WILLIAM

See also:

• BAXTER, ANDREW (1686-1750)
• BAXTER, RICHARD (1615-1691)
• BAXTER, ROBERT DUDLEY (1827-1875)
• WILLIAM BAXTER (1650-1723)

BAXTER (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 .