Had he been of different temperament, Professor Francis Otto Matthiessen of Harvard University might well have rested content with his fame as a scholar. He was a bookish bachelor of mild manner and quiet voice, whose name had become one of the best known in the faculty. To his students, he was "Matthie," always ready to receive them in his book-lined study, always prepared to help them if he could. To scholars, he was the brilliant authority on Henry and William James, and the author of a penetrating book on the times of Melville and Hawthorne, American Renaissance.
But Professor Matthiessen...