There is a peculiar fitness in the word ‘monumental’ applied to Bancroft’s work. It has solidity, strength, durability, a massive and stately grandeur. It is a book which the modern reader finds it easy to neglect; but he puts it in his library and never fails to commend it to his friends, with a hypocritical expression of surprise at their not being better acquainted with it. The truth is, we are spoiled by more attractive historians. Macaulay, Froude, and Parkman have made us indolent, fond of verbal comforts and disinclined to effort. We demand not only to be instructed but to be vastly entertained at the same time. Bancroft certainly instructs; it would be difficult to prove that he also entertains. His tone of confident eulogy is often condemned. On the whole, this is a merit rather than a fault. Doubtless he admired too uniformly and too much. Many writers have taken pleasure in showing that his admiration was misplaced. And thus a balance is kept. It is a fortunate thing for American literature that Bancroft’s vast work, destined to so wide an influence, and the fruit of such immense labor, should have been conceived and written in a generous and hopeful spirit. The English reviewer who on the appearance of the first volume praised the historian because he was ‘so fearlessly honest and impartial’ might also have praised him because he was so fearlessly optimistic. This too requires courage. FOOTNOTES: [11] Bancroft was twice married. His second wife was Mrs. Elisabeth (Davis) Bliss. [12] For an account of the privileges he enjoyed in making his collections see _Winsor’s Narrative and Critical History of America_, vol. viii, p. 477. [13] W. M. Sloane. [14] T. W. Higginson in ‘The Nation,’ January, 1891. [15] Bancroft’s characteristics as a young man are admirably brought out in the recently printed selection from his letters and journals, edited by M. A. DeWolfe Howe. ‘Scribner’s Magazine,’ September and October, 1905. [16] Two volumes of the original edition correspond to one volume of the ‘author’s last revision,’ 1883–85. [17] In the ‘last revision’ Epoch Four is divided into unequal parts and the titles are reworded: Epoch first, ‘Britain overthrows the European colonial system,’ 1748–63; Epoch second, ‘Britain estranges America,’ 1763–74; Epoch third, ‘America takes up arms for self-defence and arrives at independence,’ 1774–76; Epoch fourth, ‘America in alliance with France,’ 1776--80; Epoch fifth, ‘The People of America take their equal station among the powers of the earth,’ 1780 to December, 1782. [18] J. F. Jameson speaks of Bancroft’s ‘tendency to conventionalize, to compose his American populations of highly virtuous Noah’s-ark men.’ _History of Historical Writing in America_, 1891, p. 108. V _William Hickling Prescott_ REFERENCES: