Word: babbittical
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...Nathan sees them. Here he advances the every sound idea that one reason for the weakness of present day dramatic criticism is in the weakness of the dramatists themselves. Another landing place for Mr. Nathan's frequently applied critical foot is humanism. For him, the cries of Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmore More are the result of a too copiously imbibing of the sour grape. "And, as Lewis Mumford has so aptly put it, their strength, as with a Chinese Army, consists largely in their war cries and their dreadful faces...
While Mr. Babbitt is occupied in Sever 11 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, Sinclair Lewis is seated before a large Seidel of Schnapps. Mr. Nathan points out that the difference in these two fates obviously shows that the humanists are very much mistaken...
...other three lecturers will be professor John Dewey, of columbia on April 2, Professor E. H. Smyth on April 9, and Professor Irving Babbitt will talk on "Originality versus Culture" on April...
These students were members of Professor Irving ("New Humanism") Babbitt's lecture course, Comparative Literature II. Basing their operations on the large number of writers that he mentioned in his lectures, they were conducting a lottery, selling tickets numbered from 1 to 100 at 10? each. Holder of the ticket which tallied with Professor Babbitt's total for the day would win the sweepstakes, minus 10% commission to the promoters.* The average number of writers the professor mentioned was 47. But one day he set a record: 73 quotations, from writers so various as St. Paul, Confucius, Dante...
When the Harvard Crimson exposed the lottery, newshawks sought to discover what Professor Babbitt would do about it. He could not be reached but Mrs. Babbitt said: "Why, he won't pay any attention to the lottery. He'll go right along just as he always does. . . . He is never surprised at what Harvard students...