Messages Honor Copey on His 90th Birthday

Taine once said that a great editor is an artist whose medium is the work of other men. A great teacher--and certainly Copey is that--is an artist whose medium is much the same. The major difference is that the men with whom he works are young men in their formative years and the forming of their tastes, minds, and characters is his creative contribution.

Harvard can seldom have boasted a more colorful, witty, individual, or idiosyncratic professor than Copey. He was a performer who had the gift of making a classroom seem like a theatre. He had not read Dr. Johnson in vain. Many of his remarks cried for a Boswell.

But there was much more to his teaching than showmanship. There was the love of his subject without which no real teaching is possible. He had also the genius for communicating that love. This power to communicate and to ignite the interest and enthusiasm of student is, of course, the essence of all real teaching.

Copey knew good writing. He respected it. It was the passion of his life. Furthermore, student after student over many, many years left his classroom sharing both that passion and that respect. Though the title pages of books written by his former pupils may not mention his name, countless American writers could claim Copey as a collaborator.