Mr. Bancroft as a writer of history was subject to certain influences likely to be felt in his treatment of facts, which did not affect his coworkers. One great object was of course to make the work popular. It was with this end in view that much attention was given to literary finish and typographical features. It was his practice to have a writer employed for the purpose go over his own manuscripts and sometimes those of his assistants to add "classical allusions," as he termed them, for rhetorical effect. He himself was given to the reading of English classics--Carlyle's works are especially mentioned by his friends--as a means of acquiring a good literary style. To stimulate the reader's attention, he occasionally made a side remark of such a ludicrous character as to be startling when one comes upon it in a perfectly serious paragraph. Mrs. Victor often laughed over the interlineation in a paragraph written by her on the Oregon boundary question of the words: "Man is a preposterous pig; probably the greediest animal that crawls upon this planet": (Oregon, I, 592.) In passing upon the work of his corps of writers, one who combined the duties of financier as well as editor of the work either consciously or unconsciously must have been influenced by the question whether the treatment of the subject before him was such as would please the people in the locality whose history was being written. The Mormon turn given the History of Utah by the toning down of certain incidents which other historians have "shrunk from contemplating" occurs to us as a case in point: (Frances Fuller Victor in _Salt Lake Tribune_, April 14, 1893; _New York Mail and Express_, November 23d). The publication of the Chronicles before all of the volumes of history were out could hardly have lessened this tendency, as a favorable mention of a man in the history would naturally tend to make him more approachable upon the subject of contributing to that work. Upon the back of the letter to Mrs. Victor instructing her to give prominence to certain dictations, which he admits are practically worthless, is written in her hand the legend, "Ways that are dark and tricks that are vain." As a result of complaint, changes were sometimes made in the text, even after the first edition was out: (Pamphlet, Proceedings of the Society of California Pioneers in Reference to the Histories of Hubert Howe Bancroft).