SOURCE: "Brander Matthews," in Commemorative Tributes of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1942, pp. 234-38.

In the following tribute, Butler, president of Columbia University from 1902 to 1945, commemorates his departed friend and colleague with deep and affectionate praise.

There are men who do important and interesting work in the world, whose personalities loom larger through the years than do any of their performances. Brander Matthews was one of these. No matter what he wrote or how excellent it may have been, no matter what he taught or how abundant an inspiration it was, the personality of the man puts it all into the shade. His manner, his merriment, and his charm were all his own, and were never failing. By good fortune he wrote for us an autobiographical sketch which he called These Many Years. He gave to it, as subtitle, the...