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He was a modest man, sinking his own personality out of sight, and he always seemed to me more interested in the success of others than in his own. Many of his literary contemporaries have had reason to thank him not only for his cordial recognition and generous praise, but for the firm and yet kindly hand which pointed out deficiencies and errors of taste and judgment.
As one of those who have found pleasure and profit in his writings in the past, I would gratefully commend them to the generation which survives him. His Literature of the Age of Elizabeth is deservedly popular, but there are none of his Essays which will not repay a careful study.
‘What works of Mr. Baxter shall I read?’
asked Boswell of Dr. Johnson. ‘Read any of them,’ was the answer, ‘for they are all good.’
He will have an honored place in the history of American literature.
But I cannot now dwell upon his authorship while thinking of him as the beloved member of a literary circle now, alas!
sadly broken.
I recall the wise, genial companion and faithful friend of nearly half a century, the memory of whose words and acts of kindness moistens my eyes as I write.
It is the inevitable sorrow of age that one's companions must drop away on the right hand and the left with increasing frequency, until we are compelled to ask with Wordsworth,—
Who next shall fall and disappear?But in the case of him who has just passed from
