SOURCE: “Truth in Biography: Leonardo and Freud,” in Critical Questions on Music and Letters, Culture and Biography, 1940-1980, edited by Bea Friedland, University of Chicago Press, 1982, pp. 183-92.

In the following essay, which was written in 1940, Barzun analyzes the flaws in Freud's 1910 biographical essay on Leonardo. The critic argues that Freud relied on hearsay and guesswork as evidence for his findings.

Now that Freud belongs to the ages, we shall probably witness a double shift in the public attitude towards his work. On the one hand, scholarship will examine with increasing care and interest the worth of his ideas; and on the other, the layman will forget all but a few of his own misconceptions and allow his animus to die out. Freud will be both absorbed and neglected, in accordance with our usual way of dealing with dead philosophers.

While this process is setting in, it may...