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Pennsylvania Magazine of HISTORY and BIOGRAPHY THE Pennsylvania Magazine OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY Quaker Humanist James Logan as a Classical Scholar HETHER on the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Delaware, intellectuals in the early eighteenth century Wtended to line up on one side or the other of the great battle of the books—the “quarrel of the ancients and moderns.” James Logan, Philadelphia's premier scholar, as well as her leading fur merchant and politician, stood with the defenders of the classics. "I confess, as I advance in years," he wrote in 1718, "the ancients still gain upon me, and the Greeks particularly. ."1 Not that he scorned contemporary literature or made light of modern science. On the contrary, he read the latest books of Addison and Steele, Pope and Gay, as soon as copies could reach America; and he not only appreciated the work of men like Newton, Huygens, and Linnaeus, but actually contributed to the progress of modern science through his own experiments and his patronage of young scientists like Benjamin Franklin, John Bartram, and Thomas Godfrey.2 Yet in 1 Logan to Josiah Martin, Oct. 26, 1718, Letter Book (1717-1731), 39, Logan Papers, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Unless otherwise specified, all Logan manuscripts here- after cited are in The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I have modernized spelling and capi- talization in all quotations from manuscripts. 2 For Logan's knowledge of contemporary literature, see Frederick B. Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia (Chapel Hill, N. C, 1948), 101-102; for his scientific work, see F. B. Tolles, "Philadelphia's First Scientist" in a forth- coming issue of Isis. 415 416 FREDERICK B. TOLLES October literature he always came back to the Greeks and Romans. As in science the bent of his mind was primarily mathematical, so in liter- ary matters his tastes and critical standards were essentially clas- sical.3 He was a belated Humanist, a distant spiritual cousin of Scaliger and Casaubon, Buchanan and Bentley. It is a little surprising, perhaps, to find North America's first pro- ductive classical scholar emerging from a Quaker background. The early Friends had set little store by classical learning, feeling with George Fox that it did not avail to "fit and qualify men to be minis- ters of Christ."4 Indeed some, like Thomas Lawson, the Quaker botanist, had attacked all "heathen learning," all studies based on "Lascivious Poems, Comedies, Tragedies, Frivolous Fables, Heathen Orations, Pagan Philosophy, Ethicks, Physicks, Metaphysick." Such learning, "being entertained in Christendom," Lawson had con- tended, only corrupted "Seriousness, Soundness, Solidity, and the Simplicity of Truth."5 But most Friends did not go so far as to reject all classical learning. A number of the early Quaker leaders in Eng- land and America—William Penn, Robert Barclay, George Keith, Francis Daniel Pastorius—had been men of liberal culture, at home in the languages and literatures of Greece and Rome. Such a man was James Logan's father, Patrick Logan, Master of Arts of Edinburgh University and teacher of the Friends school in Lurgan, Ireland. Young James learned "Latin, Greek, and some Hebrew" from his father before he was thirteen, and continued his studies in the Friends school at Bristol, England, where Patrick Logan served briefly in the early 1690's as Latin master. But beyond the rudiments he was largely self-educated. "Though I had my course of Humanity, as it is called,6 in Ireland from my father," he wrote, "I can safely say he never gave me the least instruction what- soever more than he gave to the other scholars."7 In 1693, when he 3 I should here acknowledge my indebtedness to an unpublished paper on Logan as a classi- cist by E. Gordon Alderfer, which confirmed my own convictions about Logan's qualities of mind. 4 John L. Nickalls, ed., The Journal of George Fox (Cambridge, 1952), 7. 5 A Mite into the Treasury (London, 1680), 41, 42. 6 "Learning or literature concerned with human culture . esp. the study of the ancient Latin and Greek classics. (Still used in the Scottish Universities, in the sense of the Latin language and literature.)" New English Dictionary. 