The appointment of Mr. Robert S. Hillyer to be Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University is a fitting tribute to a young man who has won distinction as a poet and teacher. At the same time it places upon him the heavy responsibility of following in the footsteps of John Quincy Adams--the first to hold this post --and, in more recent times, of Adams Sherman Hill, Le Baron Russell Briggs and Charles Townsend Copeland.

To Harvard men these three stand out among the great teachers of the last half century. Only the older graduates remember Professor Hill, the associate of Charles Eliot Norton, Nathaniel Shailer and their contemporaries. Dean Briggs, who died only three years ago, was known to--and loved by--the undergraduates of the last sixty years. Even in retirement his ambling figure was familiar in the yard, and his bashful smile and warm heart won instantaneous response. To study composition in his English 5 was the ambition of nearly all undergraduates who looked forward to writing as a career, and many an author and journalist of America today is proud to be listed among the pupils of Dean Briggs.

"Copey" is still an institution, although retired from active teaching several years ago, and moved from Hollis Hall, where for a quarter century he held court and stimulated would-be writers by sharpening their interests and widening their contacts. Ill health and advancing years have crippled his frame but left his spirit youthful. He has been known to complain that he comes of long-lived Maine stock, and that his grandfather died at the age of ninety-two, not from sickness or natural causes, but because an elm tree fell upon him and crushed him. Professor Copeland at that age would also still be vigorous.

Boylston professors have, with few exceptions, lived far beyond their allotted three-score years and ten. This should leave Professor Hillyer at least thirty years of active teaching and perhaps an additional decade or two in retirement. The extent to which he has developed and grown in the last twenty years holds the promise that he will be a worthy successor to the "giants" whom he succeeds. It is encouraging that such a high honor in Harvard's scholastic world has been given to such a young man. --The New York Herald Tribune