EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE, essayist and critic, was born at Gloucester, Massachusetts, March 8th, 1819. It is said that he began to write for newspapers when only fourteen years old. At eighteen he became “superintendent of the newsroom” in the Boston Merchants’ Exchange and several years later he wrote a critique on Macaulay, for which he was thanked by Macaulay himself. The prominence thus given him was well improved. He began a course of lectures on “The Lives of Authors” and continued to lecture successfully, publishing his lectures and essays and meeting with favor from the public. Among his works are “Essays and Reviews,” 1848–49; “Literature and Life,” 1849; “Character and Characteristic Men,” 1866; “Literature of the Age of Elizabeth,” 1869; and “Outlooks on Society, Literature, and Politics,” posthumous. He died at Boston, June 16th, 1886.