number, on the American republic, liberty, parties, public opinion,
property, the press, demagogues, the decay of manners, individuality,
aristocrat and democrat, pronunciation, slavery, etc., etc. The
tone of the comments is intentionally censorious, and often proves
exasperating. Having been long absent from America, Cooper found
himself to a certain degree ‘in the situation of a foreigner in his own
country.’ On this account he was prepared to note peculiarities. Praise
and blame are mingled. _The American Democrat_ sets forth high ideals,
as may be seen, for example, in the suggestive essay on party. The book
is courageous but wanting in suavity.
_Sketches of Switzerland_ and _Gleanings in Europe_, comprising ten
volumes in the original editions, are studies of Continental and
English life. They contain a multitude of spirited, pungent, and true
observations. Lacking the ‘antiseptic of style,’ the books are no
longer read.
Between 1845 and 1850 Cooper published eight novels. Three of the
eight, _Satanstoe_, _The Chainbearer_, and _The Redskins_, are
narratives supposed to be drawn from the ‘Littlepage Manuscripts.’
The first is not only the best, but is also one of the most genial of
all Cooper’s novels. Corny Littlepage had attractive friends, such
as the mettlesome youth Guert Ten Eyck, a splendid specimen of the
free-handed, royally generous Dutch-American. Jason Newcome, on the
other hand, embodies Cooper’s never latent hostility to New England.
The pictures of old days in New York and Albany are brilliant and
highly finished, and the encounter with the Indians in Cooper’s most
spirited vein.
_The Crater_ is a history of the adventures of Mark Woolston of
Bristol, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who was shipwrecked on a
volcanic island in the Pacific, and with the able seaman Bob Betts
set himself to solve the problem of existence. What with gardening,
poultry-raising, boat-building, tempests, earthquakes, exploration
of neighboring islands, colonization, savages, and pirates, the book
resolves itself into one of the infinite variations of _Robinson
Crusoe_. After twenty-nine chapters of this sort of thing comes an
absurd and irrelevant conclusion.
All the later novels, _Jack Tier_, _The Sea Lions_, _Oak Openings_, and
_The Ways of the Hour_, are hard reading, yet the least happy of them
has passages betraying the master’s hand. _The Sea Lions_ stands out by
virtue of the powerful descriptions of an Antarctic winter; but neither
Captain Spike’s mission to the gulf, nor the revelation of fat, profane
Jack’s true station and sex, nor yet the malapropisms of Mrs. Budd (she
would say ‘It blew what they call a Hyson in the Chinese seas’), can
make _Jack Tier_ more than tolerable.
* * * * *
Cooper’s greatest achievements were his stories of the sea and the
forest. His real creations are sailors, backwoodsmen, old soldiers,
and Indians. Whether his red men are conceived in the spirit of modern
ethnological science can matter but little now. They are neither
so close to Chateaubriand’s idealized savage, nor so far from the
real Indian as is generally believed. That Cooper had no skill in
representing contemporary society is plain enough; but the failure
of _Home as Found_ need not have been as complete as it was. Haste
and anger must bear the blame of that literary disaster. Where he
deals with manners of the past, as in _Satanstoe_, he is often most
felicitous. With his novel of _The Bravo_ he was in line with the
Romantic movement. How far he comprehended that movement, or was
influenced by it, is a more intricate problem.
Modern literature can show but few authors more popular than Cooper. He
has been praised extravagantly; but the fact that Miss Mitford thought
him as good as Scott ought not to prejudice us against him. And he has
been damned without measure; but over against Mark Twain’s unchivalrous
attack on his great fellow countryman may be set the royally generous
tributes of Balzac and of Dumas.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Judge Cooper’s _A Guide in the Wilderness_, Dublin, 1810, was
reprinted in 1897 with an introduction by J. F. Cooper [the
Younger], throwing much light on the manners of the times and
the character of his ancestor.
[8] One of the most extraordinary of the suits arose from
criticism of the _Naval History_. Cooper had refused to take
the popular side of a heated controversy and to join in
assailing Elliott, Perry’s second in command at the Battle
of Lake Erie. The suit, against Stone of the ‘Commercial
Advertiser,’ was settled by arbitration, and in Cooper’s
favor. Lounsbury’s _Cooper_, pp. 200–230.
