Page:The Whitney Memorial Meeting.djvu/51

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PROFESSOR WHITNEY'S INFLUENCE

ON

CLASSICAL PHILOLOGISTS.

By PROFESSOR BERNADOTTE PERRIN,

Of Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

IT was, of course, natural that those pupils of Professor Whitney who made Oriental studies, and especially Indian literature and antiquities, their chief pursuit, should come into the closest relations with him, and receive from him the strongest influences and deepest impressions. They are also best qualified, now that the master is gone, to testify of his powers and achievements as a master. But the larger proportion of men who took Professor Whitney's graduate courses, especially after 1871, were fitting themselves for careers as teachers either of the modern or of the classical languages and literatures. To adopt the terminology of our schools, these men took Professor Whitney's courses as minor courses. Nevertheless, they too were profoundly impressed by Professor Whitney's personality and work. Most of them are now occupying honorable positions in our academic life. They do not hand on the special traditions of the school of Indian studies which Professor Whitney founded for this country, but they are carrying into their own fields of investiga-