Although it is generally accepted that T. S. Eliot was the most illustrious of Irving Babbitt’s students at Harvard, no agreement exists on who is next in line. The usual candidates are Walter Lippmann and Van Wyck Brooks. Judged from the perspective of international reputation, however, there can be no doubt that the most widely-known and perhaps the most influential of the great humanist’s students was a native Chinese, Lin Yutang (1895-1976), novelist and nominee for the Nobel Prize in literature. . . .