[9] Park Theatre, New York, March, 1822.
[10] Burton’s Theatre, New York, June, 1850.
IV
_George Bancroft_
REFERENCES:
=W. M. Sloane=: ‘George Bancroft in Society, in Politics, in
Letters,’ ‘The Century Magazine,’ January, 1887.
=S. S. Green=: ‘George Bancroft,’ _Proceedings of the American
Antiquarian Society_, April 29, 1891.
=A. McF. Davis=: ‘George Bancroft,’ _Proceedings of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences_, vol. xxvi, 1891.
I
HIS LIFE
The Bancrofts have been settled in America since 1632. Among the
historian’s ancestors were men of marked traits of character.
Bancroft’s grandfather, a farmer of Essex County, Massachusetts, had
such a reputation for piety and judgment that he was called on to act
as an umpire in the bitter dispute between Jonathan Edwards and his
church at Northampton.
The father of the historian, Aaron Bancroft, a pioneer of American
Unitarianism, was for fifty years pastor of the Second Church of
Worcester. His distinguishing trait was ‘a deep-seated abhorrence of
anything like mental slavery.’ He was an ardent student of American
history and the author of an _Essay on the Life of George Washington_
(1807), a popular book in its own day and well worth the reading in
ours. George Bancroft thought ‘that his own inclination toward history
was due very much to the influence of his father.’
There is a story (probably apocryphal) that in his youth Aaron Bancroft
fought at Lexington and Bunker Hill. During Shays’s Rebellion, when
the insurgent officers proposed to quarter themselves in private
houses at Worcester, the minister guarded his own door and told a
group of officers who approached that they were rebels, and that ‘they
would obtain no entrance to his house but by violence.’ The officers
immediately rode away.
George Bancroft was born at Worcester on October 3, 1800. He prepared
for college at Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, and was
graduated at Harvard in 1817. Edward Everett, the newly appointed
professor of Greek, who was then studying at Göttingen, urged
President Kirkland to send some graduate of marked powers to Germany
with a view to his preparing himself to teach at Harvard. The choice
fell on Bancroft. He spent two years at Göttingen and obtained his
doctorate. Among his professors were Heeren, Dissen, Eichhorn, and
Blumenbach; Heeren’s influence was the most profound and the most
lasting. His range of studies was wide, including, as it did, history,
German literature, Greek philosophy, natural history, Scripture
interpretation, Arabic, Syriac, and Persian.
From Göttingen, Bancroft went to Berlin, where he heard the lectures of
Savigny, Schleiermacher, and Hegel, and made the acquaintance of Voss,
W. von Humboldt, and F. A. Wolf. He had the fortune to meet Goethe
once at Jena, and again at Weimar. After leaving Berlin he studied
for a time at Heidelberg under Von Schlosser. In Paris he met Cousin,
Constant, and A. von Humboldt. He travelled in Switzerland and Italy,
and spent the winter of 1821–22 at Rome, where he made the acquaintance
of Niebuhr and Bunsen. At Leghorn the following spring he was one of
a party of Americans who gathered to meet Byron when the poet visited
the ‘Constitution,’ the flagship of the American squadron. Bancroft
afterwards called on Byron at Montenero, and was presented to the
Countess Guiccioli.
In the fall of 1822 Bancroft became a tutor of Greek at Harvard. The
following year he resigned his position, not to enter the ministry in
accordance with his father’s wishes, but to become a schoolmaster. He
joined his friend, Joseph G. Cogswell (the directing spirit in the
enterprise), in founding a school for boys at Round Hill, Northampton.
Emerson, then a youth of twenty, heard Bancroft preach at the ‘New
South’ in Boston soon after his return from Germany, and was ‘delighted
with his eloquence.’ ‘He needs a great deal of cutting and pruning,
but we think him an infant Hercules.’ Emerson deplored Bancroft’s new
departure, ‘because good schoolmasters are as plenty as whortleberries,
but good ministers assuredly are not, and Bancroft might be one of the
best.’
