Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

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[464] an interest stimulated by Goodwin's Greek moods and tenses (1860), and applied these methods to the Latin verb in his Analysis of the Latin subjunctive (1870). The principles here laid down and followed seem to show that Greenough was strongly influenced not only by the German originators of the comparative linguistic method, and by Goodwin, but by W. D. Whitney as well, whose Language and the study of language had appeared at the very time (1867) when Greenough was undertaking his researches. Greenough introduced the teaching of Sanskrit and comparative philology at Harvard, and gave courses in them from 1872 until the appointment of C. R. Lanman as professor of Sanskrit in 1880. In 1872, likewise, he published with Joseph Henry Allen a Latin grammar for schools and colleges, founded on comparative grammar, in which he applied the methods and amplified the results of the Analysis. This, though in name only a schoolbook, contains in its successive editions the results of Greenough's research, and has been widely influential upon the subsequent study of Latin syntax. The issues of his investigation in other fields quietly appear in the same way in the volumes of the Allen and Greenough series. Words and their ways in English speech (1901), which Greenough and G. L. Kittredge prepared together, presents in racy and readable form the substance of much solid scholarship. Greenough was active in the development of the Harvard Graduate School; established in 1889 the Harvard studies in classical philology; introduced reading at sight into American classical teaching; promoted the collegiate instruction of women; wrote excellent Latin verse and prose; and, like Lane and Child and Goodwin, delighted in learned fun.

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 ’