WHIPPLE, Edwin Percy, author, born in Gloucoster, Massachusetts, 8 March, 1819; died in Boston, Massachusetts, 16 June, 1886. His father, Matthew, who died while Edwin was an infant, is said to have had "strong sense and fine social powers." His mother, Lydia Gardiner, was of a family in Gardiner, Maine, noted for its mental gifts. She early removed to Salem, Massachusetts, where her son was educated at the English high-school. Here he was noted for his precocity, and took high rank. At fourteen years of age he published articles in a Salem newspaper, and at fifteen, on leaving school, he became a clerk in the Bank of general interest. In 1837 he was employed in the office of a large broker's firm in Boston, and soon afterward he was appointed superintendent of the news-room and of the Merchants' exchange in State street. He was an active member of the Mercantile library association, and one of a club of six that was an offshoot from it, and held its sessions, known as "The Attic Nights," for literary exercises and debate. There his command of the weapons of debate--his skill in intellectual fence and readiness of repartee, sustained by large stores of information and a subtle critical faculty--made him an acknowledged leader. In 1840 he delivered a poem before the Mercantile library association, portraying the manners and satirizing the absurdities of the day. He was introduced to the general public by a critical article, or rather panegyric, from his pen, on Macaulay, published in the " Boston Miscellany" for February, 1843, which drew from the great essayist a complimentary letter. The paper glows with enthusiasm, leading occasionally to exaggeration, but manifests a critical insight, and a sweep, energy, and vividness of style, that indicate the advent of a new force in literature. In October of the same year he gave a lecture before the Mercantile library association on "The Lives of Authors," after which he was continually sought for as a lecturer, till he abandoned the platform. He is said to have ad dressed more than a thousand audiences in the northern arid middle states, from Bangor to St. Louis. The lectures, which embraced a wide range of topics. biographical, critical, and social, were of a philosophic cast, and abounded in fine analysis, shrewd observation, and acute insight, relieved by apt anecdote, epigrammatic wit, and poignant satire. Besides lecturing before lyceums, he addressed, on many occasions, the literary societies of colleges, as Brown, Dartmouth, Waterville, and Amherst, and in 1850 was the Fourth-of-July orator before the city authorities of Boston. Mr. Whipple was an early and frequent contributor to American reviews, and wrote numerous articles for the magazines and public journals. Some of his best writing is to be found in "Every Saturday," a weekly paper of which he was at one time editor, in pithy, thoughtful papers, condensing with rare skill the results of years of observation, reading, and reflection. His first published book was "Essays and Reviews" (2 vols., New York, 1848-'9). Among the best of its papers are those on "Byron," "English Poets of the Nineteenth Century," "South's Sermons," "Henry Fielding," and "Rufus Choate." The portraiture of the great New England advocate--one of those rare and unique men whose elusive genius seems to defy characterization, and baffle all attempts to label it and put it into any moral pigeon-hole--is one of the happiest examples of the writer's acute and discriminating analysis. Choate he pronounces "a kind of Mira-beau-Peel," who "combines a conservative intellect with a radical sensibility"" whose emotions, like well-trained troops, are "impetuous by rule." "A fiery and fusing imagination lies at the centre of his large and flexible nature, and is the chief source of his power."