On the eve of leaving Cambridge, Bancroft published, under the title of
_Poems_, a volume of correct if not inspired verse. At Northampton his
literary activity found more sober expression in text-books, in papers
for the ‘North American Review’ and Walsh’s ‘American Quarterly,’ and
in a careful translation of Heeren’s _Politics of Ancient Greece_
(1824). At the celebration of Independence Day at Northampton in 1826,
Bancroft was the orator. He chanted the present glory of America,
predicted a golden future, and declared his faith in a ‘determined
uncompromising democracy.’ These notes were to be heard again and often
in his great history.
Round Hill, though prosperous in many ways, was not a success
financially, nor were the partners wholly congenial. After seven years
Bancroft withdrew from the school and began writing the book on which
his fame rests. In 1834 appeared the first volume of _A History of
the United States from the discovery of the American continent to the
present time_. The second volume was published in 1837, the third in
1840.
The historian removed to Springfield and became prominent in state
politics. He was an ardent Democrat and a strong opponent of slavery.
Elected without his knowledge to the legislature, he refused to take
his seat; he also declined a nomination to the senate. It is said that
he took this attitude with respect to office-holding out of deference
to the feelings of his wife, Sarah (Dwight) Bancroft, who came of
a prominent Whig family. Mrs. Bancroft died in 1837.[11] Appointed
Collector of the Port of Boston by President Van Buren, Bancroft held
the office from 1838 to 1841, and administered its affairs with a
thoroughness theretofore unknown, and in a way incidentally to reflect
great credit on the profession of letters.
In 1844 Bancroft was the Democratic candidate for governor of
Massachusetts and polled a large vote, but was defeated by George N.
Briggs. A year later he became Secretary of the Navy under President
Polk. In the exercise of his duties he gave the order to take
possession of California, and as acting Secretary of War the order to
General Taylor to occupy Texas.
During his secretaryship Bancroft founded the United States Naval
Academy at Annapolis. This he brought about not by asking Congress to
authorize its establishment, but by so interpreting the powers granted
him under the law that he was able to set in operation a school for
the training of midshipmen and offer it to Congress for approval. Once
the school was established and its usefulness proved, there was no
difficulty in securing funds for adequate equipment. The Academy was
formally opened on October 10, 1845.
From 1846 to 1849 Bancroft was minister to England. There were
important diplomatic problems to be solved, but his triumphs were
chiefly literary and social. He accumulated a rich store of documents,
and on his return to America made his home in New York and devoted
himself anew to the _History_.[12] The fourth volume appeared in 1852;
the fifth in 1853; the sixth in 1854; the seventh in 1858; the eighth
in 1860; the ninth in 1866; the tenth and concluding volume in 1874.
His _Literary and Historical Miscellanies_ appeared in 1855.
When the New York Historical Society celebrated the close of the first
half-century of its existence (1854), Bancroft was the orator. His
address on that occasion, ‘The Necessity, the Reality, and the Promise
of the Progress of the Human Race,’ has been pronounced the best
exposition of his historical creed.[13]
Bancroft was a strong Union man and during the Civil War acted with
the Republican party. He declined a nomination to Congress from the
eighth district of New York (October, 1862), on the ground that a
multiplication of candidates would leave the result very much to
chance; there should be a union, he urged, of all those ‘who feel
deeply for their country in this her hour of peril.’ At the close
of the war he was chosen to pronounce the eulogy on Lincoln before
Congress (February, 1866).
President Johnson, in 1867, appointed Bancroft minister to Prussia.
Later he was accredited to the North German Confederation, and in
1872, following current political changes, to the German Empire. He
brought about that notable treaty whereby Germans who had become
citizens of the United States were freed from allegiance to the land
of their birth. Never before by a ‘formal act’ had the principle of
‘renunciation of citizenship at ‘the will of the individual been
recognized.’ England followed Germany’s example and gave over her
claim of indefeasible allegiance. Another diplomatic triumph was the
settlement of the North-western boundary dispute. While in Germany
Bancroft celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation
at Göttingen. The University gave him an honorary degree, and
congratulations were showered on him from scholars, statesmen, princes,
and men of letters.
After nearly eight years of service Bancroft was recalled from the
German mission at his own request. He lived in Washington during the
winter months and spent the summers at Newport as had long been
his habit. The work of his later years included two revisions of
the _History_ (1876 and 1884), a _History of the Formation of the
Constitution of the United States_ (1882), _A Plea for the Constitution
of the United States of America, wounded in the House of its Guardians_
(1886), and a sketch of the public life of Martin Van Buren (1889).
