IRVING BABBITT '89 DIED AT CAMBRIDGE HOME ON SATURDAY

The apostle of the New Humanism, a famous scholar, and a wise teacher were lost to Harvard Saturday when Irving Babbitt, '89, professor of French and Comparative Literature, died at his Cambridge residence on Kirkland Street after an illness of nine months.

Funeral services were held yesterday afternoon at 2 o'clock in the Memorial Church in the Yard. Williard Learoyd Sperry, dean of the Theological School, and Reverend G. H. Hough, of Paterson, New Jersey officiated.

At Harvard Since 1894

Professor Babbitt was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1865, the son of Mr. and Mrs. E. D. Babbitt. He graduated from Harvard with class of 1889, took his master's degree, and directly afterwards, 1893 took an instructorship at Williams College. The following year he returned to Harvard, however, and held the post of instructor of French until 1902, when he became an assistant professor. Since 1912 he has been a full professor, and has gained much fame from his courses, Comparative Literature 9 and 11, chiefly on the subject of Rousseau and the Romantic Movement. In 1923 he was away from Cambridge as exchange professor at the Sorbonne, in Paris.

In 1900 Professor Babbitt married Dora May Drew of Cambridge, who survives him, as do his son, Edward S. Babbitt, and his daughter Edith now Mrs. G. F. Howe of Cincinnati.

Believed World Decadent

Professor Babbitt believed that, in its essential features, the artistic, philosophical, and critical life of today are an integral part of the Romantic Movement which flourished most brightly in the early part of the last century. In this sense he was dissatisfied with the "modern movement", which he was able to track back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau in one of his chief works, "Rouseau and, Romanticism". His other books extend the idea of intellectual and moral decline since the days of Rousseau and the democratic theorists to the field of politics in "Democracy and Leadership", to modern education, in "Literature and the American College", and to art in "The New Loakoon". Other works were "Masters of Modern French Criticism," and "On Being Creative," the last a book of essays.

E. K. RAND

"Few Harvard professors have had the power to inspire their students that Professor Babbitt had," said E. K. Rand, '94 Pope Professor of Latin said on Sunday night, in connection with the death of Irving Babbitt, '89 professor of French and Comparatine Literature and protagonist of the philosphy of the New Humanism. "He was, of course one of the stoutest defenders of the cause of the classics and humanism. His works were read all over the world, and like his lectures, show great virility and a high sense of value. His place will be impossible to fill."

C. B. GULICK

"Among the members of the Harvard faculty who devoted themselves to the study of letters no man so full a knowledge of the literature of different countries than Professor Babbitt." C. B. Gulick '90, Eliot Professor of Greek, said on Sunday, voicing his deep regret. "His reading was extraordinarily wide and penetrating and he has done much to present his students with the continuity of literature from the days of the Greeks to our own. He was a devoted friend of the classics and he made the ideas of classical literature the standard of reference for his wise and acute criticism of the moderns.