TRIBUTE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY TO THE MEMORY OF THE HON. JAMES SAYAGE, LL.D. TRIBUTE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY TO THE MEMORY OF THEIR Eate Senior ificinljEr nnli Jormcr |3rcsiti£nt, THE HON. JAMES SAYAGE, LL.D., March 13, 1873. D>®iC BOSTON: PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 1873. ' ^(fi TRIBUTE. At a stated meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, on the evening of the 13th of March, 1873, at the house of their associate, H. M. Mason, Esq. ; the President, the lion. Robert C. Winthrop, spoke as follows : — Gentlemen of the Massachusetts Historical Society: We have so recently been called to attend the funeral of our late venerable Senior Member and former President, the Hon. James Savage, that it is only as a matter for record that his death, on Saturday, the 8th inst., requires any formal announce- ment to the Society this evening. I need hardly say that we cannot consider it a subject for the expression of sorrow. Even those nearest and dearest to him, who have so tenderly watched over him in his infirmities, during the last eight or nine years, must have abundant consolation for their bereave- ment. We may all, indeed, have found cause for satisfaction and gratitude, as we learned that, in the good providence of God, our aged friend was at length happily released from the ' burdens of the flesh, and of the spirit, which have weighed upon him so heavily since he had come to fourscore years. Yet none of us, I am sure, can see his name disappearing at last from the very top of our living roll, altogether without emotion ; and, certainly, not without pausing to pay a more than common tribute of respect and affection to his memory. Quite apart from all the personal qualities and associations ■which had endeared him to us so warmly, we cannot forget that the removal of his name from our roll has sundered the last link between our Society of this generation and that little company of Historical Students and lovers of antiquity in which it originated more than eighty years ago. We have, it is true, still in our ranks, and we rejoice to remember that it is so, more than one of those who have seen as many years of human life as our departed friend. But there is no one now left, among our existing members, whose relation to our Society commenced within a quarter of a century of the date of his election ; no one, who witnessed the small Ijeginnings of our work, or who was associated, as he was, with any of those by whom that work was originally organized. Mr. Savage was chosen a member of this Society on the 28th of January, 1813. He had thus been a member for a little more than sixty years, — a longer term than any on our records, as I believe, except that of the late venerable Josiah Quincy, who had completed his sixty-eighth year of continu- ous membership, when he died, in 1864, at ninety-two years of age. When Mr. Savage was elected. Dr. Jeremy Belknap, our honored founder ; Governor Sullivan, our first President ; the Rev. Dr. Thacher, and the Hon. George Richards Minot, were, indeed, no more. But the Rev. Dr. Eliot, the Rev. Dr. Freeman, the Hon. William Tudor, Thomas Wallcut, Esq., the Hon. James Winthrop, and the Hon. William Baylies, — six of our Decemvirs, — six of the ten whose election dates back to the 24th of January, 1791, and who on that day met to- gether and organized the Society, — were still living and active members. With them, when Mr. Savage was elected, were associated, among others. Governor Gore, then the President of the Society ; Judge Davis, and Lieutenant-Governor Win- throp, who succeeded him in that office ; Dr. Manasseh Cutler, who, twenty years before, had led the way of the pioneer emi- grants to the Ohio River ; Dr. Thaddeus Mason Harris, Dr. Prince and Dr. Bentley, of Salem ; Dr. Homer, of Newton ; Dr. Morse, the Geographer; Dr. Abiel Holmes, the Annalist; John xVdams, Caleb Strong, Alden Bradford, Professors Peck and McKean, President Kirkland, and Dr. Pierce, — besides Josiah Quincy and John Qnincy Adams, whose membership, — to a few of us, at least, — is something more than a tra- dition. Mr. Savage was but twenty-nine years of age, when he be- came associated with these men in our ranks ; and as no pro- fessional or public duties ever took him far away from his native place, for any considerable length of time, his services to our Society, and his attendance at its meetings, were in the way of being, and unquestionably were, more prolonged, con- tinuous, and constant, than those of any other member, from its foundation. Accordingly, we find him Librarian, from 1814 to 1818 ; a member of the Publishing Committee of five several