Herbert Newell Couch

Herbert Newell Couch (1899-1959), professor of classics, was born in Laurel, Ontario, on December 4, 1899. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1924, and received his master’s degree in 1926 and his Ph.D. in 1927, both from Johns Hopkins University. In 1927-28 he studied at the American Academy in Rome and at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. From 1928 to 1930 he was an associate in classics at the University of Illinois. He came to Brown in 1930 as assistant professor of classics, and was promoted to associate professor in 1938 and professor in 1945. He served as chairman of the Department of Classics from 1948 to 1959. He started the department’s popular Latin Christmas Carol Service, at which his translation of “Good King Wenceslas” into Latin was regularly sung. He also made a series of Latin verse translations of Christmas verse and song, in meters corresponding to the English originals for his own Christmas cards. He composed the Latin “Academic Greetings” which Brown was accustomed to send to congratulate other institutions on their anniversaries and new presidents. He published Classical Civilization: Greece in 1940, and Beauty and Parting, translations from the Greek poets, illustrated with his own sketches, in 1945. His last book, Cicero on the Art of Growing Old, written while on sabbatical in 1958, was published after his death from a heart attack on June 6, 1959 in Providence.