Mr. Whipple's next work was "Literature and Life" (1849), a thin volume containing his lectures on "Authors," "Wit and Humor, .... The Ludicrous Side of Life," "Genius," and others. In 1871 a new edition was published, containing several additional papers. In 1860 he resigned his post in the Merchants' exchange in order to devote himself exclusively to literary pursuits. In 1866 appeared his "Character and Characteristic Men," a work composed of lectures and essays, in which the various qualities that make up the complex web of character, and the subtle essence that constitutes the individuality of great men, are detected with penetrating vision and set forth in vivid language. The last paper, on "Washington and the Principles of the American Revolution," is a republication of the Fourth-of-July address already noticed. In 1871 was published "Success and its Conditions," the key-note of which is that "virtue is tm aid to insight," and which enforces and illustrates the truth that sham, in a large sense, is never successful. In 1872 Mr. Whipple became literary editor of the "Globe," then a new daily paper in Boston, but resigned the place in the next year. In 1876 the "Literature of the Age of Elizabeth," a series of critical essays originally delivered at the Lowell institute, was published. In this work, which is a discussion of the merits and defects of the English dramatists, with also critical estimates of Sidney, Raleigh, Bacon, and Hooker, Mr. Whipple's genius reaches high-water mark. In 1877 he wrote for the "North American Review" a paper on George Eliot, which she and Mr. Lewes declared to be the most satisfactory criticism on her writings that had then appeared. In 1878 Mr. Whipple and James T. Fields compiled and edited the "Family Library of British Poetry." After Mr. Whipple's death was published his "Recollections of Eminent Men, with other Papers," with an introduction by Cyrus A. Bartol (Boston, 1887). In this volume are vivid portraitures of Rufus Choate, Louis Agassiz, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John L. Motley, Charles Stunner, and George Ticknor ; and to these are added a paper on Matthew Arnold, who is praised for the expansiveness, fertility, and subtlety of his intellect, his felicitous critical phrases and definitions, and the exquisite beauty of his style, but severely censured for his "moral and intellectual superciliousness" as a critic; and papers on Barry Cornwall and some of his contemporaries, and on the private life of George Eliot, who "allowed her understanding to adopt opinions which her deepest reason and affections repudiated." In the same year with the latter work was published "American Literature and other Papers," with a brief introduction by the poet Whittier. The volume contains five essays; the centennial review of "American Literature," published in " Harper's Magazine" in 1876, a masterpiece of condensation and of apt and discriminating criticism ; "Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style," which had been prefixed to a collection of that statesman's principal speeches published in 1879; and papers on " Emerson and Carlyle," "Emerson as a Poet," and the "Character an/t Genius of T. Start King." The last collection of Mr. Whipple's periodical papers was "Outlooks on Society, Literature, and Politics" (Boston, 1888).

Mr. Whipple was one of the very few men who have made the most of their natural gifts. Though chiefly self-educated in the popular sense of the term, his mental training and equipment were such as most college graduates might envy. He was chiefly distinguished for his critical faculty. Endowed by nature with a rare degree of acuteness, penetration, judgment, and sympathy, he developed and strengthened these faculties by ceaseless training and discipline, which made him a master in his chosen calling. Uniting a keen insight, that was "almost a species of mental clairvoyance," with the power of logical analysis, a tenacious memory with a playful imagination, and a grave spirit with a lively sensibility to the comic, he instinctively discriminated between the essential and the accidental, the wheat and the chaff, in letters, and set forth the reasons for his discrimination with a force and clearness that carried conviction to his readers. Pure and sensitive, however, as was his literary taste, his distinctive excellence was not so much his judgment upon the quality of a book as a more or less cunning work of art, as the revelation which he saw in it of the genius and character of the author. Like Sainte-Beuve, he sought to detect the man in his writing, his spiritual physiognomy, his originality and independence or slavery as a thinker, the atmosphere in which he lived, and the experiences of which the work was the product. Few critics have been influenced less by their idiosyncrasies and predilections, by the secret leanings which "haunt every man as his shadow," and warp the mind from absolute rectitude. Rarely blind to faults, he had a quick and keen eye for excellence, and when he erred it was on the side of leniency, never on that of excessive severity. Conscientious in all his statements, he carefully weighed his words, and never sacrificed the truth to epigram and brilliant effect. Few writers have been more painstaking. He was as fastidious and self-exacting when writing an ephemeral article for a newspaper as when preparing a paper for a review, often throwing into the fire three or four draughts in succession, because they did not satisfy his critical judgment. His style is said to have been formed on Macaulay's; but he was no copyist or imitator. If, as some will think, it is sometimes oratorical, and sometimes injured by an excess of antithesis and anecdote, the faults are accounted for by the fact that some of his most characteristic productions were written for delivery as lectures. Mr. Whipple had fine conversational powers. He had an inexhaustible fund of anecdote and illustration from history and literature, ready for instant use, and the felicity of his citations was only equalled by that of his original wit. "The effete of society," "the gentleman of wealth and pleasure," "the organ of distaste" (said of a certain journal), were some of his current sayings. Of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" he said : "It has every leaf except the fig-leaf." He had an even temperament, and was noticeably free from envy, jealousy, irritability, and other faults that too often deform the literary character. His married life was a contradiction to the popular notion concerning the hymeneal infelicity of literary men. In 1847 he married Miss Charlotte Hastings, in whom he found at all times an intellectual, congenial, and sympathetic companion. Personally Mr. Whipple was of spare figure and below medium stature, with a face of remarkable mobility and expressiveness, the large, lustrous eyes glowing with interest as he talked on favorite inspiring themes.