Born at Gloucester, Mass., March 8, 1819; died at Boston, June 16, 1886. An American critic and essayist. He was employed in a bank and in a broker’s office at Boston; and 1837–60 was superintendent of the reading-room of the Merchant’s Exchange. He became noted as a lecturer. His works include “Essays and Reviews” (2 vols., 1848–49), “Literature and Life” (1849), “Character and Characteristic Men” (1866), “Literature of the Age of Elizabeth” (1869), “Success and its Conditions” (1871), “American Literature and Other Papers” (1887), “Recollections of Eminent Men” (1887), “Outlooks on Society, Literature, and Politics” (1888).

Personal

  He was an essential part of the literary life of Boston at a time when that city probably furnished a larger proportion of the literary life of the nation than it will ever again supply. He was unique among the authors of that time and place in his training, tastes, and mental habit; the element that he contributed was special and valuable; he duplicated nobody, while at the same time he antagonized nobody, and the controversial history of that period will find no place for his name.

  Mr. Whipple was an intellectual sympathy incarnate. He lived to do honor to others, and to forget himself in awarding to everybody else the meed of desert. No dramatic poet, novelist, painter of likenesses on the canvas could be in his subjects and sitters more absorbed, himself unconscious of having any claim or winning a morsel of regard…. He was meek and lowly like his Master, and the almost more than a woman’s delicacy in his robust manly mind was a sort of continual hint of the Holy spirit. A strong thinker in a slender frame, he had also the sensibility which is not unveiled, and the sentiment which cannot be sentimental or weak. Nobody would enter a more displeased protest against whoever would set him forth as a model of perfection, in any way…. This rarely modest disposition was well suited in the custom of his plain and quiet demeanor, in his withdrawal from appearing abroad as his bodily strength abated, and in the peculiarly placid circumstances of his lamented yet cheerful demise…. He had an eminent magnanimity. Did others crowd and push in the grasp for riches or race for fame?—he stood aside, he fell back, he relinquished to those who craved it the prize. I never heard a word of envy from his lips; I never saw a spark of malice in his eye. He rejoiced in his comrade’s superiority and success.

  Whipple, with two-storied head, and bulbous spectacles; keen critic, good talker.

General

  As chief among his mental characteristics we are disposed to place the rectitude which marks his critical judgments, and which is seen in the patience and thoroughness of his investigation and in the precision of his analysis, not less than in the results at which he arrives. With the utmost skill he penetrates to the heart of his subject, and lays it bare for the inspection of the curious that they may verify for themselves the correctness of the views which he presents…. Closely allied with this quality of mental rectitude is his power of analytical criticism, as shown in his delineations of both intellectual and moral character. He rarely fails of reaching the prime motive of a man’s acts, and the principles which give a direction to his thoughts, in this peculiar psychological development…. Another distinguishing feature of Mr. Whipple’s mind is his fondness for what he has denominated, in one of his lectures, “the ludicrous side of life.” This quality, so rarely found among the descendants of the Puritans, enters deeply into his intellectual constitution, and may to a greater or less extent be detected in nearly all his essays.

  In fact, he has been infected with that unmeaning and transparent heresy—the cant of critical Boswellism, by dint of which we are to shut our eyes tightly to all authorial blemishes, and open them, like owls, to all authorial merits.

  To a large acquaintance with English literature, a prompt and retentive memory, a lively fancy, and considerable wit, he joins the brisk and smart exuberance of style which is the most agreeable quality of the essayist, and the most essential to his success. His command of expression is almost marvellous; he showers words upon the page with a prodigality that astonished the lean and bare scribblers who, after painful search and with many contortions, clothe their shivering thoughts in scant and inappropriate garments. He revels in the abundance of his wealth, and changes his rich costume so frequently and swiftly, that the reader begins to think he is playing tricks with dress, or is substituting words for thought. Yet the suspicion would be groundless. The expression, though lavish and ornate, is almost invariably clear, pointed, and precise. Because he has a large store to choose from, the word selected is just the appropriate word, conveying the precise idea that the writer wishes to impart, without distortion or indistinctness. Mr. Whipple’s essays, therefore, form easy and luxurious reading…. Of all the later English essayists, Mr. Whipple may most properly be compared with Hazlitt, whom he closely resembles except in this very point of his imperturbable good humor.

  There is hardly a writer in the country so capable of such a series of subjects as the author of “Character and Characteristic Men;” and it may safely be said that through this book more real insight may be had into the spirit of that time than can be obtained by means of the works of any one other critical author.

  Mr. Whipple’s mind is acute and analytic, and his mode of dealing with a subject shows his mastery of principles, his sincerity of character, and his power of lucid statement. His style is not uniformly easy, although his vocabulary is ample, and his choice of words is often very felicitous. At times he inclines to be epigrammatic and sparkling, and when this is the case he is apt to restrain his naturally ample utterance, and to establish a formal balance of terse phrases in short, pungent sentences, in place of the longer sweep of the older and more melodious style of English prose. Like most writers who have had their early discipline in debate, and have maintained an oratorical style by long practice in lecturing, he sometimes swells his periods into sonorous measure, and writes at his reader, as if in the midst of a brilliant peroration before an excited audience.

