Education: At Harvard

Murray In. Harvard University has named the first incumbent of its Charles Eliot Norton chair of poetry, established last year by Alumnus C. C. Stillman of Manhattan. The stipulation was that “poetry” should be interpreted to mean poetic expression in music and the fine arts as well as in language; that the incumbent should be “of high distinction and preferably of international reputation”; that he should lecture on cultural subjects of his own choosing; and that the latchstring of his study door should be out to students that may come to him for tutoring or informal conversation. It much resembles the fellowship in creative arts instituted five years ago at the University of Michigan and filled successively by Poets Robert Frost and Robert Bridges, and at present by Author Jesse Lynch Williams (TIME, Aug. 24).

Harvard’s first choice for her chair is George Gilbert Aime Murray, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University, classicist and teacher renowned to the farthest reaches of the world of letters. Though appointed for a full year, he will be in residence at Harvard only from the opening of college next autumn until Christmas, lecturing eight or nine times.

Dr. Murray visited the U. S. in 1916 in the interest of the Allied cause. He was a staunch supporter of Viscount Grey and later of the League. He sought, unsuccessfully, to enter Parliament in 1918. Welsh by birth, he is possessed not only of a scholar’s brain and great conversational wit, but of a “sixth sense,” an uncanny proficiency at thought reading, which he indulges with amusement rather than exercises seriously. Cases are cited (TIME, Feb. 23, 1925. SCIENCE) of his entertaining drawing rooms by withdrawing while a “thought” was whispered about in the company. Lord Balfour once whispered: “I am thinking of Robert Walpole talking Latin to George I.” Professor Murray was recalled and he at once said: “Something 18th Century,” upon entering the room. “I don’t think I shall get it,” he continued, taking Lord Balfour’s hand. “Dr. Johnson met George III in the King’s library; but I am sure he is talking Latin to him, which he would not do. I don’t think I shall get it right . . . wait … I have nearly got it. Eighteenth Century; somebody talking Latin to a king.”

Another time the agent thought of a girl’s line in Tchekov’s play, The Cherry Orchard: “When I was in Paris, I went up in a balloon.”

Professor Murray’s progress was: “Russian . . . out of a book. . . . De dum dum, de dum dum . . . up in a balloon . . . when I was in dum dum I went up in a balloon. When I was in Paris I went up in a balloon.”

Whether Harvard will be so fortunate as to see Professor Murray demonstrate his “gift,” remains to be seen. But it will not hear him vaunt it or seek to rival the Boston medium “Margery,” whose alleged powers were investigated two years ago by Harvard scientists with non-unanimous result and arguments that flared up again last week. Professor Murray makes no claim upon the supernatural, believing his telepathic power to be some kind of subconscious sense-perception.

Hart Out. Along with its good news, Harvard had to announce some bad. Albert Bushnell Hart, Ph. D., Eaton professor of government since 1910 and a Harvard faculty member since 1883, terminated his long teaching career by resigning to devote his age (he is 71) to writing and editing. Of this sort of thing he has already done a lot, being’ one of the most celebrated of U. S. historians, past or present. His most extensive single editorial production was The American Nation in 28 volumes. He has written on a score of phases of U. S. history, from The Formation of the Union to A Handbook of the War (with A. 0. Lovejoy) has edited (beside the 28 volumes mentioned) over a score of volumes of historical sourcebooks, histories, lives of statesmen and the Macmillan Co.’s exhaustive American Year Book (with W. M. Schuyler). He will now bend his energies upon South America, Australia and Theodore Roosevelt. In June, Harvard will bid him godspeed, call him “emeritus.”