Bancroft died in Washington on January 17, 1891.
II
HIS CHARACTER
Bancroft’s character was fashioned on a large scale. His mental horizon
was broad, his power to plan and carry out a vast undertaking was
commensurate with the reach of his vision. There was little in his
habit of thought to suggest the narrowness so often associated with the
name of scholar. Yet he had the infinitely laborious powers of the mere
scholar. He could toil with unflagging energy day by day or year by
year.
The magisterial note in his historical writings is due not alone to the
subject or to the literary manner, but also to the deliberate tenacity
of purpose with which the historian wrought. Such a work is the
product, not of feverish spasms of intellectual activity, but of even
and steady effort.
Bancroft has been accused of a want of enthusiasm in receiving critical
observations on his work. It is a question whether historians (more
than philosophers) are wont to receive with rapture proofs that they
are possibly in the wrong. Bancroft’s tone of controversy is perhaps
less peculiar to himself than is commonly asserted. However, it must be
kept in mind that he had a ‘strong nervous personality.’
Emerson described the greeting he had from Bancroft in London. When
he presented himself at the minister’s door, ‘it was opened by Mr.
Bancroft himself in the midst of servants whom that man of eager
manners thrust aside, saying that he would open his own door for me.
He was full of goodness and talk.’ Other accounts of him give an
impression of much stateliness of manner tempered by affability. Still
others convey the idea that he was always artificial, and sometimes
playful with a playfulness that bordered on frivolity. A friend[14]
professed to detect in Bancroft’s bearing marks of the man of letters,
diplomat, politician, preacher and pedagogue, one trait superimposed on
another. But the blend of characteristics was charming.[15]
III
THE WRITER
The charge brought against Bancroft of having embellished his themes
with ‘cheap rhetoric’ is unjust. Rhetorical the historian undoubtedly
was, but the rhetoric was not cheap. It had the merit of sincerity;
it was the result of an honest effort to present important facts and
comments in becoming garb.
In 1834 the style thought appropriate to historical writing was
markedly oratorical. Historians addressed their readers. A pomp of
expression, something almost liturgical, was held seemly if not indeed
of last importance. Reading their works, one involuntarily calls up a
vision of grave gentlemen in much-wrinkled frock-coats, making stilted
gestures, and looking even more unreal than their statues which now
terrify posterity. Bancroft was affected by the prevailing drift
towards oratorical forms. At times one is tempted to exclaim: ‘This was
not meant to be read but to be heard.’
Take for example this passage on Sebastian Cabot: ‘He lived to an
extreme old age and loved his profession to the last; in the hour of
death his wandering thoughts were upon the ocean. The discoverer of
the territory of our country was one of the most extraordinary men of
his age; there is deep cause for regret that time has spared so few
memorials of his career. Himself incapable of jealousy, he did not
escape detraction. He gave England a continent, and no one knows his
burial place.’
Not to enter into the question whether this is good, or indifferent, or
even bad writing, it is sufficient to note that the passage in question
belongs to spoken discourse rather than to literature. It appeals to
us, if at all, through the medium of the ear rather than the eye.
Take for another example the comparison of Puritan and Cavalier:
Historians have loved to eulogize ‘the manners and virtues, the glory
and the benefits of chivalry. Puritanism accomplished for mankind
far more. If it had the sectarian crime of intolerance, chivalry had
the vices of dissoluteness. The knights were brave from gallantry of
spirit; the puritans from the fear of God. The knights were proud of
loyalty, the puritans of liberty. The knights did homage to monarchs,
in whose smile they beheld honor, whose rebuke was the wound of
disgrace; the puritans, disdaining ceremony, would not bend the knee
to the King of kings. The former valued courtesy; the latter justice.
The former adorned society by graceful refinements; the latter founded
national grandeur on universal education. The institutions of chivalry
were subverted by the gradually increasing weight, and knowledge, and
opulence, of the industrious classes; the puritans, relying on those
classes, planted in their hearts the undying principles of democratic
liberty.’
