Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve

Ten years later, he accepted an offer from Daniel Coit Gilman to teach at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.[5] When the Johns Hopkins University opened in 1876, Gildersleeve was one of five original full professors and was responsible for setting up a program in the study of Greek and Roman literature, at which he succeeded admirably. He chose junior faculty and graduate students who went on to make a major impact in classical studies, at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere. His hiring also helped to reassure the Baltimore community that the new university was not just a northern institution transplanted south. Johns Hopkins was known to be opposed to slavery, founding president Daniel Coit Gilman was from Connecticut, and most other faculty were from the northern states, which led to suspicion regarding the intent of the new institution.[6]

In 1880, the American Journal of Philology, a quarterly published by the Johns Hopkins University, was established under his editorial charge, and his strong personality was expressed in the department of the Journal headed "Brief Report" or "Lanx Satura," and in the earliest years of its publication every tiny detail was in his hands. His style in it, as elsewhere, is in striking contrast to that of the typical classical scholar, and accords with his conviction that the true aim of scholarship is "that which is." He published a Latin Grammar (1867; revised with the cooperation of Gonzalez B. Lodge, 1895 and 1899; reprinted 1997 with a bibliography of twentieth-century work on the subject)[7] and a Latin Series for use in secondary schools (1875), both marked by lucidity of order and mastery of grammatical theory and methods. His edition of Persius (1875) has been attributed great value.[3]

Gildersleeve's bent was toward Greek more than Latin. His special interest in Christian Greek was partly the cause of his editing the Apologies of Justin Martyr (1877), which claimed to have "used unblushingly as a repository for [his] syntactical formulae." Gildersleeve's studies under Franz had no doubt quickened his interest in Greek syntax, and his logic, untrammeled by previous categories, and his marvelous sympathy with the language were displayed in this most unlikely of places. His Syntax of Classic Greek (Part I, 1900, with CWE Miller) collects these formulae. Gildersleeve edited in 1885 The Olympian and Pythian Odes of Pindar, with what was called "a brilliant and valuable introduction." His views on the function of grammar were summarized in a paper on The Spiritual Rights of Minute Research delivered at Bryn Mawr on June 16, 1895. His collected contributions to literary periodicals appeared in 1890 under the title Essays and Studies Educational and Literary.[3]

The Atlantic Monthly published an article by Gildersleeve titled "The Creed of the Old South" in January 1892, and an essay, "A Southerner in the Peloponnesian War", in September 1897. Johns Hopkins Press later published them in a book in 1915.[8]

Gildersleeve's gravestone at the University of Virginia Cemetery in Charlottesville, Virginia.

He was elected president of the American Philological Association in 1877 and again in 1908 and became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as of various learned societies. He received the honorary degree of LL.D. from William and Mary (1869), Harvard (1896), Yale (1901), Chicago (1901),[9] and Pennsylvania (1911); D.C.L. from the University of the South (1884); L.H.D. from Yale (1891) and Princeton (1899); and Litt.D. from Oxford and Cambridge (1905).