SOURCE: "George Edward Woodberry," in Criticism in America, University of Oklahoma Press, 1956, pp. 156-62.

In the following essay, Pritchard discusses the influence of Aristotle on Woodberry's criticism.

George Edward Woodberry entered Harvard when Lowell was finishing his career as a professor. Lowell became interested in the impecunious undergraduate who aided in cataloguing his library, and in 1891, shortly before he died, recommended the young scholar for the new chair of comparative literature at Columbia University. There for fourteen years Woodberry taught. He established the new department upon the firm basis which has ever since been its characteristic, and inspired in his students, among whom were Joel E. Spingarn and John Erskine, the same love of letters which had been developed in him by Lowell.

Woodberry was a curious combination of characteristics. A Yankee by birth, he learned at Harvard to love the Mediterranean lands and literatures. Spingarn described him...