VIRCIXIA BIOGRAPHY
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of the Johns lloi)kins University, in his en-
larged edition of "(jildersleeve's 'Latin
Grammar," speaks of him as a "Latinist of
exact and penetrating scholarship." Pro-
fessor W. E. Peters, professor of Latin at
the University of Virginia, wrote of him in
1887: "He is one of the most reliable, exact
and accomplished Latinists in this country,"
while tributes have been paid to his accom-
plishments as scholar and teacher by Mat-
thew Arnold, Professor Crawford H. Toy
and Dr. Charles R. Lanman, of Harvard,
and by others no less distinguished in the
world of higher education.
In recognition of that scholarship and of his literary achievements. Captain McCabe has had conferred upon him the degree of Master of Arts by the College of William and Mary, in Virginia (1868), and by Wil- liams College, in Massachusetts (1885) ! that of Doctor of Letters by Yale University, in 1897, and that of Doctor of Laws by Wil- liam and Mary, in 1906. He is a member of the Alpha (William and Mary) Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and has long been President of the Virginia Historical Society (1903-1906; 1909-1915). He has been President of the Westmoreland Club of Richmond, which is one of the best known social organizations in the South ; President of the "Society of the Sons of the Revolu- tion in Virginia ;" President of the "Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Virginia ;" has been and still is First Vice-President of the "Descendants of the Signers of the Dec- laration of Independence," and President of the "Pegram Battalion Veteran Associa- tion;" was, from 1890 to the time of his re- moval from Petersburg to Richmond in 1895, Colonel Commanding the "A. P. Hill Camp of Confederate A'eterans" at the first named place ; is a member of the University Club of Xew York City, of the "American Philo- logical Society." "of the "Modern Language Association." of the "Head-Masters' Associa- tion of America, "a life-member of the "Asso- ciation for the Preservation of Virginia An- tiquities ;" State Commissioner and Director of "Jamestown. Exposition" (1905-1907) ; Historian-General of the "General Society of Sons of the Revolution" (1908-1911) ; mem- ber of the "Virginia Gettysburg Monument Commission" (1910-1914), and is on the executive committee of the "Southern His- torical Association."
Eor a number of years Captain McCabe
was an active and interested member of the
Board of Visitors of the University of Vir-
ginia (Vice-Rector, 1892-96), and, as such,
was the author of the degree system now
existing there, and it was in no small meas-
ure due to his zeal and interest as one of the
"Building Committee," after the destruction
of the university rotunda by fire in i8c;5,
that the University arose again from its
ashes with a finer and fairer beauty.
Captain McCabe has been a great traveler, and numbers among his many foreign friends some of the most cultivated and dis- tinguished savants, soldiers, and scholars of Europe. His personal charm as a raconteur, his eloquence as an orator and after-dinner speaker, and the distinction of his scholar- ship and literary acquirements have com- bined to make him a welcome guest in very many of "the stately homes of England," and there is perhaps no private person among their "kin beyond sea" who is better known to Englishmen "of light and leading" than is he. He is now (1914) engaged in conjunction with Captain Robert E. Lee in editing the unpublished private and domes- tic letters of the latter's illustrious father.
Captain McCabe possesses the finest and most unique private library in Virginia, and possibly in the South, and it illustrates in the great number of its autograph "presenta- tion copies" the high regard in which he is held by literary men the world over, for it includes the works of Tennyson, Thack- eray, Browning, Swinburne, Austin Dob- son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, [Matthew Ar- nold, James Bryce, Lady Ritchie ("Annie Thackeray"), Anthony Hope, William Black, Owen Wister, Anatole France. E. C. Sted- man, and of many others, hardly less well known, which have been given to him by their several authors. On his shelves also are to be found presentation copies of their books from such famous soldiers and mili- tary critics as Lord Roberts. Lord W'olseley, Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood. Sir Thomas Eraser, and Sir Frederick Maurice, all of whom Captain McCabe numbers among his personal friends. His collection of manu- scripts is scarcely less notable than his printed books, for it contains letters (nearly every one written to himself), poems and other writings of Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Tennyson. Oliver Wendell Holmes, W^illiam Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Edmund Pendleton, Presi-
