Page:Hubert Howe Bancroft His Work and His Method.djvu/14

171 the expenditure of a fortune of money and twenty-five years of such patient devotion and infinite toil as few men can boast. Over- whelmed by the magnitude of his task he had "sat for days and brooded, heart-sick and discouraged."

"If but one copy of Mr. Bancroft's books had been made [it is claimed] the cost of it would be, in time and money, a million of dollars." It was without much doubt the severest labor of its kind ever undertaken by a private individual. But it was accomplished in time to permit the author to turn his hand and brain to other and lighter work. And who is there that now regrets the creation of these volumes?

The opportunity was matchless; the subject enticing. The country was old enough to have a history, but yet the beginnings of things could be found out through research. Had not some one collected documents and manuscripts much would have fallen into certain oblivion. What have we, then, in these works of Hubert Howe Bancroft? Not completed history. Hold the work up before the canons of history writing, and it falls short at sundry vital points. It lacks unity of purpose, sense of proportion, and in numerous places orderly statement of related facts. It admits the trivial and the non-relevant, and for most part it is a heterogeneous mass of raw materials of history which has never been put through the crucible of literary style. In criticising the works of Mr. Ban- croft one should not forget the modest pretensions with which the author entered upon his task, however much he may have over- passed these after experience that led him to more exorbitant claims.1 If the work were thoroughly reliable the historical stu- dent would possess an inexhaustible fund of historical data; unfor- tunately, this has not been fully established.

(i) Thus in the preface to his Native Races (Vol. I, p. ix) we read: "Of the importance of the task undertaken, I need not say that I have formed the highest opinion. At present the few grains of wheat are so hidden by the mountain of chaff as to be of comparatively little benefit to searchers in the various branches of learning; and to sift and select from this mass, to extract from bulky tome and transient journal, from the archives of convent and mission, facts valuable to the scholar and interesting to the general reader; to arrange these facts in a natural order, and to present them in such a manner as to be of practical benefit to inquirers in the various branches of knowledge, is a work of no small importance and responsibility. And though mine is the labor of the artisan rather than that of the artist, a forging of weapons for other hands to wield, a producing of raw materials for skilled mechanics to weave and color at will, yet, in undertaking to bring to light from sources innumerable essential facts, which from the very shortness of life if from no other cause, must otherwise be left out in the physical and social generalizations which occupy the ablest minds, I feel that I engage in no idle pastime."