Howard

verse were published: Last Songs from Vaga-
bondia (1901) with Carman, and To the End of
the Trail (1908). In 1907 Mrs. Hovey edited a
volume of fragments from the Launcelot and
Guenevere cycle, called The Holy Gradl, with an
important preface by Carman. In this volume
one sees the scope of the poem in dramas. It was
planned to consist of three trilogies, each trilogy
made up of a masque, a tragedy, and a drama.
Hovey finished only the first trilogy and the
masque of the second. Taking Mallory's Morte
d'Arthur as a background, and with love as the
central theme, the poet propounded a very defi-
nite thesis, which was, in Mrs. Hovey's words,
"to impeach the social system that had not yet—
and has not yet-—gone far enough in evolution to
become a medium in which all lives can move at
all times in all respects in freedom" (The Holy
Graalj p. 18). Carman, who knew the poet so in-
timately, saw "that to Richard Hovey it afforded
a modern instance stripped of modern dress"
(Ibid., p. 9). If Hovey's promise was greater
than his achievement, his achievement was not
small. He was a poet of great versatility, sub-
tlety, and psychological depth; his work showed
a craftsmanship and philosophic content that
placed him well in the van of the American poets
of his day.

[In addition to the references above, see The Hovey
Book (1913); Henry Leffert, "Richard Hovey, an
American Poet: a Biographical Critique" (1928), MS.
in library of N. Y, Univ.; Jessie B. Rittenhouse, The
Younger American Poets (1904), ch. I; P. H. Boynton,
Am. Poetry (1918) ; Wm. Archer, Poets of the Younger
Generation (1902); James Cappon, Bliss Carman
(IQ30)J H.L.

HOWARD, ADA LYDIA (Dec. 19, 1829-
Mar. 3,1907), educator, first president of Welles-
ley College, was born in Temple, N. H., the
daughter of William Hawkins and Lydia Adaline
(Cowden) Howard. Her biographers have with
one accord cited the fact that she possessed three
ancestors who were officers in the Revolutionary
army, but it was probably of more importance to
her future career that she possessed a father who
was something of a student and interested in his
daughter's education. After being instructed by
him, she went to the New Ipswich Academy, to
the Lowell High School, and to Mount Holyoke
Seminary, from which she graduated in 1853.
Five years later, having in the meantime con-
tinued her study under private instructors, she
returned to Mount Holyoke as a teacher, where
she remained until 1861. During the year 1861-
62 she taught at the Western College for Wo-
men, Oxford, Ohio, and from 1866 to 1869 she
was principal of the department for women of
Knox College, Galesburg, III, from which place
she went to a school of her own, Ivy Hall, Bridge-

Howard

ton, N. J. Here Henry F. Durant [#.£>.], search-
ing for a president for Wellesley College who
should combine scholarship, experience, and
high Christian character, found her, and trans-
ferred her to his new college, which opened in
September 1875.

Her position was not easy, but its difficulties
were not those incident to the selection of a fac-
ulty, the formulating of sound educational poli-
cies, or the creation of a curriculum which should
place the college training of women on a level
with that available for men. These were matters
of which the founder took charge. No depart-
ment of the college failed to interest his active
imagination or seemed too trivial for his atten-
tion. To the president fell the duty of carrying
out his policies, which may often have seemed
decidedly questionable to her more conventional
mind. If ever she rebelled at the complete sub-
ordination of her position, or questioned the wis-
dom of Duranf s action, that fact has not become
a matter of record. A more aggressive person,
or one with educational policies of her own
which she wished to put into effect, might have
hampered the growth of the institution by cre-
ating obstacles or by failing to throw herself
wholeheartedly into activities which she had not
originated. As it was, the early years of the in-
stitution were free from such difficulties. Miss
Howard was able to lend dignity to an office
which, while Durant lived, was entirely lacking
in the power which is wont to accompany the
title. A month after his death, ill health forced
her to resign, so that she was never called upon
to meet the demands of the presidency without
his guidance, Her last years, in which continued
ill health kept her from active life, were divided
between Methuen, Mass., and Brooklyn, N. Y.,
where she died.

["In Memoriam — Ada L. Howard," Wellesley Mag.,
XV, 324-26 ; Florence Converse, The Story of Welles-
ley (1915) ; F. M. Kingsley, The Life of Henry Fowle
Durant (1924); the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Mar. 5,

E.D.

HOWARD, BENJAMIN (i76o-Sept. 18,
1814), soldier, congressman, territorial governor,
was born in Virginia, the only son of John How-
ard. His family moved across the mountains
into the Kentucky regions just before the out-
break of the Revolution, settling at Boonesboro,
where Richard Henderson [#.z/.] was trying to
establish his Transylvania colony. John Howard
was successful in getting hold of two one-thou-
sand-acre tracts of land in the scramble for land
that followed. He lived to be 103 years old. What
little schooling Benjamin got seems to have come
to him while he was yet in Virginia. In 1801
and 1802 he represented Fayette County in the

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