  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.”

  By the mere exercise of these moral qualities, combined with great keenness of insight, he doubtless did a great deal for the American criticism of his day, and must rank with Margaret Fuller Ossoli and far above Poe in the total value of his work. It is certainly saying a great deal in his praise to admit that up to a certain time in his life there was probably no other literary man in America who had so thoroughly made the best of himself,—extracted so thoroughly from his own natural gifts their utmost resources. His memory was great, his reading constant, his acquaintance large, his apprehension ready and clear…. In a time and place which had produced Emerson, this narrowness of range was a defect almost fatal. It did not harm his immediate success, and he is said, in those palmy days of lecturing, to have appeared a thousand times before audiences. But now that his lectures—or his essays which might have been lectures—are read critically, many years later, we can see that the same shrinkage which has overtaken the work of Bayard Taylor and Dr. Holland, his compeers upon the lecture platform, has also overtaken his. Whether it was that this platform, by its direct influence, restricted these men, or whether it was that a certain limitation of intellect was best fitted for producing the article precisely available for this particular market, it is clear that these three illustrate alike the success and the drawbacks of the lecturing profession.

  Great and exceptional as were Whipple’s early achievements in letters, it is easy to note why he did not accomplish more, and to see why he missed the points of excellence which a more generous culture would have given him. He had not a creative mind, but his purely critical abilities, though of the first order, needed the discipline of exact and long-continued study, and the widening of intellectual view, to make his later work something more substantial than it is. He came just short of being a great critic of literature. His vital defect is illustrated by comparing his critical writing with that of Emerson. Both have much in common—the same feeling for vitality in the works of others, the same regard for good form—but Emerson had the survey of the world, though the horizon was that of Concord, while Whipple seldom saw beyond the author or subject which he had in hand…. Taking up Whipple’s essays to-day, one is surprised at the maturity and strength of his youthful work…. In literary knowledge Whipple had no superior among Americans, but when he undertook the entertainment of an audience the temptation drove all serious ideas out of his head, and the result is a display of rhetorical pyrotechnics which has no more present interest than a bundle of sticks. When he sat down to the dissection of an author or to the critical discussion of a subject he was another man; what he lacked in moral purpose and breadth of view was made up in vigor of style and in acuteness of probing…. Dear as he was to his friends, and delightful as are our memories of his overflowing wit and his brilliant conversations, his writings entirely lack the elements of perpetuity. His essays and criticisms delight for the moment, but are related neither to philosophy nor religion, nor to the interpretation of the life of humanity. They entertain one, like the feats of the athlete, but make no permanent impression, and carry no one forward in any direction.

  Whipple began his active work as a writer, in an article on Macaulay. As a reviewer and a lecturer, Whipple reached a public which Emerson never fully influenced; though his service in emphasizing the value and strength of true character was in Emerson’s own vein. Whipple showed his Americanism by the emphasis laid upon that element of character he called grit; and he displayed his Saxon temper in his unmitigated contempt for sham and shoddy.

  Whipple was not only a critic; he was also a critic of first-rate ability. His literary judgments were as just as they were acute, and have been confirmed by the verdict of later years. His mind was both penetrating and comprehensive; he took the philosophical view, and showed the sources and relations of existing conditions. The range of his reading was extensive and its subjects well-chosen; he was familiar with the field of European literature, as well as with American: only Lowell rivalled him in this respect, and he gave himself, as Lowell did not, wholly to the critical function. He may fairly be classed with such men as Matthew Arnold in England, and Taine in France; for though his scope was less pretentious than theirs, the actual value of his achievements will probably not be found inferior. His gift of interpretation and expression was commensurate with his insight; so that his essays are not merely instructive to students, but delightful to the general reader. Humor he possesses in abundance; eloquence; and the faculty of giving charm and lucidity to subjects apparently dry and intricate. His merits have been acknowledged by competent foreign judges, and many an English scholar’s library contains his books. No one who wishes to acquire a vivid and trustworthy conception of eminent American books and men, and of the conditions of recent American existence, can do better than to consult the writings of Whipple.

  His best essays are still read by the student of literature for their keen analysis and fine literary sense; but he was not a great critic, and his books lack that charm of manner and richness of thought which make Lowell’s and Arnold’s critical essays literature.

  It is almost impossible to understand the extravagant praise he received, but we can recognize his earnestness, his insistence—perhaps his over-insistence—upon the moral element in literature, his enthusiasm for his favourite writers, such as Wordsworth, his wide reading, his not infrequent felicity of phrase, and his ability, somewhat rare at the time, to express his dislikes in a hearty fashion. We can understand also how his apt illustrations and his anecdotes about famous men delighted his audiences. On the other hand, many of his pages suggest that he drew upon his commonplace book oftener than upon his brains, that his knowledge was frequently defective and his judgment still more so, that his criticism was lacking in subtlety, and that his style was at times far from pleasing.