Edwin P. Whipple. Death, however expected, is always something of a
surprise, and in his case I was not prepared for it by knowing of any
serious failure of his health. With the possible exception of Lowell and
Matthew Arnold, he was the ablest critical essayist of his time, and the
place he has left will not be readily filled.

Scarcely inferior to Macaulay in brilliance of diction and graphic
portraiture, he was freer from prejudice and passion, and more loyal to
the truth of fact and history. He was a thoroughly honest man. He wrote
with conscience always at his elbow, and never sacrificed his real
convictions for the sake of epigram and antithesis. He instinctively
took the right side of the questions that came before him for decision,
even when by so doing he ranked himself with the unpopular minority. He
had the manliest hatred of hypocrisy and meanness; but if his language
had at times the severity of justice, it was never merciless. He "set
down naught in malice."

Never blind to faults, he had a quick and sympathetic eye for any real
excellence or evidence of reserved strength in the author under
discussion.

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