volumes of our Collections, in 1815, 1816, 1819, 1823, and 1825 ; Treasurer from 1820 to 1839 ; a member of the Standing Committee from 1818 to 1820, and from 1835 to 1811 ; and the President of the Society from 1811 to 1855. Having then passed the terra of threescore years and ten, he claimed, as he certainly had a right to claim, an honorable dismission from the routine of official duty. It seems but yesterday, that I succeeded him in this chair, at the close of our Annual Meeting, on the 12th of April, 1855, when, on motion of our late accomplished associate, Mr. Ticknor, it was unanimously resolved, " That the members of this Society, — mindful of the excellent services which, for fourteen years, the Hon. James Savage has rendered as its President, and of liis peculiar fitness for that place, not only on all other grounds, but from his extraordinarily accurate knowledge of whatever relates to the early history of New England, — do now express their great regret at his resigna- tion, and offer him their thanks for his long-tried and uniform fidelity to their interests." It seems but yesterday, that, in taking the seat which he had so held and honored, I was speaking of that fulness of information, that richness of rem- iniscence, that raciness of remark and repartee, which had so often given the highest relish to our monthly meetings, which was then to be lost to the chair ; — and which is now lost to us for ever. Eighteen years have since passed away, during the first half of which he continued to be one of our most punctual and assiduous members, ever entering our rooms with that eager, animated, joyous look, which betokened that he felt as much pleasure as he imparted. Since then, for us, all has been silence. Was I not right, Gentlemen, in suggesting that, while his name remained at the head of our roll, even though it were only a name, or even but the shadow of a name, we seemed to have a living tie to the old traditions, the old worthies, and the old workers and organizers, of our Society, which is now finally sundered ? Certainly, his death at this moment, — just as we are about entering on the occupation of our reconstructed Halls, — seems to conspire most impressively with that event, in marking still a new departure for our Society, still another era in its history, when the responsi- bilities for its future usefulness and honor are to be unshared with even one of those who had been witnesses, or partakers in any way, of its early experiences and its narrower fortunes. Certainly, it seems to call upon us, — as we enter on that era, with nothing left of the Founders and their early associates and followers except their inspiring memory and example, — for a warmer interest in the welfare of the Institution which they so loved and honored, and for a deeper devotion to the work for which they estal)lishcd it. The most interesting and valuable contributions, which were made by Mr. Savage to our own published volumes, were un- doubteilly his " Gleanings for New England History," pre- pared by him immediately on his return from a summer visit to England in 1842, and which were followed by '' More," and " More Gleanings," not long afterwards. But the great historical laljors of his life, his two Editions and Annotations of " Winthrop's History of New England from 1630 to 1619," and his wonderful Genealogical Dictionary of New England, were hardly less in our service than if they had formed a part of our own Collections. If a new edition of the Winthrop, certainly, should ever be demanded, it might well be placed side by side with the Bradford, and under the care of the same hand, among the publications of this Society, and it would be a fit monument to the memory of our departed friend. I am aware, however. Gentlemen, that we are all thinking at this moment much more of the man we have lost, than of his services to our Society, or of his work in the cause of New England History, which can never be lost. He comes back to many of us, to-night, as he was twenty years ago, in the old Pilgrim Chair, before the old Provincial Desk, in the old dusty rooms of our Society, — before the name of Thomas Dowse had been breathed among us ; or, certainly, before his benefactions, by the marvellous alchemy of good George Livermore, had transmuted all that belonged to us into something more pre- cious than gold. He was at that day, — and with those surroundings, -.