Ruth Putnam

“ The inability of the soldier, acting as statesman, to understand the diplomat is dwelt on in a fashion to show that General Grant was in the historian’s thoughts when he wrote of Count Maurice. Indeed, John of Barneveld is a reflection of autobiography almost as much as Morton’s Hope. Every point having to do with the ambitions of the individual province and the needs of the United Netherlands is coloured by the crisis through which the United States had just passed. ”

“ It sometimes happens when a boy is precocious that the reputation of being in advance of his years lingers about him after the time when a man of more normal powers makes his public appearance. But Motley began to show himself in another light than that of romancer or legislator; his essays were proving that he could conquer some of the glaring faults of his style and write on sober themes. His articles on Peter the Great, on Balzac, and on Talvi’s Geschichte der Colonisation von New England were scholarly and original. ”

“ Life was, indeed, breathed into skeleton facts—some new joints being supplied—and life, too, into years of discussion as to the eternal verity of Motley’s conception. One item in The Rise of the Dutch Republic gave Fruin especial concern. That was the use of the term “William the Silent.” He wished that the American had lent his weight towards eliminating the unsuitable adjective from the historical vocabulary. Criticism such as this of Fruin’s was the highest compliment that could have been paid to Motley. ”

“ Trollope had given forth their impressions of the United States, and their readers were not prepared for scholarly yet graceful and novel historical work.
Yet such was the rating of Ferdinand and Isabella pronounced by these competent specialists in Spanish lore. One sympathetic and appreciative review came from the hand of Count de Circourt, a man described by Lamartine as “a living chest of human knowledge,” which gave the unknown and modest American immense satisfaction. ”

“ Born the very year Prescott finished his Harvard course, Motley was two-thirds of a generation behind the elder historian. Thus, though the immediate environment of the two Bostonians was the same, the storm brewing beyond the confines of Massachusetts had burst and had forced her conservative citizens out of their aloofness, and the Commonwealth was involved in a close bond with the other units of the Union, while Motley and his labours were still in a stage to be affected, as Prescott and his work never were, by contemporaneous politics. ”

“ No publisher would look at the formidable mass of manuscript with the slightest interest. No one would believe in the chances of returns from such an expensive undertaking as its publication. Like his compatriot, Motley was obliged to take his own risks, and The Rise of the Dutch Republic was published at the author’s expense by John Chapman in London, and by Harpers in New York. The sale of fifteen thousand copies in two years proved the fallibility of human judgment. ”

“ Under the stimulus of these daily reiterations, Motley wrote two long letters, to which the Times gave prominent space, on The Causes of the Civil War. They appeared on Thursday, 23 May, and Friday, 24 May, and were reprinted in New York within a few weeks. The line of argument followed was that the United States was no confederacy from which a part could be lopped and both parts continue to live. A confederation of sovereign bodies had been tested and found wanting; then a more perfect government had been formed by the people themselves, at large, not in states as units. ”

“ It was not surprising that the American reviews were favourable. There was no one capable of passing upon the sources. That the style was easy and the story illuminating was sufficient to make people gratefully acknowledge the introduction to Spanish history at a moment when Spanish eyes were turned anxiously towards the west. But in England there were at least two scholars who knew the subject and could pass a competent opinion on the American’s work: Don Pascal de Gayangos, Spaniard and archivist in London, and Richard Forest, author of a handbook on Spain. ”

“ He was handsome, with good and sound inheritance, cultivated surroundings, sympathetic and congenial parents and well-to-do family circumstances, and he was as well equipped for intellectual life as Harvard could make him. But ill-health barred the way to active life. All the capacity for work, for the steady occupation that enriched forty years of quiet student pursuits, had to be resolutely wooed. ”

“ Fruin repeated the words at the beginning of his review. He added a cordial appreciation of the industry and conscientiousness of the American.
We have discovered no unused source.... I take it for granted that everyone has read the work of the American.... It would be a scandal if our countrymen neglected to read what the foreigner counted of sufficient importance to discuss.... Motley shines in narrative [Hij is een bekwam stylist] but he is less fortunate in his explanations of cause and effect. ”

