BABBITT, IRVING , American scholar, was born in Dayton, O., on Aug. 2, 1865. After graduating at Harvard in 1889 he continued his studies in Paris and in 1893-94 was instructor in Romance languages at Williams college. In 1894 he went to Harvard in the same capacity and was made professor of French literature in 1912. His attention became centred on an analysis of the theories of the classicists, neo-classicists and ro mantics, and while this was chiefly applied to problems of literary criticism he extended it also to art and politics. His general con clusion was that the romantics, whom he considered chiefly in spired by Rousseau, exaggerated the two elements of liberty and sympathy and that in the name of these articles of faith they brought about an undesirable confusion of genres. The romantic exaltation of the ego, according to him, injected into the 19th century a spirit of revolt which denied the worth of what he con sidered fundamental laws and injured artistic and social thought.
Among his publications are: The New Laokoon (1910) ; The Mas ters of Modern French Criticism (1912) ; Rousseau and Romanticism (1919) and Democracy and Leadership (1924) •