Engraver/Poet/Journalist
Centurion, 1867–1897
Born 7 December 1812 in London, England
Died 29 December 1897 in New Haven, Connecticut
Buried State Street Cemetery
, Hamden, Connecticut
Proposed by Henry R. Winthrop and John Priestley
Elected 5 October 1867 at age fifty-four
Century Memorial
William James Linton was a remarkable man and an ideal member of the Club. He was born in London in 1812, and in his younger days was a zealous Chartist, and was intimately associated with the chief political refugees. He was connected with Mazzini, and in 1848 carried to the French Provisional Government the first congratulatory address of English workmen.
He was one of the founders of the Leader newspaper, manager and editor of Pen and Pencil, and a regular poetical contributor to the National in England, and was the author of many works, among them several volumes of poems.
His book upon the “Masters of Engraving” was recently said by a writer in The English Illustrated Magazine to be unquestionably the one authoritative treatise by incomparably the greatest living master.
He emigrated to this country in 1867, making New York his first home and New Haven his last, and leaving in each the pleasantest recollections of his simple, unselfish nature, his kindness of heart, and his jocose, companionable, and yet thoughtful character.
He will be long remembered as a great master in wood engraving, and as a strikingly original poet. We sent him upon his eighty-fifth birthday a message of congratulation and cheer aptly expressed by his old friend, Richard Henry Stoddard.
The prophecy of the lines is unfulfilled, but the tender feeling there expressed remains with us.
It was characteristic of him that the death of an old servant to whom he was deeply attached occasioned his final illness, but then even to the last he worked, and in spite of sorrow and old age his hand retained its cunning to the end. We shall miss his picturesque figure and his genial presence, but his memory will ever be green.
An extract from his book “Claribel, and other poems,” is not inappropriate here.
GONE.
Will the dead Hours come again,
From the arms of the buried Years?
Though we call, we call in vain,
And they will not heed our tears.
Why, O why were they slain
By thy fears?
Will the dead Love e’er return,
For all thy late desire?
Can thy grief unclose Love’s urn,
Or make of the ashes—fire;
Though the cinders yet may burn
Round the pyre?
Alas and alas for the Gone!
We mourn and we mourn in vain.
Like a ghost, or the dreamy tone
Of some long-forgotten strain,
Their memory haunts the Lone
But with pain.
Henry E. Howland
1898 Century Association Yearbook
