After nearly eight years of service Bancroft was recalled from the German mission at his own request. He lived in Washington during the winter months and spent the summers at Newport as had long been his habit. The work of his later years included two revisions of the History (1876 and 1884), a History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States (1882), A Plea for the Constitution of the United States of America, wounded in the House of its Guardians (1886), and a sketch of the public life of Martin Van Buren (1889).
Bancroft died in Washington on January 17, 1891.
II
HIS CHARACTER
Bancroft’s character was fashioned on a large scale. His mental horizon was broad, his power to plan and carry out a vast undertaking was commensurate with the reach of his vision. There was little in his habit of thought to suggest the narrowness so often associated with the name of scholar. Yet he had the infinitely laborious powers of the mere scholar. He could toil with unflagging energy day by day or year by year.
The magisterial note in his historical writings is due not alone to the subject or to the literary manner, but also to the deliberate tenacity of purpose with which the historian wrought. Such a work is the product, not of feverish spasms of intellectual activity, but of even and steady effort.
Bancroft has been accused of a want of enthusiasm in receiving critical observations on his work. It is a question whether historians (more than philosophers) are wont to receive with rapture proofs that they are possibly in the wrong. Bancroft’s tone of controversy is perhaps less peculiar to himself than is commonly asserted. However, it must be kept in mind that he had a ‘strong nervous personality.’
Emerson described the greeting he had from Bancroft in London. When he presented himself at the minister’s door, ‘it was opened by Mr. Bancroft himself in the midst of servants whom that man of eager manners thrust aside, saying that he would open his own door for me. He was full of goodness and talk.’ Other accounts of him give an impression of much stateliness of manner tempered by affability. Still others convey the idea that he was always artificial, and sometimes playful with a playfulness that bordered on frivolity. A friend[14] professed to detect in Bancroft’s bearing marks of the man of letters, diplomat, politician, preacher and pedagogue, one trait superimposed on another. But the blend of characteristics was charming.[15]
III
THE WRITER
The charge brought against Bancroft of having embellished his themes with ‘cheap rhetoric’ is unjust. Rhetorical the historian undoubtedly was, but the rhetoric was not cheap. It had the merit of sincerity; it was the result of an honest effort to present important facts and comments in becoming garb.
In 1834 the style thought appropriate to historical writing was markedly oratorical. Historians addressed their readers. A pomp of expression, something almost liturgical, was held seemly if not indeed of last importance. Reading their works, one involuntarily calls up a vision of grave gentlemen in much-wrinkled frock-coats, making stilted gestures, and looking even more unreal than their statues which now terrify posterity. Bancroft was affected by the prevailing drift towards oratorical forms. At times one is tempted to exclaim: ‘This was not meant to be read but to be heard.’