1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Baxter, William

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.