“ In his hands Philip II was treated too severely, as was Maurice in his conflict with Barneveld. There was a lack of perspective in his every estimate. Not only that, but in making one period so dominant, he dislocated the perspective of the whole history of the Netherlands. For the last thirty years scholars in Belgium as well as Holland have been working over the ground, bringing small dark places into sober light, shading down other points too highly illuminated. A fair result will be reached at last. But the great light was a pleasant thing.
Footnotes ↑ North American Review, January, 1849. ”

“ He met scholars, such as Tieck, then at work on his translation of Shakespeare, and he learned what minute research could be. At the same time Motley retained an impressionistic attitude towards history which was wholly un-German. He always saw the past instinct with life. He is constantly reconstructing. ”

“ They like the way Motley has navigated the whole sea of difficulties but think he has lost his way on their private pools. In Holland and Belgium at the time of the appearance of The Rise of the Dutch Republic there were, among other scholars, three eminent archivists and one rising historian: Groen van Prinsterer, Bakhuysen van der Brink, and Professor Fruin in Holland, and Gachard in Brussels. ”

“ PRESCOTT § 1. Youth. To write, his first resolve; to select a topic, his second—herein lies a cardinal difference between William Hickling Prescott (1796–1859) and the typical research student who only at last commits the results of his labours to paper. Not that Prescott plunged into his task without preparation. His self-training was long and minute, but the methods were so exceptional as to be well worth noting in some detail. ”

“ It was Motley’s tendency, in general, to indulge in comparisons and metaphor that once more troubled The Saturday Review. [5] The carping critic evidently thought that all the expressions to which he objected were American. He did not realize that any worker in sixteenth century historical sources is living in the midst of just such language as was found objectionable. Sober documents are permeated with idioms not to be counted Americanisms ”

“ Novels. When the wanderer returned to Boston he continued his preparation for law, but it never became his serious profession. He had to write, and his first venture was a novel called Morton’s Hope. Published anonymously, it fell flat. Nor did it deserve success, although, at first view, the writer seems to have had both the training and the qualifications for a romancer. Foreign travel and study had widened his vision; he had really studied languages on the basis of a good preliminary education ”

“ Certainly all do not know, but they kill each other con amore, that is the way the business comes to them. Your battles are bloody; ours are wordy.” This query was, perhaps, half humorous, but the Times was in dead earnest in its opinion that the war was unjustifiable. ”

“ He had no well-based accurate knowledge of English, let alone modern languages. Accordingly, on 30 October, 1821, he planned a preliminary course to lay accurate foundations for a literary career. Blair’s Rhetoric, Lindley Murray, the introductory chapter of Johnson’s Dictionary were studied as though the student were a small schoolboy instead of a Harvard graduate of seven years standing. At the same time he ploughed through a long course of English literature. ”

“ During the remainder of his life, noted English scholars and statesmen kept up a correspondence with him. Perhaps the friendship accorded to him by Alexander von Humboldt on account of Mexico and Peru was one of the most grateful of the many won by the real merit of his literary labours. Fortunately he never lost the powers of enjoyment or of active occupation as death came very suddenly in 1859.
§ 9. Style and Methods; His Aloofness from Current Affairs. Prescott has been called a great amateur in the historical field, and in one sense, the term applies. ”

“ Exact figures seem difficult to obtain, but many thousand copies have been sold, while several editions of translations have appeared in Spain, in France, in Italy, in Germany, and in Holland.
MOTLEY § 10. Youthful Energy. John Lothrop Motley (1814–77) was like Prescott in being a son of Massachusetts and born with a silver spoon of pure Boston metal in his mouth. In each case New England gave to her child a heritage of sturdy character, of convinced opinions of the Channing school, of the finest lineage she had woven from British material ”