- the perfect impersonation of an Antiquary, in form and feature, in speech and in spirit. He had few or none of the smoothnesses and roundnesses of conventional life ; and though he did not aftect or cultivate singularity, he by no means scorned that part of his nature which rendered him singular. He would be called, in common parlance, — and he has often been called, — a man of strong and oven intense prejudices. Yet I think he never prejudged any thing or anybody. It was only when he had known any person in society, or had studied any person 8 or any passage in history, that he conceived opinions which nothing could change, and which ching to him, and he to them, ever afterwards. His impulsive and even explosive utterances of such opinions were never to be forgotten by those who wit- nessed them. Still less could any one ever forget his exuberant exultations, when his searches and researches were rewarded, by verifying some disputed date, or discovering some historical fact, or by lighting upon some lost historical manuscript. He rejoiced, as the Psalmist describes it, " as one that findeth great spoil." His " Eureka " had all the elation and ecstasy of that of the old philosopher of Syracuse. He was eminently a character, even for a Tale or a Drama. His marked peculiarities would have given a vivid interest to any story, and his racy utterances would have enlivened any dialogue. If he had chanced to have been one of the neigh- bors of Sir Walter Scott, he could never have escaped the fate, let me rather say the felicity, which befell so many of those neighbors, of figuring in one of the Waverley Novels. I remember that Thackeray once passed an evening with him at my own house, at a meeting of the old Wednesday Night Club of 1770, of which he was so long a member. When I met Thackeray afterwards, his immediate remark was, " I want to see that quaint, charming, old Mr. Savage again." In a conversation with Walter Savage Landor, then eighty years old, at his own villa in Florence, in 1860, he greeted me by saying, " I know all about your family and the old Founder of New England ; " and then he forthwith went on to speak of the Savage family, whose name he bore, including the old Earl of Rivers and our James Savage, of Boston, whose edition of Winthrop he had evidently seen. There were occasional scintillations and coruscations exhibited in common by Landor himself and by our departed friend, which miglit have indi- cated an affinity or consanguinity, even after the genealogists had failed to trace them. 9 If there was anybody wliom the late Ijord Braybrooke, the editor of Pepys, or Dr. Bliss, the editor of Wood's Athenae Oxonienses, or Joseph Eomilly, the late Registrar of old Cam- bridge, or Joseph Hunter, the Antiquary par excellence of Her Majesty's Record Office, remembered and valuefl in America, it was Mr. Savage. He had corresponded with them all, and had known them all personally, while he was visiting Eng- land. To come nearer home, I may not forget that I rarely if ever met, after a longer or a shorter a!)senco, my late lamented friend, John P. Kennedy, of Baltimore, who had as keen a relish and as quick an appreciation of wit and of wisdom as Thackeray or even Sydney Smith, that it was not his second exclamation, if not his first, " How is our old friend Savage ? Is he as earnest, and humorous, and funny as ever ? " I may be pardoned for remembering, too, that it was from a member of this Society, elected eight years after him, but who died in early manhood, forty years before him, who sympathized with him in all his pursuits, and aided him in many of his researches and labors, and was nnto him for many years almost as a brother, as he was to myself an own brother, — the late James Bowdoin,* — that I first learned to a[)preciate the sterling qualities of our friend's mind and character ; his minute exactness ; his untiring perseverance ; his inexhausti- ble patience of research ; his mingled impetuosity and tender- ness ; his sympathy with the sufferings of others, and his brave endurance of his own. But I must not forget how many there are around me who have known him longer and better than myself, and who will more than supply any deficiencies of my own tribute. I omit, therefore, all notice of the public trusts in the City and in the State, and as a member of the Constitutional Convention of * The second son of the hite Lieutenant-Governor Winthrop, who died in his thirty- ninth J'ear, on the 6th of March, 1833, and of whom a brief Memoir is contained in Vol. IX., 3d Series, of our Collections. 2 10 1820, which he discharged so well ; all notice of the grand work he did for the conimnnity in organizing and presiding over that Provident Institution for Savings, where, for a few years, I was monthly at his side ; all notice, too, of the Chris- tian resignation and bravery with which he bore domestic trials, which might have crushed a feebler spirit. Let me only say, in conclusion, that the death of his only son in the late Civil "War, — a son of the same name with himself, and who had given every promise of transmitting that name with increased distinction to future generations, — has doubled the obligation which rests upon us, to guard that name from being lost to the records either of patient and successful historic research, or of patriotic and heroic self-sacrifice.