In 1939, in a fit of economy, Harvard University fired a young poet and assistant professor of English named Theodore Spencer. Cambridge University promptly offered him a lectureshipbut war broke before he could take it. Harvard, properly impressed, Lend-Leased him as a "visiting professor" from Cambridge. Last week, Harvard, which has been increasingly impressed by Ted Spencer since then, appointed him, at 44, to the prestigious, 140year-old Boylston Professorship of "Rhetoric & Oratory (first chairholder: John Quincy Adams; last: Poet Robert S. Hillyer).
Spencer, tall (a stooping 6 ft. 5 in.), strawberry-blond, and...
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