News
Amid Boston Overdose Crisis, a Pair of Harvard Students Are Bringing Narcan to the Red Line
News
At First Cambridge City Council Election Forum, Candidates Clash Over Building Emissions
News
Harvard’s Updated Sustainability Plan Garners Optimistic Responses from Student Climate Activists
News
‘Sunroof’ Singer Nicky Youre Lights Up Harvard Yard at Crimson Jam
News
‘The Architect of the Whole Plan’: Harvard Law Graduate Ken Chesebro’s Path to Jan. 6
Mr. Copeland began his final lecture last evening with a brief description of a country library in which he passed much time and read many books before coming to college. Among the volumes of this collection was an early edition of the Waverley novels. Sir Walter, said the speaker, is not to be judged by his heroes and heroines, who are for the most part filled with sawdust rather than blood. Nor are his large and moving pictures of history and famous personages of the past, picturesque and effective though they usually are, to be accounted his most important contribution to fiction. This is found in Edie Ochiltre, Meg Dods, Nantyswart, and the hundred and one characters of low life which Scott represented so truly and so completely. Another novelist in the goodly company of this country library was Dickens, in the first American edition-that edition of tall black volumes of double columns, fine print, and grotesque cuts-and Mr. Copeland deplored the fact that people in these days, remembering too much against Dickens for his unreal pathos, forget to read him for his real though fantastic humor and his vigorous, wonderful caricatures. Thackeray stood side by side with Scott and Dickens. "Pendennis," "The Newcombes" and "Vanity Fair" were in the tall black volumes with the double columns and Thackeray's own drawings. The lecturer recalled among these the scenes of Colonel Newcombe meeting Rumum Lal at his sister-in-law's party, Sir Pit Crawley kneeling at Becky's feet, and Becky herself reading in the nursery, while the young Crawleys fought and clawed each other upon the floor.
Mr. Copeland spoke in passing of a forgotten book entitled "The To-morrow of Death," from the French of one Louis Figuier, of Pope's translation of the Iliad, of translations from George Sand, Authors' Classical Dictionary, the novels of Henry Kingsley, and many another volume which had contributed to a complex yet vivid recollection of this distant library.
Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.