and Dream Life (1852), which are hardly essays certainly not critical

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but rather, as they purport to be, dreamy reflections on life. The Letters to Young People by "Timothy Titcomb " (1858) were among the earliest and most useful books of J. A. Holland (1819-1881), but his poems especially "Bittersweet " (1858) and Kathrina " (1867)— the Life of Lincoln (1865), and his later novels found a wider contemporary audience. The last two and all the others yet to be referred to as essayists lap over, in part of their work, from the present period into the succeeding one; but much of their best work, save perhaps Lowell's, lies in this field and was done before 1865.

For instance, Edwin P. Whipple (1819-1886), a discriminating critic and most conscientious scholar, especially in Elizabethan literature, gained wide distinction by his earliest writings, Essays and Reviews (1848) and Literature and Life (1849).

In 1848 Henry N. Hudson (18141886) collected the Lectures on Shakespeare that made his reputation as a Shakespearean scholar, his literary abilities and historical insight being strikingly similar in this regard to Richard Grant White (1822-1885), whose Shakespeare's Scholar appeared in 1854, his scholarly and popular edition of Shakespeare's Works from 1857 to 1863, and his Memoir of William Shakespeare in

1865.

From the earliest prose work of

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), Conversations on Some of the Old Poets (1845), down through the long list of literary, satirical, and biographical lectures, articles and books, a mixture of pendantry and Yankee whimsicality, of serious literary criticism and humorous studies of human nature was presented in a style sometimes unduly involved and tangled in allusions, but withal rich, exuberant and altogether charming. Of Lowell's poetry we shall say a word elsewhere. The quaint reflections of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), sunlight of American literature," as Frank L. Stanton characterized him, places The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1860), and The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872) somewhere between the drama and the essay. These works are "the quintessence of humor, scholarship, and satire gathered from a genial observation and ripe experience." But Holmes wrote also poetry and novels, and so will be met with again in these connections.

Historians and Biographers.

"the

There is a modern tendency to regard history as science rather than as literature, but history has had at least as large a share in the making of American literature as has any other field of study. Nearly all the earlier historical writers were men of affairs, participants in as well as recorders of the deeds described; but

in the period now under consideration a succession of brilliant men of high culture devoted themselves to exhaustive, if sometimes academic, research in historical fields, and gave to the world the results of their investigations in a pure English style that often attained classic standards.

There was a compelling fascination in the olden splendors of Spain for several of our historians, but to none did these past glories make a more romantic appeal than to Washington Irving. At intervals from 1825 to 1850 appeared his biographico-historical pictures of Spanish and Moorish events, described with a fantastic play of humor and touched with warm oriental coloring, comprising his works on Columbus, the Conquest of Granada, the Alhambra, the Conquest of Spain, and Mahomet and His Successors. His biographies of Goldsmith and of Washington have the charm and vivid imagination of all his other works; but while they cause his subjects to stand out as at least living human beings, they lack the critical qualities which now make history more nearly an exact science.

In this respect Jared Sparks (17891866), who is known also as a writer of controversial books, somewhat surpassed Irving. His methods of careful research, though below the present standards, were new in America at that time, for he ransacked papers and records in the Old World and the New in the preparation of The Life and Writings of George Washington and

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The Life of Benjamin Franklin. This biography of Washington preceded Irving's, by the way, by twenty years, and was proportionally nearer to the living personality; but Irving preserved for us a more flesh-andblood Washington than the severely critical earlier biographer could laboriously chisel out. Sparks' great work, Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, is still consulted as an indispensable contribution to Revolutionary lore. He gave us also a valuable Library of Ameri can Biography. James Parton (18221891) was a voluminous writer of biography, of which the best was his Life of Voltaire. Other notable biographies are Emerson's Thoreau and Margaret Fuller; Holmes' Motley and Emerson; Ticknor's Prescott;

Prescott's Brockden Brown.

and

The attraction of the romantic European past for American historians has just been alluded to. It seems that, like Gibbon, these writers were at their best when dealing with matters remote. This cannot, however, be asserted without qualification of George Ticknor (1791-1871), as far as the intrinsic value of his History of Spanish Literature (1849) is concerned, for, though authoritative, it is cold and lifeless in style; but he must, nevertheless, be gratefully remembered for the inspiration he brought to William H. Prescott (1796-1859) and John Lothrop Motley (18141877). Prescott wrote The Conquest of Mexico (1843) and The Conquest of

Peru (1847), while his Life of Philip the Second was left incomplete by his death. The style of these histories is perhaps rather florid, but the events. are accurately and faithfully portrayed and are the result of years of patient study. In 1857 was published Prescott's Life of Charles V. after his Abdication. Motley, "twin historian with Prescott," gave us The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856), History of the United Netherlands (18601868), and The Life and Death of John of Barneveld (1874). His writings are remarkable for their color and dramatic vigor, their picturesqueness reminding us of Carlyle. He could hardly be called a dispassionate historian, for his Spaniards, for instance, are always painted black and the Netherlanders white," and he was ” perhaps too thoroughly saturated with the American's insistence on political liberty to treat with entire impartiality any nation not entertaining the same views. Yet he is far removed from blind partisanship, while his works show untiring research and are celebrated for their clear presentation of facts.

the greatest works in American literature; or Richard Hildreth (18071865), whose History of the United States from Columbus to 1820 (1852) had little imaginative power or charm of style, yet presented with considerable merit the Federalist point of view.

On the other hand, George Bancroft (1800-1891), the greatest exponent of the Democratic view, published the first volume of his massive History of the United States in 1834, the last of the twelve tomes coming out fifty years later. His style is often stiff, labored and heavy, yet is frequently attractive and, where not over-ornamented, is often dramatic. As an authority on the three centuries of American History from Columbus to the adoption of the Constitution, Bancroft is likely to remain the standard.

By many considered the greatest of all American historians, Francis Parkman (1823-1893) wrote the historical series France and England in North America. He was the most imaginative of our historians, as befitted a student of the native American races and the gallant efforts of France to retain her hold on this continent; but philosophic withal, impartially judicial, and a mature, careful and conscientious scholar.

Although their literary standing hardly merits inclusion here, yet the pleasant and readable histories of Jacob Abbott (1803-1879), and his brother, John S. C. Abbott (18051877) have performed a distinct ser