|
|
| & etc |
FEEDBACK
(C)1998-2012
All Rights Reserved.
Site last updated
13 January, 2012
|
|
|
|
Outlines of English and American Literature
The Historians
by Long, William J.
|
The honored names of Bancroft, Sparks, Prescott, Motley and
Parkman are indicative of the importance attached to history-writing in
America ever since Colonial days, and of the remarkably fine and sometimes
heroic quality of American historians. Another matter suggested by these
names is the changing standard or ideal of historical writing. In an
earlier time history was a dry chronicle of important events, or of such
events as seemed important to the chronicler; at the present day it
threatens to degenerate into an equally dry chronicle of economic forces;
and between these thirsty extremes are various highly colored records
glorifying kings or conquerors or political parties as the chief things of
history.
The Epic of History
These American historians had a different standard. They first consulted
all available records to be sure of the facts or events. Then they closely
examined the scene in which the event had come to pass, knowing that
environment is always a factor in human history. Finally they studied
historical personages, not as others had described them but as they
revealed themselves in letters, diaries, speeches,--personal records
revealing human motives that all men understand, because man is everywhere
the same. From such a combination of event, scene and characters our
historians wrote a dramatic narrative, giving it the heroic cast without
which history, the prose epic of liberty, is little better than a dull
catalogue. Another very important matter was that they cultivated their
style as well as their knowledge; they were literary men no less than
historians, and in the conviction that the first object of literature is to
give pleasure they produced works that have charmed as well as instructed a
multitude of readers. There are chapters in Prescott's Conquest of
Mexico and Conquest of Peru over which one must sit up late, as
over a novel of Scott; in Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic and
History of the United Netherlands there are scores of glowing
passages dealing with great characters or great events which stir the
reader like a tale of gallant adventure.
Prescott deals with force in action, and the action at times seems to be an
exaltation of violence and cruelty. Motley also delights in action; but he
is at heart an apostle of liberty, or perhaps we should say, of the
American ideal of liberty, and his narrative often assumes the character of
a partisan chant of freedom.
|
|
| |
