(1904-10) was an editorial writer under Mr. Scott. Chapman credited the editor's vigorous English style to his Latin reading (5). While in Pacific University he had acquired a mastery of Latin and a fair command of Greek, and his library was filled with Latin originals.
He wrote (said Dr. Chapman, himself a master of style) with all the precision of the classical authors and often with more than their incisiveness. His Latin taught him to shun that diffusive wordiness which is the bane of so much common writing and gave him the model for those condensed and forceful sentences which never failed to go straight to the mark, and pierce it when they struck.
In Dr. Chapman's opinion Mr. Scott's classical studies sharpened up a mind "admirably adapted" to their use.
Of Mr. Scott's wide reading, all his contemporaries have spoken. Dr. Chapman (6) notes Gibbon, modern Egyptologists, Milton, Hooker, Locke, Carlyle, Bishop Berkeley, William James, but above all, Shakespeare and the Bible. His knowledge of the Bible was constantly shown in his writings, to which the scriptures contributed more than any other source, even the classics. Current best-sellers had no place in his reading, but he did read the best novels. Of poetry he was especially fond, and his memory was a treasurehouse of poetical quotations. Paradise Lost, Burns, Goethe's Faust, Tennyson he could quote interminably.
His library was one of the largest in the West. His marvelous memory (Chapman says, indeed, "He seldom forgot a passage") was buttressed by his great store of books in his own library, ready at hand. "To one who understands and loves books Mr. Scott's library gives a better account of his life and thought than any biographer could write," Dr. Chapman concludes.
Others have paid similar tribute to Mr. Scott's writing strength, drawn from a developing facility in written expression, the rugged individuality of the pioneer applied to his thinking, and a constantly increasing stock of information and ideas, built up through study on the job and off. As a foundation for the discussion of his editorial career, let us here reproduce the outline of his life given in the June, 1913, edition of the Oregon Historical Quarterly, then edited by Professor F. G. Young of the University of Oregon:
Born near Peoria, Illinois, February 1, 1838, son of John Tucker Scott and Anne Roelofson Scott.
Crossed the plains to Oregon, arriving in Oregon City, October 2, 1852.
Went to Puget Sound, spring of 1854, working there in the woods.
