ABSTRACT
Edmund Wilson studied with Christian Gauss at Princeton University. It was in this association that Mr. Wilson acquired his conception of literary criticism - a history of man's ideas and imaginings in the setting of the conditions that have shaped them. As a professor of French and Italian, then, one of the qualities that distinguished Gauss was the unusual fluidity of mind that he preserved through his whole career. A teacher like Irving Babbitt was a dogmatist who either imposed his dogma or provoked a strong Opposition. This extreme flexibility and enormous range were, of course, a feature of his lectures. He was able to explain and appreciate almost any kind of work of literature from almost any period. Christian admired the romantics and expounded them with the liveliest appreciation; but the romantic ideal in literature was not his own ideal.
