A Brill Calendar: October 26

The Death of Professor Carel Gabriel Cobet

Few elements of education & learning are so endearingly lasting as the admiring attachment to a teacher who is a true master of his ‘profession’; if ‘profession’ is the right word.

‘Calling’ might be a better one in this context. Each level of introducing young – and not so young – people to information, knowledge and perhaps wisdom may be associated with these warm feelings.

This fundamental appreciation by their pupils makes masters timeless in a sense; even if the method and style of their teaching have been adjusted to new insights and realities. The case of Professor Carel Gabriel Cobet (Paris, France, 1813 – Leyden, 26 October 1889) who taught Attic Greek at Leyden University, could be remembered in this context. The man must have been a source of lasting inspiration to all his students, although he may be a little obscure some 120 years later; even to knowledgeable philologists, palaeographists and Graecists.

But when the University celebrated its 70th lustrum and its 350th ‘Dies Natalis’ in 1925, Cobet received the great distinction that his tenure was given one of the 21 chapters of a book which surveyed Leyden’s academic developments from 1875 to 1925; the last 50 years of its rich history. ( ‘Pallas Leidensis MCMXXV’, Leiden, S. G. van Doesburgh, 1925).

Since Cobet was an ‘emeritus’ in 1884, his charm and fame had survived him for decades. It is seldom realized how important the oral skill of delivering lectures is in fostering that inspiration students need to pass on to new generations; the torch & tradition of scholarship and learning. In Doctor J. Vürtheim’s evocation of his hero, ‘Cobet en zijn invloed’, real love shines through.

How sad it is that general good taste, good manners and good breeding, embedded in elegance and generously employed erudition during discussion and class, can not be faithfully reconstructed in the end.