To James Madison from John Adams, 21 December 1814
From John Adams
Quincy December 21st 1814
Respected Sir
Knowing the immense weight of your cares, it gives me pain to interrupt you a moment. But when a young Scholar, Lawyer and amiable character asks an introduction from me I cannot refuse it.
Such is George Ticknor Esqr on his travels in his own Country first, and in foreign Countries afterward.1 He is ranked here, with our Everett & Buckminster, choice spirits, as we think them.2 With great esteem
John Adams
Letterbook copy (MHi: Adams Papers).
1. George Ticknor (1791–1871), an 1807 graduate of Dartmouth College, traveled to Europe in 1815 and spent two years studying at the University of Göttingen. Returning to the United States in 1819, he declined Thomas Jefferson’s offer of a faculty position at the University of Virginia in favor of a professorship of languages and belles lettres at Harvard College, where he taught until 1835. He published prolifically, his best-known work being his 1849 three-volume History of Spanish Literature ( 1:482, 483 n. 3).
2. For Edward Everett, see Adams to JM, 29 Oct. 1814, and n. 1. Joseph Stevens Buckminster (1784–1812), a Harvard College graduate, was ordained pastor of Boston’s Brattle Street Church in 1805. Already renowned as a biblical scholar and speaker, he died at age twenty-eight from an epileptic seizure. His sermons were collected and published in 1814 ( 1:6 n. 4).