* Mr. Edmund Quincy, from the Standing Committee, then offered the following resolutions : — Eesolved, That the Massachusetts Historical Society, in recording the death of their oldest member and former President, the Hon. James Savage, wouhl add the expression of their grateful sense of his long services as a member and officer of the Society, and of the invalu- able contributions to the History of New England, and especially of Massachusetts, which are due to his indomitable industry and con- scientious accuracy. Resolved, That the family of Mr. Savage may be assured that there are none of the inhabitants of this city where his life was passed that can have a more sincere respect and admiration for his character and conduct both in public and private life, or a more warmly cherished recollection of their personal intercourse with him, than the members of this Society. Resolved, That the President be requested to appoint one of our associates to prepare a Memoir of Mr. Savage for the Proceedings of the Society. * Lieutenant-Colonel James Savage, Jr., died at Charlottesville, Virginia, Oct. 22, 18G2, of wounds received at the battle of Cedar Mountain. He was born April 21, ]832, and graduated at Harvard University with the class of 1854. An interesting Memoir of him may be found in the first volume of " Harvard Memorial Biographies." 11 Mr. Charles Deane then said : — Nothing surely need be added, Mr. President, to complete your own full and just tribute to our late Senior Member ; yet I cannot resist the opportunity of saying a few words, for the memories which I cherish of Mr. Savage are most pleasant. I shall never forget how cordially he welcomed me when a young man, nearly twenty-five years ago, into this Society, then limited to sixty members. There were fifty-eight names upon the Resident Roll at that time, only eighteen of which now remain. And what a galaxy of brilliant names they were, of which so many have been stricken off" by death ! Memory recalls the venerable form of Quincy, so long our Senior Member, and of Everett, and Gray, and Prescott, and Webster, and Sparks, and Ticknor, and Choate, and Froth- ingham, and Shaw, and Young, and others I need not enume- rate. The name of Savage is now added to the list of the dead. Mr. Savage will be remembered as the New England Anti- quary by way of eminence. The late Joseph Hunter, as I remember, somewhere draws a distinction — perhaps a fanciful one — between the Antiquary and the Historian. It belongs to the antiquary, he says, to gather up the small facts of history, the fragments of truth, to be a gleaner in the liy-ways of the past. Mr. Savage had a peculiar facility for all this. With a persistency and an enthusiasm I never saw surpassed, he would pursue the inquiry into the smallest incidents of history. They were not small to him. He saw that they had a place, and had important relations to other facts. But Mr. Savage was not merely an antiquary. Like his friend Mr. Hunter, he had many of the higher qualities of an historian. He saw the relations of historical facts to each other, and could trace the principle or law by which nations or communities rise or decay, and opinions change from age to age. The history of New England was all written out on the 12 tablets of his memory, if he had never written it elsewhere. But his annotations to Winthrop's History are a marvellous embodiment of facts and opinions, which show how thoroughly he understood the subject that he undertook to illustrate. Gibbon somewhere says of the ecclesiastical historian Til- lemont, that his wonderful accuracy almost assumes the character of Genius. Mr, Savage's love of accuracy was never excelled. He always meant to be right ; he always felt that he was right ; and perhaps few had attained to a higher degree of exactness in investigations kindred to his own. He took nothing upon trust. He felt that here a missing link, as in the chain of circumstantial evidence in weaving its meshes round the criminal, was fatal to the proof. The discovery of the manuscript of Governor Winthrop's 3d volume of the History of New England, in 1816, in the tower of the Old South Church, was most providential, when we consider into whose hands it was committed, to copy and to illustrate. Mr. Savage was then a young man, but he had been elected a member of this Society three years before. He immediately set about the