Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/51

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Lane; Allen; Greenough 463 Ernst Curtius, and others, Lane received his degree at Gottin- gen in 1851 for a dissertation which has remained an authority upon the history of the city of Smyrna. In the same year he succeeded Beck as professor of Latin, and served until 1894, promoting the work of the graduate school of research, and offering courses more and more advanced. The soundness and the brilliancy of his teaching are still proverbial, and his publications, though few, are influential. Latin Pronunciation (1871) is said to have "worked a revolution in exterminating the English pronunciation of Latin in this country — a revolu- tion which even the weight and learning of a Munro could never even begin in England.'" Lane assisted Charlton T. Lewis in producing the large Harper's Latin Dictionary (Lewis and Short), but contributed more vitally to the smaller or School Lexicon, "by far the more original and trustworthy book." Chief of his works is the Latin Grammar, for which he had been collecting material since 1869, but which was just approaching completion when he died. Lane wore his learning lightly and was remarkable for his wit. At the Newport Town and Country Club, presided over by JuHa Ward Howe, he presented in Latin a burlesque Harvard Commencement pro- gramme ; upon an adventure of his own he composed the far- famed ballad of "The Lone Fish Ball." The brothers Joseph Henry AUen (1820-98) and William Francis Allen (1830-89) together edited Virgil (1880), and with James Bradstreet Greenough (1833-1901) produced the weU- known "Allen and Greenough" Latin texts, which included Caesar, Sallust, Ovid, and Cicero. J. H. Allen with Greenough wrote the Allen and Greenough Latin Grammar, published 1872, and an Elementary Latin Composition, published 1876. W. F. Allen contributed the historical and archaeological material to the Allen and Greenough series, and later edited Tacitus. Greenough in 1865 was appointed to a Latin tutorship at Harvard, and was professor of Latin from 1883 until the year of his death. He taught himself Sanskrit, became interested from the first in comparative grammar and general linguistics, ' It is said, however, that "Washington and Lee University was the first in- stitution in this country to adopt the Roman pronunciation of Latin" — it was introduced there in 1868 by Milton W. Humphreys, later (1887) professor of Greek at the University of Virginia.