COOK, ALBERT STANBURROUGH (Mar. 6, 1853‑Sept. 1, 1927), scholar, was seventh in descent from Ellis Cook, who was settled at Southampton, L. L, by the year 1644, and whose great‑grandson, Ellis, removed to Morris County, N. J., about 1747. Albert's father, Frederick Weissenfels Cook (1802‑74), Of Montville, Morris County, had by a second wife, Sarah Barmore (1824‑96), three children, of whom Albert, the eldest, owed qualities of heart to his mother, and intellectual powers to his grandfather, Silas Cook (d. 1852). At the age of five he had read the Bible through, and used a dictionary. At six he began an interrupted schooling, first under a Mr. Whittlesey; at twelve he had some weeks, with a little French and Ger~ man, at Miss Crane's school in the neighboring Boonton. He spent a year or more of his frail boyhood working in New York City. At fifteen he taught in a country school at Towaco; at Taylortown some of his pupils were older than he. In after years he said that he would not take a million dollars for his experience of poverty. He graduated from the Latin‑scientific course in Rutgers College, at the head of the class of 1872, and remained for a year as tutor in mathematics. Thereafter (1873‑77) he taught at the Freehold (N. J.) Institute, continued reading poetry, privately studied Greek, and hoped to become a teacher of English at Rutgers. On his return from a year (1877‑78) at Göttingen and Leipzig, the promised position was refused him because he had censured the mismanagement of the Rutgers Grammar School. Jacob Cooper [q.v.] now recommended him to the Johns Hopkins University; Cook here became associate in English, and organized the department. Again he went abroad (1881‑82) to study Old English, first in London with Sweet, and then with Sievers in Jena, where in 1882 he won the doctorate with honors. He returned to a professorship in the University of California, whence he exerted a yet visible influence upon the schools of the state. In May 1889, he was called to Yale; at his request, in October he was entitled professor of the English language and literature. For thirty‑two years he was active in the professorship, not lecturing, but employing an inductive dialectic that was effective in turning graduate students into scholars. He was himself indefatigable in productive scholarship. When he retired in 1921 some of his best research, in the background of Old English poetry, and in Chaucer, was yet to be done. Gradually beset by angina pectoris, he still produced virtually to the end, taking his work for a patriotic as well as a Christian and universal duty, He was twice married: in 1886 to Emily Chamberlain (d. 1908) ; and in 1911 to Elizabeth Merrill. Latterly he spent his summers at Greensboro, Vt., and there did much of his constructive work with intensive hay‑farming as an avocation.

Apart from travel abroad, numerous calls to university chairs, honorary degrees, and the establishment of prizes in poetry and philosophy, the chief items in his life were his scholarly publications. Though seldom working at night, in productive capacity he was amazing, and his effect upon his pupils was catalytic. Some seventy‑five Yale Studies in English (1898) partly show his stimulus in training doctors of philosophy, who have diffused his eclectic method. A bibliography of over 300 titles speaks for his own research. In Old English, besides adapting Sievers's Grammar (1885, 1903), he published an excellent First Book (1894, 1903) for beginners, and edited Judith (1888, 1889, 1904), the Christ of Cynewulf (1900), The Dream of the Road (1905), Elene, Phoenix, and Physiologus (1919). His Literary Middle English Reader (1915) was a welcome innovation. He did much for the study of the English Bible in its origins and influence; much also for the art of poetry by editing the treatises of Sidney, Shelley, Horace, Vida, Boileau, Addison, Hunt, and Newman. A sample of his scholarly method is The Date of the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Crosses (1913). His philosophy of scholarship may be seen in a presidential address to the Modern Language Association, The Province of English Philology (1898) ; his ideals in The Artistic Ordering of Life (1898) ; his style and personal quality in his tribute to Jacob Cooper (19o6). A complete Bibliography of his writings up to 1923 was "printed for private circulation" at New Haven in that year. His publications from then on (some posthumous) are chiefly found in Speculum, Modern Language Notes, the Philological Quarterly, and the Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. This list gives no hint of his many briefer articles and notes. His interests ranged from ancient to modern literature, and in English from Cædmon to Kipling. He regarded the study of language and literature as inseparable. He united contrary powers, moving patiently, yet, where possible, swiftly. Tender‑hearted, he was uncompromising enough not to be popular. He had loyal friends, but was not prone to mingle with scholars of his own age, although he maintained a large and spirited correspondence. He lavished himself on his accepted pupils, and, hating folly and pretense, was quick to recognize intelligent endeavor. His occasional praise was remembered. The scholar and teacher in him were at one; the affair of his life was the advancement of learning, for the enrichment of private and communal well‑being.

[Speculum II (1927), 499‑501 ; Kemp Malone in The Johns Hopkins Alumni Mag., XV (1927), 116‑18; G. H. Whitman in Rutgers Alumni M, VII (1927), 28‑30; C. G. Osgood in Jour. Eng. and Germanic Philology, XXVII (1928), 289‑92; information from Mrs. Elizabeth Merrill Cook; personal acquaintance.] L.C.

From The American Dictionary of Biography, 1948.