Page:Hubert Howe Bancroft His Work and His Method.djvu/10

167 take 400 years to go through the library in a superficial way.* The index thus prepared has subsequently been found rather seriously defective, and a complete new index has been made since the Collection was acquired by the University of California. However it will be recalled that library science was in its infancy when Bancroft undertook the work.

Bancroft's great plan unfolded itself gradually. Otherwise, he informs us, he would have lacked courage to undertake so vast a work. "At the beginning of my literary pilgrimage I did little but flounder in a slough of despond." (235) "It was because I was led on by my fate, following blindly in paths where there was no returning, that I finally became so lost in my labors that my only way out was to finish them. ... I cannot but feel that in this great work I was but the humble instrument of some power mightier than I, call it fate, providence, environment, or what you will." (3)

His first intention had been to publish a bibliography of the Pacific Coast, but before that year (1870) ended his passionate fondness for writing had found expression in quite a pile of manu- script. "Literature is my love, a love sprung from my brain, no less my child than the offspring of my body." The plan of an encyclopedia of the Pacific States was proposed by several. This task Bancroft did not fancy, but finally consented to superintend such a work.

Considerable interest was taken in the projected work, and a pros- pectus was printed. But meantime he went on writing, for he could not do otherwise. "Whoever has lived, laboring under the terrible pressure of the cacoethes scribendi without promising him- self to write a dozen books for every one accomplished I" (226) Interest in the cyclopedia waned, and an incident in the summer of 1871 brought him to the decision to aim high. He was roused from his lethargy by the remark of an influential lady who con- fronted him with the words: "The next ten years will be the best of your life; what are you going to do with them?" (227) From that day there was less wavering.

The magnitude of Bancroft's self-imposed task was such as to render ordinary methods of history writing absolutely inadequate. Clearly some co-operative system must be devised. The work must be the joint result of many hands and many brains. It will be well to notice a few of the numerous assistants employed in the library. Of the more responsible laborers there were about twenty, while there were probably 600 in all in the library; during thirty years the number seldom fell below twelve, and sometimes ran as high as fifty.

2 Literary Industries, 233.