Lewis Edwards Gates was born 23 March 1860 in Warsaw, New York. His father, Seth Merrill Gates, a prominent lawyer and politician, served two terms in Congress, where he was an outspoken abolitionist; it is said that a southern planter once put a price of five hundred dollars on his head. Fanny Parsons Gates, Lewis's mother, was a great-granddaughter of Jonathan Edwards, a connection commemorated both in his middle name and in that of his brother, Merrill Edwards Gates, who served as president of Rutgers and then of Amherst. Lewis graduated from Harvard in 1884 and was subsequently an instructor in forensics there for three years. From 1887 to 1890 he studied in Germany, England, and France, then returned to Harvard as an instructor in English. In 1896 he was promoted to an assistant professorship in English, and the following year he became an assistant professor of comparative literature.

At the turn of the...