In April, 1876, Mr. Lewis H. Morgan printed in the _North American Review_, under the title of “Montezuma’s Dinner,” a paper in which he controverted the views expressed in the _Native Races_ regarding the kind of aboriginal civilization belonging to the Mexican and Central American table-lands. A writer of Mr. Morgan’s reputation commanded respect in all but Mr. Bancroft, who has been unwise enough to charge him with seeking “to gain notoriety by attacking” his (Mr. B.’s) views or supposed views. He dares also to characterize so well-known an authority as “a person going about from one reviewer to another begging condemnation for my _Native Races_.” It was this ungracious tone which produced a divided reception for his new venture. This, after an interval of seven years, began to make its appearance in vol. vi. of the “Works,” or vol. i. of the _History of Central America_, appearing in the autumn of 1882. The changed tone of the new series, its rhetoric, ambitious in parts, but mixed with passages which are often forceful and exact, suggestive of an ill-assorted conjoint production; the interlarding of classic allusions by some retained reviser who served this purpose for one volume at least; a certain cheap reasoning and ranting philosophy, which gives place at times to conceptions of grasp; flippancy and egotism, which induce a patronizing air under the guise of a constrained adulation of others; a want of knowledge on points where the system of indexing employed by his staff had been deficient,—these traits served to separate the criticism of students from the ordinary laudation of such as were dazed by the magnitude of the scheme. Two reviews challenging his merits on these grounds[63] induced Mr. Bancroft to reply in a tract[64] called _The Early American Chroniclers_. The manner of this rejoinder is more offensive than that of the volumes which it defends; and with bitter language he charges the reviewers with being “men of Morgan,” working in concert to prejudice his success. But the controversy of which record is here made is unworthy of the principal party to it. His important work needs no such adventitious support; and the occasion for it might have been avoided by ordinary prudence. The extent of the library upon which the work[65] is based, and the full citation of the authorities followed in his notes, and the more general enumeration of them in his preliminary lists, make the work pre-eminent for its bibliographical extent, however insufficient, and at times careless, is the bibliographical record.[66]