December, 1903. ^OI 



MAXWELL HENRY CLOSE, M.A. 



One of the most familiar figures, one of the keenest thinkers, 

 and one of the gentlest and yet most stimulating personalities, 

 has passed from among the ranks of Irish men of science. At 

 the age of eighty-one, the Revd. Maxwell H. Close died on 

 September 12th, 1903, in the rooms long occupied by him in 

 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin. For some years it had seemed 

 to many of us that he moved in an area limited by those rooms, 

 the house of the Royal Dublin Society, the Royal Irish 

 Academy in Dawson Street, and the Church of the Magdalen 

 Asylum in Lower Leeson Street. But within that area his 

 activity, exercised in the quietest manner, was unceasing. 

 Absolutely unconscious of himself, his mind seemed always 

 filled with a consciousness of the wants of others. He sub- 

 scribed towards the publication of literary or scientific works, 

 with the object of encouraging research, and of giving some 

 direct token of his goodwill to their authors ; if the book, 

 however, proved when issued to be of permanent value, he 

 usually presented it to some library, \vhere it would be more 

 widely knowm than if he had kept it to himself. The library 

 of the Royal Irish Academy was frequently enriched by gifts 

 of this kind ; and almost the last work of his life was the 

 arranging of two series of drawings of Irish antiquitiCvS; which 

 he then had bound at his own expense for presentation. 



The list of his private benefactions will never become known. 

 In making any unusually large donation to a charity, he pre- 

 ferred to remain anonymous, lest he should wound the feelings 

 of some friend, to whose favourite scheme he had given less. 

 But the best remembered feature-of the help thus afforded by 

 him will be his personal interest in those to whom he gave. 

 This regard for others extended to the doings of the youngest 

 scientific worker in the country ; and it may be said that he 

 gave away the results of many observations which other men 

 would have published over their own names. 



Maxwell Henry Close, the eldest son of the late Mr. H. S. 

 Close, was born in Merrion Square East, Dublin, in 1822. Part 

 of his schooldays were spent at Weymouth, where his head- 



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