7 Autobiographical sketch in Logan Papers, II, 103. Logan probably learned more Latin than Greek from his father, if one can judge from the contents of Patrick Logan's library. A 1955 JAMES LOGAN, QUAKER HUMANIST 417 was not yet nineteen, he succeeded his father in Bristol as Latin master. While he taught the children of the Quaker burghers he con- tinued his own education, building up a library of seven or eight hundred volumes and laying the foundation of what was to become "the most agreeable amusement of [his] life ... an acquaintance with ancient authors/'8 After a few years, tiring of a pedagogue's routine, he longed for a more exciting, more gainful career. He sold his library in Dublin, made a false start in trade, and finally, in 1699, agreed to go to the New World as secretary to William Penn, the proprietor of Pennsyl- vania. During the next ten years he had little time to pursue classical studies. As provincial secretary, proprietary agent, commissioner of property, and councilor, he found his hours and days crowded with duties as multifarious as they were exhausting.9 But a visit to Eng- land in 1710-1711 revived his zest for learning. He started buying books again—books of science, philosophy, theology, history, con- temporary literature—but always the Greek and Roman classics. From his return to Philadelphia in 1712 to the end of his long life, nearly forty years later, he never ceased adding to his library, never ceased reading and studying the classics. His leisure for study was limited, for in that period he came to dominate Pennsylvania's fur trade, her politics, and her Indian diplomacy; he was for seven years the province's chief justice and, for a brief but eventful term, her acting governor. But no matter how deeply involved he was in the active life, his heart was always with his books, his instincts always those of a scholar. "It may appear strange to thee, perhaps," he wrote in 1721 to a correspondent in Hamburg from whom he had ordered some classical texts, "to find an American bearskin merchant troubling himself with such books, but they have been my delight manuscript catalogue of the books he owned in 1688 is in the Loganian Library at the Library Company of Philadelphia (bound with a copy of Robert Clavel's General Catalogue of Books Printed in England . [London, 1675]). It lists one hundred sixty "Latin books," but only twenty-three "Greek books," including a high proportion of lexicons and grammars. I am in- debted to Mr. Edwin Wolf 2nd for calling this to my attention and for other favors. 8 Logan to Timothy Forbes, Jan. 3, 1725/6, Letter Books, III, 49; Logan to Edward Hacket, July 31, 1720, ibid., II, 223. 9 See Albright G. Zimmerman, "James Logan, Proprietary Agent," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (PMHB), LXXVIII (1954), 143-176, for a detailed account of his work as William Penn's steward. There is no adequate biography of Logan in print. 418 FREDERICK B. TOLLES October and . will, I believe, continue my best entertainment in my ad- vancing years." And to another correspondent in Amsterdam: "I confess a book has from my infancy been my diversion, and serves me agreeably to spend my vacant hours. This humor has led me to furnish myself with most of the ancient authors, Greek and Latin, yet I still want some or better editions than those I have."10 It was no idle boast when, near the end of his life, he described his library as containing "above one hundred volumes of authors, in folio, all in Greek . [and] all the Roman classics, without excep- tion."11 The titles are all listed in the Catalogus bibltothecae J£j)gan- ianae of 1760 and the books themselves—the tall folios, the massive quartos, the octavos and smaller volumes—stand in impressive array on their shelves in the Library Company of Philadelphia, newly re- habilitated, catalogued, and arranged as befits the greatest of all American colonial libraries. No superficial description or analysis, no mere sampling of authors, titles, and editions, no comparisons with other early Ameri- can book collections can do more than suggest the amazing richness of Logan's classical library. According to my calculations,12 it con- tained a hundred and thirty-one titles in Greek literature (including poets, dramatists, orators, historians, philosophers, and scientists), one hundred and thirty-six in Roman literature, and thirty-three collections or anthologies, a total of three hundred classical titles. These figures include only works in the original tongues. In addi- tion, Logan had twenty-three translations into English, French, Italian, or German. He had, moreover, no less than a hundred and 10 Logan to Frederick Schomaker, Nov. 14, 1721, Letter Book (1717-1731), 215; Logan to Theodorus Hodson, Dec. 12, 1726, ibid., 451. 11 This description appears in varying language in his will (see First Supplement to the Catalogue of Books Belonging to the Loganian Library [Philadelphia, 1867], x); in a letter to Peter Collinson, July 1, 1749 (Jared Sparks, ed., Works of Benjamin Franklin [Boston, 1840], VII, 39 [note]); and in Franklin's Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1749), 8-9 (note). 12 No two people in analyzing a library will count in precisely the same fashion, a fact which makes meaningful comparisons all but impossible.
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