The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XVIII. Later National Literature, Part III.
§ 23. Frederick DeForest Allen
Frederic DeForest Allen (1844–97) in 1879 was appointed Hadley’s successor at Yale, and in 1880 was called to Harvard as the first professor of Classical Philology, where he remained until his death. Those who could best judge his work found in him a tireless questioner of traditions, an essential investigator; and what he investigated was the life of the ancients. He considered classical learning to be “a great branch of anthropology, giving insight, when rightly studied, into the mental operations and intellectual and moral growth of ancient peoples. To him, literature and monuments were records of life, and they were to be interpreted by it and in turn were themselves to interpret it.” His only volumes are an edition of the Medea (1876), a collection of Remnants of Early Latin (1879), Hadley’s Greek Grammar, revised and in part rewritten (1884), and a translation of the Prometheus Bound (1891); but he published many short papers, chiefly upon etymologies, inscriptions, and ancient music and metres. In 1885 and 1886 he had charge of the American School at Athens, and had, at his death, gathered materials for an edition, never finished, of the scholia of Plato.