Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Kingsley, James Luce

KINGSLEY, James Luce, educator, b. in Windham, Conn., 28 Aug., 1778; d. in New Haven, 31 Aug., 1852. He was educated at Williams and Yale, where he was graduated in 1799. He afterward taught for two years, first in Wethersfield and then in Windham, and in 1801 became a tutor in Yale. In 1805 he was appointed to the newly established professorship of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin in that institution. He was relieved of a part of his duties in 1831, when a separate professorship of Greek was established, and of another part in 1835, when a professorship of sacred literature was founded, but he continued to instruct in Latin until he resigned in 1851. As a writer of English, President Timothy Dwight called him the “American Addison”; and President Woolsey said of him, “I doubt if any American scholar has ever surpassed him in Latin style.” He published a discourse on the 200th anniversary of the founding of New Haven, 25 April, 1838; editions of Tacitus (Philadelphia), and Cicero, “De Oratore” (New York); and was the author of a history of Yale college in the “American Quarterly Register” (1835); a life of Ezra Stiles, president of Yale college, in Sparks's “American Biography.”