Paul Elmer More

Paul Elmer More frequently joined the groups at the lunch-table or the older-time Graham Library, and this sociable participation in Club-house gatherings continued after his residence had changed from New York to Princeton. In his house hold writing, More was absorbed for many years with his “Shelburne Essays,” which ranged widely through the topics of philosophy, literature and religion, and which won him wide repute as scholar in all those fields. Probably older fellow-Centurions will remember him still better for his literary editorship; first on the Independent, then, in succession to the late Wendell P. Garrison and Hammond Lamont, on the old Nation. In the conducting of those publications, More’s own literary judgment was not more infallible than the instinct for discovering promising qualities with which he chose new contributors and reviewers—some of whom, like our late fellow-Centurion Stuart Sherman, he brought from comparative obscurity to high achievement in literary criticism. But at the same time, More was never blind to shortcomings of critics with established reputation. To Saintsbury, for instance, he usually referred as a critic pleasant in style and learned in past and contemporary literature, but who, either through carelessness or laziness, would rarely quote correctly even the best-known literary passages.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1938 Century Association Yearbook