TYLER, AlOSES COST ( 1835-1900). An Ameriean literary historian and educator, born at Griswold, Conn. His parents removed to Michi gan, where he began his education. Ile graduated at Yale in 1857 and. after studying theology there and at Andover, took charge of Congrega tional churches at Owego and then at Pough keepsie. N. Y. Broken down by over-study. lie resigned the latter charge in 1862 and went to England, w•here he spent four years recuperating, studying, lecturing, and writing letters to the New York Independent and the New York Nation. In 1867 lie accepted the chair of English at. the University of Michigan, and in 1881 he was called to the chair of American history at Cornell, a po sition which he held until his death. In 1881 he was ordained deacon in the Protestant Episcopal Church, and was advanced to the priesthood in 1883. Meanwhile be had published his History of American Literature During the Co/onnial Time (2 vols., 1878) and had won a wide reputation for scholarship. This history, which was continued in the two volumes entitled A. Literary History of the American Revolution (1897) and in the essays entitled Thucc Men of Letters (Bishop Berkeley, President Dwight, and Joel Barlow, 1895), constitutes Professor Tyler's chief claim to remembrance. It hardly carries the story of
our literature beyond the year 1783, but within its limits is characterized by such accuracy and breadth of scholarship, such genial sympathy and attractiveness of style, that it is not likely to be superseded, and fully entitles its author to rank with the great literary historians of the world. Its chief defects are diffuseness and a failure to apply standards rigorously. Besides this his tory, Tyler's most important work is a biogra phy of Patrick Henry in the American States men series (1887). He also published The Brawnvi11e Papers (1869), devoted to the claims of physical culture; a revision of H. Morley's Manual of English Literature (1879) ; Memorial of E. IC. Apgar (privately printed, 1886) ; and Glimpses of England (1898) , a collection of his letters from England mentioned above. Consult a paper by W. P. Trent in the Forum for August, 1901, and one by C. L. Burr in Report of the American Historical Association for 1901 (vol. i.).