He trained to Truth's exact severity;
He was a Teacher: why be grieved for him
Whose living word still stimulates the air?
In endless file shall loving scholars come
The glow of his transmitted touch to share. 

--Lowell, Agassiz. 

PREFACE 

If it be asked why a teacher of English should be moved to issue this
book on Agassiz, my reply might be: 'Read the Introductory Note'-for
the answer is there.  But doubtless the primary reason is that I have
been taught, and I try to teach others, after a method in essence
identical with that employed by the great naturalist.  And I might go on
to show in some detail that a doctoral investigation in the humanities,
when the subject is well chosen, serves the same purpose in the
education of a student of language and literature as the independent,
intensive study of a living or a fossil animal, when prescribed by
Agassiz to a beginner in natural science.  But there is no need to