Brantz Mayer

“ In seventeen years, and at the age of fifty-one, he had won the highest honors of literature, and the right to have his name linked forever, throughout the world, with the names of Franklin and Washington. Nor were these honors less dear to him when he reflected that he had reached the mature age of thirty-four before he had a real purpose in life, and that, in spite of adverse fortune, he had accomplished his designs by the force of character, by self-denial and indomitable industry. ”

“ The career of a scholar is generally uneventful, seldom possessing those stirring traits which give dramatic interest to public characters [Pg 29] of less quiet pursuits. Mr. Sparks was not an exception to this rule. His life is in his works; for, as long as he could work well he was a worker for his country.
The few and simple facts I have told of this gentle student's struggles and success, show that his labors were mostly in the field of History. But, the field of History is large and sub-divided. It comprehends Annals, Chronicles, Memoirs, Biography ”

“ Sparks as a self-made man I use the phrase in a sense of intellectual progress and success, founded on self-relying discipline,—of mental culture and mental fruit, bringing him up to honorable fame from low obscurity,—making him a lasting power in our nation, nay, throughout the world, in our best society, in our literature, in our institutions of learning ”

“ No American, of acknowledged superiority, has yet equalled George Bancroft in the breadth of his theme, the extent of time and place covered, the variety of character, circumstance, and nationality concerned, the corresponding research, the sparkling story, and the philosophic analysis of his National History.
Prescott, the prince of scholars and gentlemen, matchless in the department he chose, was rather a biographer than a historian. ”

“ He was to run the career of a man of letters, and in a country hardly ripe for literary production. American history was to be his occupation; all things else became subservient to this great purpose. He had conceived the project of collecting the correspondence of Washington, and of gathering all the accessible documents in this country and Europe necessary for an authentic life of the great chief. On his first application for the Washington manuscripts, which Mr. Justice Bushrod Washington had intended to edit, Mr. Sparks was told, much as he was respected, he could by no means have them. ”

“ Sparks's demeanor to the Harvard scholars, which is worthy of repetition: One of the pupils, as he left the recitation-room, made a noise derisive of a tutor. The tutor stated the fact to the faculty, with the names of several, who, if not guilty, might know the real offender. They were summoned before the faculty, and President Sparks was desired to ask them, one by one, "if they made the noise, or, knew who made it?" Dr. Sparks had previously said to the faculty that they could not expect to get the information thus, or suppose the boys would inform on their fellows ”

“ This was a great honor, won in ten years, by the Harvard student of 1811; and although his election alarmed the clergy and laity of other Christian denominations, and a member of Congress declared they had "voted Christ out of the House," still, in time, Congress learned to know him better, to admit the tolerance of his catholic spirit, and to honor him with increased confidence. But, in 1823, after four years of labor in our city, Mr. Sparks's health became so much impaired that he resolved to retire from the Church entirely, and devote himself exclusively to literature. ”

“ No man can charge him with hasty or capricious censure. He was always the careful protector of human reputation, dealing with the unresisting and undefending dead as their advocate as well as righteous judge ”

“ President Kirkland used to say, in his quaint way, "Sparks is not only a man, but a man and a-half." He graduated with high honors. In his senior year he gained the Bowdoin prize for an essay on the physical discoveries of [Pg 10] Sir Isaac Newton, an essay which is remembered in the traditions of the University as "a masterpiece of analytic exposition, philosophical method, lucid and exact statement." ”

“ Sparks was what we call, in America, a self-made man. Although his life is a fair illustration of what an industrious person of talent and common sense may compass by decision of character and a high aim, my object in these observations is not to draw from his biography what has been aptly called "ostentatious precepts and impertinent lessons." By a self-made man I do not mean to class Mr. ”

“ Sparks's important contributions to our national stores. It has been said that he contemplated a History of the Foreign Diplomacy of the Revolution, and it is quite certain that he intended to write a History of the Revolution, itself, preceding it, probably, by several volumes on our Colonial history. As I heard Mr. Irving once say that the biography of Washington was not a task to his liking, for "he had no private life" to give it the personal interest essential to secure the reader's sympathy ”

“ Sparks with that large and influential body of citizens whose portraits adorn the illustrated newspapers, and whose memoirs disclose the opinion [Pg 4] that the making of a great deal of money is the making of a very exemplary man. ”

“ This was the finale of a career of successful labor extending through thirty-eight years. His Presidency was [Pg 25] acceptable as well as popular; especially commanding the confidence and affectionate respect of the pupils. He was no martinet, but fostered the manhood of the generation entrusted to his government. A friend who was present in Cambridge, and well acquainted with Mr. Sparks's administration of the Presidency, tells me that its peculiarity was the parental character of his intercourse with the under-graduates. ”

“ Sparks required a Life of Jonathan Edwards for his American Biography, he selected Dr. Miller to write it, and, in the truly liberal spirit that [Pg 13] always governed his editorial labors, and, indeed, his whole literary life, published the memoir of the great Calvanist "without the alteration of a single word." It was here, too, in Baltimore, in consequence of a sermon against Unitarianism by the late Rev. Dr. Wm. E. Wyatt, of St. Paul's, that Mr. Sparks published his volume of Letters on the Ministry, Ritual, and Doctrines of the Protestant Episcopal Church. ”

“ In his style, he was an artless artist, if there is truth in Thackeray's observation, that the "true artist makes you think of a great deal more than the objects before you." His extreme calmness may have, sometimes, made him cold ”

“ The President, however, wrote a note to his father, saying he considered it no dishonor, as young men did not often have such opportunities to show themselves frank and noble. (Memoir of Sparks, Hist. Mag., vol. x., p. 153.)
[3] No candid student in lauding Mr. Sparks, should fail to acknowledge our debt of gratitude to Peter Force, for his vast and successful labors in recovering and rendering accessible the large stores of materials for American history and biography contained in the "American Archives." ”

“ The first fruits of these domestic and foreign studies was Mr. Sparks's valuable publication, in 1829-30, of the Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution; followed, after two years, by the Life of Gouverneur Morris, with selections from his correspondence and miscellaneous papers. ”

“ He went to Europe to complete his researches; and the national [Pg 19] and private archives of France and England, which had hitherto been closed to American students, were soon unlocked for him through the personal solicitations in his favor of Sir James Mackintosh, Mr. Lockhart, Mr. Hamilton, Lord Landsdowne, and Lord Holland, in Great Britain, and of General Lafayette, Monsieur Guizot, and Monsieur de Marbois in France;—another proud achievement by the charity student of 1811. I may add here, at once, that Mr. Sparks paid a second visit to Europe in 1840, in order to examine its archives ”

“ These are the silk-worms of literature, whose glory is spun from the digested leaves of other men's culture. It was his habit, when allusions were made to such appropriations, to find sufficient reward in his own diligence, and to comfort himself for this "way of the world" by a patient shrug and a pinch of snuff. [3] Irving, in his advanced life, [Pg 32] could never have written his Washington, had not Sparks organized his twelve volumes of materials, and analysed them in the biography. That work must be studied, in order to be appreciated in relation to Mr. ”

“ The years 1816 and 1817 were passed by the graduate in teaching a private school at Lancaster, Massachusetts. He finished his college course at the advanced age of twenty-six, and had now added two years more to the score. At Lancaster he cultivated those habits of methodical industry which always characterized him afterwards. ”