August 2, 1865

Irving Babbitt (August 2, 1865 to July 15, 1933) was a literary critic, who in his work, attempted to recover some of the classical values in a world flattened by the loss of religious certainties. Babbitt introduced comparative literature at Harvard, where he was a professor. His own studies involved French and Sanskrit. .None of the above is apparent in our Babbitt quote:

"A cat may, however, according to the adage, be killed with cream; and it has become only too evident that criticism may be killed by an excess of the appreciative temper."

This we found in the book, The masters of modern French criticism which Babbitt published in 1912. Babbitt was one of T. S. Eliot's professors.