, and at his instigation in 1895 Vanderbilt invited some twenty other institutions to meet in Atlanta to form the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Southern States (later the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools), for the avowed purpose of adopting uniform entrance requirements, eliminating all sub-freshman classes, and requiring written entrance examinations. There were only six institutions that were then qualified to join such an association, but these, gradually augmented by others, brought about a real elevation of standards. In 1935 he was the main figure in the organization of the Southern University Conference, composed of the leading institutions of higher learning and devoted to the specific work of improving academic standards, graduate training, library facilities, and financial resources. Kirkland was also active in the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, serving as a trustee for twenty years (1917 - 37) and as chairman of the board in 1922 and 1923.
Kirkland might well have retired as chancellor of Vanderbilt in 1933, but at the earnest desire of the faculty and trustees he remained for four more years and ably guided the university through the financial depression.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
Membership
Kirkland served as secretary of Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Southern States for fourteen years (1895 - 1909), twice as president (1911-1912, 1920 - 1921), and as a member of the executive committee for forty years.
Personality
Kirkland was interested in social and political affairs. He was an advocate of the higher education of Negroes and assisted their institutions, and he was one of the leaders in the movement against child labor.
Connections
In 1895 Kirkland married Mary Henderson of Knoxville, Tennessee. They had one child, Elizabeth.