HILLARD

Holograph poem by the Harvard-educated lawyer George Stillman Hillard, Attorney General of Massachusetts, titled 'To the Friday Club'. With engraved portrait of Hillard.

Author: 
George Stillman Hillard (1808-1879), Harvard-educated lawyer, in partnership with Charles Sumner, writer on the law, United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts [The Friday Club, Boston]
Publication details: 
Signed 'Geo. S. Hillard | April 1. 1859.'
£200.00

3pp., 12mo. A fair copy. Very good, on lightly-aged paper. The twenty-eight-line poem is arranged in seven four-line stanzas, with Hillard's firm signature and the date at the end. The poem begins with unintentional, but no less curious, sexual overtones: 'The rod of Aaron, severed long | From its ancestral bowers, | Felt in its veins the sap of youth, | And shone with buds of flowers. | The rigid staff, smoothworn and dry, | In living green was dressed.

Autograph Letter Signed ('Geo. S. Hillard') from the Harvard lawyer George Stillman Hillard (later District Attorney for Massachusetts) to W. W. Greenough, written from Paris in the 'Year of Revolutions' 1848, analysing the political situation there.

Author: 
George Stillman Hillard (1808-1879), Harvard-educated lawyer, writer on the law, United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts [William Whitwell Greenough (1818-1899), Boston merchant]
Publication details: 
Paris, France; 16 May 1848.
£320.00

4pp., 4to. Bifolium. Ninety lines of text. Good, on lightly-aged paper, with small hole on second leaf causing damage to a few words of text. Addressed with two postmarks (one French, one American) on the reverse of the second leaf to 'William W. Whitwell Esq | Boston. Mass. | United States of America'. A significant letter, written from Paris by an astute and cultured American jurist on the day following the demonstration of 15 May 1848.

Autograph Letter Signed ('Geo. S. Hillard') from George Stillman Hillard (later District Attorney for Massachusetts) to the abolitionist Rev. Samuel Joseph May, describing his acquaintance with the first Harvard Professor of German, Charles Follen.

Author: 
George Stillman Hillard (1808-1879), Massachusetts District Attorney [Rev. Samuel Joseph May (1797-1871), abolitionist; Charles Follen [Karl Follen] (1796-1840), first Professor of German at Harvard]
Publication details: 
Boston; 11 March 1840.
£280.00

4pp., 4to. Bifolium. 89 lines of text. Good, on lightly-aged paper. Addressed, with red circular postmark, on reverse of second leaf, to 'Revd. Samuel J. May | South Scituate'. Hillard describes 'Dr. Follen' as 'an intimate and dear friend to me'. He looks back 'with melancholy pleasure upon the happy hours' he spent in the society of 'so pure and elevated a being'. He has 'never known a better man; I do not know that I may not say, that I have never known so good a man.

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