task of copying and annotating the volume, but he soon determined to prepare a new edition of the whole work, including the two earlier volumes, published at Hartford, in 1790, of which the manuscripts were in the cabinet of this Society. This edition, owing to various cir- cumstances, did not appear till 1825-26. Its publication at that time formed a new era in the history of annotation of our New England chronicles. No other work, it is true, extant among us, relating to our annals, was of equal value ; but such as had been published were not annotated. Hubbard's History had been issued by the Society as ])arts of the Collections, but without notes or illustrations. Judge Davis's edition of Morton's Memorial, copied from the first printed edition of 1669, with full notes by the editor, had been long in course of preparation, and soon followed this edition of Winthrop. In turning over Mr. Savage's numerous letters to me, 13 written some fifteen or twenty years ago, wlien he was en- gaged on his last great work, his Genealogical Dictionary of New England, — a monument of labor and patience, — I am reminded of the many curious questions in history, genealogy, and bibliography which he was so fond of discussing. There were some points on which we differed, — if I may be pardoned for saying that I ever ventured to differ from him on any sub- ject, — and long discussions, harmless certainly, if not always convincing, sometimes ensued. As an illustration of the thoroughness with which Mr. Savage pursued his investigations, I may be permitted to refer to one instance which came under my own observation. There had been, as is well known, a tradition for many years in the Rogers family in New England, among those descended from the Rev. Nathaniel Rogers of Ipswich, that he was a grandson of the proto-martyr of Queen Mary's reign. There was a link wanting in the chain of evi- dence. Mr. Savage had no faith in the tradition, which could not be traced beyond the time of Hutchinson. It was, however, warmly cherished by descendants of the Ipswich family ; and among the tangible pieces of evidence produced, it was stated that a branch of the family, in a neighboring town, had a copy of the Bible which, according to invariable tradition, once belonged to the martyr himself, — indeed, it was said to be the identical copy which he carried with him to the stake, and that it bore upon its leaves the marks of fire. This was thought to be an overwhelming piece of testimony to the fact that the owners of that Bible were lineal descendants of the martyr. Unfortunately, like most of the ancient Bibles, the title-page which bore the date was gone. This only whetted Mr. Savage's determination tlie more to ascertain when that book was printed. It bore the monogram of Cawood, a well-known London printer of the 16th century. So a leaf of this memorable scorched relic was procured, and through the intervention of our late member, Mr. Livermore, was sent to Mr. George Offor, an eminent biblical bibliographer, of London, 14 who diligently compared it with all the known editions of Cawood ; and he proved beyond a qnestion that the volume was a copy of the edition of 1561, — six years after the martyr^ death. Mr. Savage's well-known tastes and pursuits, and marked qualities of mind, drew around him a large number of attached friends and admirers. Among those whom I have named as members here when I was first elected an associate, was the Rev. Alexander Young, D.D., a thorough antiquary and an exact scholar. He had a great admiration for Mr. Savage, and of every thing he said and did. He once told me that he was accustomed to read over and over again the notes to Winthrop's History, apart from the text. The information he there gleaned, expressed in the quaint and inverted style of the editor, gave him the highest satisfaction and enjoyment ; and he always gathered up his odd sayings of wit and wisdom as they fell from his lips, seated, as President of this Society, in the old Governor Winslow chair, and regretted that there was no Boswell to collect and preserve these Sava^i/cana in a perma- nent form. With the kindliest nature and the most delicate sensibilities, Mr. Savage also would have realized Dr. Johnson's idea of a " good hater." He hated Cotton Mather with a deadly hatred. The late Richard Biddle, the author of the Life of Sebastian Cabot, whom he made his hero, relentlessly pursued the memory of Richard Hakluyt, the eminent historical collector, who lived two centuries and a half before him, because he thought that historian had furnished evidence unfairly that John Cabot, the father, and not Sebastian, the son, discovered North America. One would almost as soon think of getting an