when he discoursed so fitly and
with such maturity on "Poetry--an instinctive philosophy," those know
best who were most familiar with his college life. One testimony to
this is so full and generous, and of such weighty authority, that I
cannot forbear to give it. It is from the accomplished scholar who
filled the chair of Greek for many years before Professor Putnam.[46]

[46] Professor Alpheus Crosby.

"I could not hope," he says, "to express, by any words at my command,
the peculiar charm which Professor Putnam's scholarship and character
had for me. I never heard him recite without being impressed with the
wonderful perfection of his scholarship. His translation was so
faultlessly accurate, and yet in such exquisite taste, his analysis
and parsing were so philosophical and minutely exact, and his
information upon illustrative points of history, biography,
antiquities, and literature, was so full and ready, that I listened
with admiration, and to become myself a learner. How often I had the
feeling that we ought to change places I and when I had decided to
resign my situation in the college, my mind immediately turned to him
as a successor, assured that the college would be most fortunate if it
could secure his services." It need not be said how fully Professor
Putnam reciprocated this esteem, nor what value he attached to the
exact and thorough discipline of his instructor.

Nor was it in the department of languages alone that he was
distinguished, but almost equally in every other, as much in those
studies which demand the independent and original action of the mind
as those which mainly require close attention, and the faculty of
acquisition. His modesty was then, as always, so marked, and his ideal
of excellence so high, that it required some sense of duty to bring
his powers to a public test. He never thrust himself into a place of
responsibility, or sought distinction for distinction's sake.

He had in college the desire and purpose which he always retained,--to
complete himself in every art and every manly exercise. Hence his
study of music, not only as a recreation, but as a discipline; not
merely to gratify the ear, though exquisitely fond of the art, and
receiving from it a refined and exalted pleasure, but also that he
might become acquainted with the thoughts and conceptions of men great
in musical genius. The Handel Society, which, from the constant
changes of its members, must necessarily flu