JAMES

See also:

• GATES, HORATIO (1728-1806)

GATES

See also:

• JAMES GATES PERCIVAL

PERCIVAL  0795-1856), American poet, philologist and geologist, was born in Kensington parish, Berlin, Connecticut, on the 15th of September 1795 . He graduatedat Yale in 1815, and in 182o took the degree of M.D., and started practice in Berlin . He contributed verse to the Microscope, a semi-weekly paper, founded at New Haven in 1820 . In this first appeared his best-known poem," " The Suicide," which reflects his chronic melancholy, due doubtless to ill-health; it was begun in 1816 and finished in 1820, after he had actually made two attempts on his own life . In 1823 Percival became an editor of the Connecticut Herald at New Haven; and in 1824 he was in turn an assistant-surgeon and lecturer on chemistry at West Point, and an inspector of recruits at the Charlestown (Mass.) Navy Yard . He prepared (1826-1831) an English edition of Malte-Brun's Geography (published 1834); and in 1827-1829 read the manuscripts and proof-sheets of Webster's Dictionary, giving special attention to scientific words . In 1835-1840, with Professor Charles U . Shepard (1804-1886), he made a geological survey of Connecticut; his Report (1842) showed great learning and much patient research . In 1854 he became state geologist of Wisconsin, and in 1855 published one volume of his Report; the second he had nearly completed at the time of his death, on the 22nd of May 1856, at Hazel Green, Wisconsin . See his Poetical Works (2 vols., Boston, 1839), with a biographical sketch by L . W . Fitch; and Julius H .

Ward, Life and Letters of James Gates Percival (Boston, 1866) .