Various considerations concurred to produce this determination. Many of the circumstances attending the foundation of the College, and much of its subsequent history, the lapse of time had already involved in obscurity. Important public documents were lost. Some of the early records of the institution had been destroyed by fire. Those which remained were contained in two or three decaying volumes, the loss of which would render it impossible to trace consecutively the events of its early history. In 1809, the importance of such a work was perceived, and its immediate preparation was urged on the sons of the College, by Buckminster, as ripe a scholar, and a genius "touched to as fine issues," as any one who was ever graduated at Harvard College; on the ground that, if delayed, "it would soon become impracticable."[1] For nearly thirty years a vote of the Corporation, requesting the President to prepare a History of the University, had stood upon the records of that board, and the execution of such a work had long been an object of desire among the friends of the institution. The laborious zeal of the late Benjamin Peirce, Librarian of the seminary, had indeed eventuated in a publication of
- ↑ See an eloquent appeal to the Alumni of the University, in an address "on the Dangers and Duties of Men of Letters," pronounced before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, by J. S. Buckminster, and published in the "Monthly Anthology" for September, 1809.