Passages such as these are often employed as a rhetorical flourish
at the end of a chapter. They are analogous to what actors call
‘making a good exit.’ In Bancroft they constitute for pages together
the prevailing rather than the exceptional form. The reader, whether
conscious of it or not, is kept on a strain. At last he grows
uncomfortable. He wishes the historian would cease to declaim, would
come down from the rostrum, throw aside his academic robes, and be
neighborly and familiar.
This _History_ was so long in the writing that Bancroft’s style changed
materially. The opinion prevails that his diction improved as the
work proceeded, that the later volumes are uniformly less inflated,
strained, and ‘eloquent’ than the earlier ones. It is true that he
made innumerable revisions of the text. The changes were not always
improvements. Sometimes in rewriting a sentence he made it less
energetic. Strong expressions were softened. A plain old-fashioned word
would be taken out; often it carried the whole phrase with it. Whether
the literary or the historical sense dictated the change in question
cannot always be determined.
Bancroft’s diction is manly and forceful, but it lacks natural grace
and suppleness; it is flexible as chain armor is flexible, but not
as is the human body. It may be doubted whether he is ever read for
literary pleasure. Nevertheless, scattered through these twelve volumes
are hundreds of passages well worth the study of those who enjoy an
exhibition of mastery in the use of words.
IV
_THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES_
One does well to read Bancroft in the tall, wide-margined, and almost
sumptuous volumes of the original editions. The page is open and
inviting. Both text and notes have a personal flavor very diverting at
times. There is no question as to the usefulness of an attractive page
in works of this sort. Political histories should be made easy, not by
picture-book methods, but by the legitimate arts of good printing.
The work is generously planned. Twelve octavo volumes are required to
bring the narrative down to the ratification of the constitution.[16]
Three volumes, comprising nearly fifteen hundred pages, are given to
the Colonial period alone.
Bancroft announced his theory of historical writing in the preface of
1834. He was to be controlled always by ‘the principles of historical
scepticism,’ and his narrative was to be drawn ‘from writings and
sources which were contemporaries of the events that are described.’
Nothing commonly supposed to belong to American history was to be
retained merely because it had been unchallenged by former historians.
The treatment, as shown in these volumes on the Colonial period, is
in perfect accord with the author’s conception of the dignity of the
subject. The matter is as stately as the manner. Bancroft writes
history as a lord high chamberlain conducts a court function. He feels
that during the ceremony of discovering a world and planting a nation
there should be no unseemliness, certainly no laughter or disturbance.
The characters go through their evolutions like well-drilled courtiers.
So stately are they as to appear scarce human. Homely and familiar
traits are almost completely suppressed. The founders of America, as we
see them looming in the pages of Bancroft, are not men but incarnate
ideas. They are the embodiment of principles and virtues. Winthrop is
enlightened conservatism, Vane is generous impetuosity, Roger Williams
is liberty of conscience. Strive how we will to bring these men nearer,
to make them tangible, the effort is not wholly successful. These
figures of the past, like the characters of a morality-play, persist in
remaining personified ideas.
As a reaction against ‘classical’ history comes history of the
gossiping school. ‘Thanks to you,’ said Brunetière, welcoming Masson
to the French Academy, ‘we now know the exact number of Napoleon’s
shirts.’ Bancroft was not interested in the spindles and shoe-buckles
of the Puritans. Many people are, but they must find elsewhere the
gratification they seek. Whoever wishes at any time absolutely to
escape anecdotage, homely detail, and piquant gossip, has it always
in his power to do so; he can read Bancroft’s three volumes on the
Colonial period and dwell among abstractions.
Even if not at this stage of his career the most human of writers,
Bancroft is a comforting historian to return to, after having dwelt
for a while with those who instruct us how low and mercenary in
motive, how impervious to liberal ideas, were the men who planted
English civilization in America. Historical iconoclasts all, they are
frightfully convincing. Some of their arguments lose a degree of force
as it dawns on the reader that Seventeenth-century men are being judged
by Nineteenth-century standards. When Bancroft wrote, the habit of
abusing the ancestors had not become deep-seated.
Turning from the Colonial period, the historian takes up the period
of the American Revolution. Seven volumes are required for telling
the story. The logical arrangement is by ‘epochs.’ They are four in
number: ‘Overthrow of the European Colonial system,’ ‘How Great
Britain estranged America,’ ‘America declares itself independent,’ ‘The
Independence of America is acknowledged.’[17]