Evert Augustus Duyckinck,
His Life, Writings and Influence.
In drawing up this memoir of a prominent scholar and citizen of New York for a New England magazine, it is easiest and best to write from the given point of view, and to treat the life and service of Evert Augustus Duyckinck as they appear to a New England man who was his neighbor in New York for nearly thirty years. The facts of his career are already well known; and if a full and able and affectionate memorial is needed, the wisest course would be to transfer to these columns the admirable paper of William Allen Butler, read before the New York Historical Society at the January meeting. That paper at once allows us to be assured of knowing well Mr. Duyckinck's personal career and animating purpose, and enables us to go beyond the author's own plan, and to consider his friend's connection with history and literature during the important period in which he lived from 1816 to 1878.
I went to live in New York in the October of 1849, and soon made his acquaintance, as a neighbor and friend of letters. His home had been almost from the time of his marriage in 1840 at No. 20 Clinton Place, the home from which his body was borne last August to St. Mark's Church for the funeral service. Clinton Place, when I first knew him there, was a conspicuous and central resort of society, and many of its residents were distinguished for wealth and fashion, but he had at the beginning the same simple dignity and choice taste that he kept to the last, long after that gay street had been so far given over to business and boarding houses. Mr. Duyckinck was then thirty-three years old, and he had already made his mark in literature, as contributor to the New York Review and other publications, and as editor of the Literary World, which he began to edit in 1847.
