The remainder of Baxter’s life, from 1687 onwards, was passed in peace and honour. He continued to preach and to publish almost to the end. He was surrounded by attached friends, and reverenced by the religious world. His saintly behaviour, his great talents, and his wide influence, added to his extended age, raised him to a position of unequalled reputation. He helped to bring about the downfall of James II. and complied with the Toleration Act under William and Mary. He died in London on the 8th of December 1691, and his funeral was attended by churchmen as well as dissenters. A similar tribute of general esteem was paid to him nearly two centuries later, when a statue was erected to his memory at Kidderminster in July 1875.
Baxter was possessed by an unconquerable belief in the power of persuasive argument. He thought every one was amenable to reason—bishops and levellers included. And yet he was as far as possible from being a quarrelsome man. He was at once a man of fixed belief and large appreciation, so that his dogmatism and his liberality sometimes came into collision. His popularity as a preacher was deservedly pre-eminent; but no more diligent student ever shut himself up with his books. He was singularly fitted for intellectual debate, but his devotional tendency was equally strong with his logical aptitude. Some of his writings, from their metaphysical subtilty, will always puzzle the learned; but he could write to the level of the common heart without loss of dignity or pointedness. His Reasons for the Christian Religion is still, for its evidential purpose, better than most works of its kind. His Poor Man’s Family Book is a manual that continues to be worthy of its title. His Saints’ Everlasting Rest will always command the grateful admiration of pious readers. It is also charged with a robust and manly eloquence and a rare and unsought felicity of language that make it a masterpiece of style. Perhaps no thinker has exerted so great an influence upon nonconformity as Baxter has done, and that not in one direction only, but in every form of development, doctrinal, ecclesiastical and practical. He is the type of a distinct class of the Christian ministry—that class which aspires after scholarly training, prefers a broad to a sectarian theology, and adheres to rational methods of religious investigation and appeal. The rational element in him was very strong. He had a settled hatred of fanaticism. Even Quakerism he could scarcely endure. Religion was with him all and in all—that by which all besides was measured, and to whose interests all else was subordinated. Isaac Barrow said that “his practical writings were never minded, and his controversial ones seldom confuted,” and John Wilkins, bishop of Chester, asserted that “if he had lived in the primitive time he had been one of the fathers of the church.”
Bibliography.—Our most valuable source is Baxter’s autobiography, called Reliquiae Baxterianae or Mr Richard Baxter’s Narrative of the most memorable Passages of his Life and Times (published by Matthew Sylvester in 1696). Edmund Calamy abridged this work (1702). The abridgment forms the first volume of the account of the ejected ministers, but whoever refers to it should also acquaint himself with the reply to the accusations which had been brought against Baxter, and which will be found in the second volume of Calamy’s Continuation. William Orme’s Life and Times of Richard Baxter appeared in 2 vols. in 1830; it also forms the first volume of “Practical Works” (1830, reprinted 1868). Sir James Stephen’s interesting paper on Baxter, contributed originally to the Edinburgh Review, is reprinted in the second volume of his Essays. More recent estimates of Baxter are those given by John Tulloch in his English Puritanism and its Leaders, and by Dean Stanley in his address at the inauguration of the statue to Baxter at Kidderminster (see Macmillan’s Magazine, xxxii. 385).
There is a good portrait of Baxter in the Williams library, Gordon Square, London.
BAXTER, ROBERT DUDLEY (1827-1875), English economist and statistician, was born at Doncaster in 1827. He was educated privately and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He studied law and entered his father’s firm of Baxter & Co., solicitors, with which he was connected till his death. Though studiously attentive to business, he was enabled, as a member of the Statistical and other learned societies, to accomplish much useful economic work. His principal economic writings were The Budget and the Income Tax (1860), Railway Extension and its Results (1866), The National Income (1868), The Taxation of the United Kingdom (1869), National Debts of the World (1871), Local Government and Taxation (1874), and his purely political writings included The Volunteer Movement (1860), The Redistribution of Seats and the Counties (1866), History of English Parties and Conservatism (1870), and The Political Progress of the Working Classes (1871).
BAXTER, WILLIAM (1650-1723), British antiquarian, critic and grammarian, nephew of Richard Baxter, the divine, was born at Llanllugan, Montgomeryshire. When he went to Harrow school, at the age of eighteen, he was unable to read, and could speak no language except Welsh. His progress must have been remarkable, since he published his Latin grammar about ten years afterwards. During the greater part of his life Baxter was a schoolmaster, and was finally headmaster of the Mercers’ school, where he remained till shortly before his death on the 31st of May 1723. He was an accomplished linguist, and his learning was undoubtedly very great. His published works are: De Analogia (1679), an advanced Latin grammar; Anacreontis Teii Carmina, including two odes of Sappho (1695; reprinted in 1710, “with improvements,” which he was accused of having borrowed from the edition of Joshua Barnes); Horace (1701 and subsequent editions, regarded as remarkable for its abuse of Bentley); Glossarium Antiquitatum Britannicarum (1719); and Glossarium Antiquitatum Romanarum (1826). The last two works were published by the Rev. Moses Williams, the second (which goes no farther than the letter A) under the title of Reliquiae Baxterianae, including an autobiographical fragment. Baxter also contributed to a joint translation of Plutarch’s Moralia, and left notes on Juvenal and Persius.
BAY, a homonymous term of which the principal branches are as follows, (1) The name of the sweet laurel (Laurus nobilis) or bay tree (see [Laurel]); this word is derived through the O. Fr. baie, from Lat. baca, berry, the bay bearing a heavy crop of dark purple berries. The leaves of the bay were woven in garlands to crown poets, and hence the word is often used figuratively in the sense of fame and reward. (2) A wide opening or indentation in a coast line. This may be of the same origin as “bay,” in the architectural sense, or from a Latin word which is seen in the place name Baiae. (3) The name of a colour, of a reddish brown, principally used of the colour in horses; there are various shades, light bay, bright bay, &c. This word is derived from the Latin badius, which is given by Varro (in Nonnius, pp. 80-82) as one of the colours of horses. The word is also seen in baize (q.v.). (4) The deep bark of dogs. This word is also seen in the expression “at bay,” properly of a hunted animal who at the last turns on the “baying” hounds and defends itself. The origin of the word is the O. Fr. bayer, abayer, Lat. badare, properly to gape, open wide the mouth. (5) An architectural term (Fr. travée, Ital. compartimento, Ger. Abteilung) for any division or compartment of an arcade, roof, &c. Each space from pillar to pillar in a cathedral, church or other building is called a “bay” or “severy.” This word is also to be referred to bayer, to gape.