North American Scholar

LINCOLN, John Larkin

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  • Date of Birth (YYYY-MM-DD): 1817-02-23
  • Born City: Boston
  • Born State/Country: MA
  • Parents: Ensign, a printer & publisher, & Sophia Oliver Larkin L.
  • Date of Death (YYYY-MM-DD): 1891-10-17
  • Death City: Providence
  • Death State/Country: RI
  • Married: Laura Eloise Pearce, 29 July 1846.
  • Education:

    A.B. Brown, 1836; Newton (MA) Theol. Inst., 1837-9; study at Halle & Berlin, 1841-3; travel & study in Europe, 1843-4.
  • Professional Experience:

    Tutor Lat. & Gk. Columbian Coll. (now George Washington U.), 1836-7; tutor Lat. & Gk. Brown, 1839-41; asst. prof, to prof. Lat. lang. & lit., 1844-ca. 1890; operated school for young women, Providence, RI, 1859-67.
  • Publications:

    Titus Livius. Selections from the First Five Books, together with the Twenty-First and Twenty-Second Books Entire (New York, 1847); The Works of Horace (7th ed., New York, 1860); "The Platonic Myths," Baptist Quarterly (1872) 333-58; "The Relation of Plato's Philosophy to Christian Truth," ibid. (1874) 209-22; Selections from the Poems of Ovid (New York, 1882).
  • Notes:

    John L. Lincoln was nearly an institution at Brown. He brought to his -teaching a diverse background exemplified in his German study: he studied theology and philology at Halle, church history and classics at Berlin, French literature at Geneva, and architecture in Rome. He combined his breadth of knowledge with precise scholarship which can still be sampled in his commentaries and in the essays collected in the memorial volume. He was devoted to Brown and was reported to have turned down offers of college presidencies to remain there and teach. So deeply loved was he that alumni and friends collected $100,000 to support Lincoln "whether teaching or not." So long was his career that the adage on campus was "Professor Lincoln will never grow old."
  • Sources:

    Francis G. Allinson, DAB 12:262; William E. Lincoln, In Memoriam: John Larkin Lincoln 1817-1891 (Boston & New York, 1894); NatCAB 8:30-1; Sandys 457; WhAmHS 385.
  • Author: Ward W. Briggs, Jr.