Charlton T. Lewis

Charlton T. Lewis had been a member of The Century two-score years at the time of his death. He was distinguished by unusually brilliant attainments in varied directions. Scholarly gifts may be said to have been his birthright, and scholarly work in mathematics and in the classics at once his occupation and diversion. Graduated at Yale at nineteen, in the famous class of 1853, when he was elected to The Century in 1864 he had already filled several pastorates in the Methodist Episcopal Church, had held the chairs of mathematics and of Greek at Bloomington, Ill., and at Troy, N. Y., and had acquired a considerable practice in the law, his specialty being insurance, which he continued to develop until his death. He found time for four years of editorial work on the Evening Post with Mr. Bryant, and was its editor-in-chief after his death. In connection with Dr. Vincent, he translated the then important theological work, Bengel’s Gnomon of the New Testament, and issued a history of Germany. His chief labor in the line of scholarship was his Latin Dictionary, published by Harper’s in 1879, a production regarded by experts as monumental in extent and authoritative. He received the degree of Ph.D. from the University of New York in 1877, and that of LL.D. from Harvard in 1903.

To his distinction in classical scholarship, in the higher mathematics, and in his profession, Dr. Lewis added a strong claim to the gratitude and esteem of the community through his remarkable services in the cause of enlightened treatment of the class which furnishes the inmates of our prisons. He was for many years President of the New York Prison Association, and devoted to its work most unselfishly and constantly his vigorous mind and rare gift of convincing advocacy with pen and voice. He believed profoundly that “the true criminal, the habitual or congenital enemy of society, must be disarmed and that the true use of the prisons is to entomb this small class not for a year or for a fixed term, then to be released to prey on mankind, but permanently as long as the character is unchanged,” but that the great majority of the so-called criminal class could by aid and guidance and restraint or liberty conditioned on behavior, be restored to usefulness. It was a noble ideal, for the fulfilment of which Dr. Lewis wrought incessantly and effectively. His aspiration was not in vain, to quote his own lines, to

“leave behind

Some hope that cheers mankind, some faith that saves,

Some wisdom as their guide among our graves.”

Edward Cary
1905 Century Association Yearbook