Benjamin Kaplan, one of the commonwealth’s foremost jurists and a Vineyard seasonal resident, died last week at 99. Justice Kaplan was an eloquent man who brought his soaring intellect and sparking wit to the classroom as a professor at Harvard Law School, and to the bench as a justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and after his retirement from that court, as a senior justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court. I had the good fortune to appear before him on several occasions.