What a man. What a life. The news of his passing is of course sad and comes as a shock; but as the celebration of his life takes over, one feels nothing so much as gratitude.

Your humble goliard was never fortunate enough to meet Mr. Buckley, but his words have been kept handy on the bookshelves of both my library and my mind since the day I picked up my first copy of National Review as a teenager. In a way, I felt he belonged to me as a conservative and a longtime NR aficionado, as much as if he were a beloved uncle or favorite professor.

Now the book of his life—the writing of which he made seem as effortless as all his other books, though it lasted so much longer—is closed; and he, as they rightly say, belongs to the ages. Requiescat in pace.