"How remarkable is his work when we consider that he had only a few moments each day that he could devote to study! We draw from his life the same lesson as from that of Darwin. Not more than twenty minutes at a time could Darwin devote himself to his work, and rarely more than twice each day; yet see the store of knowledge he has opened up to us. With Parkman it was the same. Rarely could he study over half an hour at a time, yet left us a great monument.
"His ideal manhood was the highest and purest. It was this that made the tone of his writing so ennobling and uplifting. Above all things he abhorred fanaticism and intolerance, and very naturally, after depicting the physical and moral sufferings in the new world.
"His life was a noble lesson to students, particularly in the steadfast sticking to duty to the very last. He never appeared in public. He did not love prominence. His influence was quiet and subtle. But his name will remain long in human memory."
Among the speakers was Dr. John Fiske, who said,—
"Some thirty years ago, there appeared a history of Pontiac. It at once attracted attention because it made real men of the Indians and gave a true insight into their real character and importance in history. It was because Parkman showed a full knowledge of them that he first got hold of the world. He was more powerful than Prescott because he was true to life.
"He was a great historian because coupled with his knowledge were a philosophic insight and a poetic instinct. We can be thankful to heaven for sending us such a scholar, artist, and genius before it was too late.
"Parkman is the most American of all our historians because he deals with purely American history, but at the same time he is a historian for all mankind and all time, one of the greatest that ever lived."
The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, March, 1894, contained an appreciative article on Francis Parkman by James Schouler, the prominent law-writer, and author of "A Constitutional History of the United States." Mr. Schouler said,—
"The illustrious scholar and historian whose death we have deplored so recently, found physical drawbacks to his work to hinder and discourage. But all the greater is his meed of success because he surmounted them. His life was, on the whole, a happy one, and rounded out in rare conformity to its appointed task; he passed the Psalmist's full limit of years, as few of our English-speaking historians have done; and, however slow or painful might have been his progress, he completed in his riper years the great enterprise which he had projected in early life. Like one of those fair roses which in hours of recreation he so fondly cultivated, his literary reputation has lingered in full blossom, dispersing its delicate fragrance and beauty among all beholders."
The following tribute is from the pen of E. Irenæus Stevenson, in Harper's Weekly:—
"In Parkman's hand, history charms us as only the finer fiction can charm. Clear, sober, and elegant in his style, a natural artist in his diction, he gave picturesqueness, life, movement, to what he wished to set before his reader. The child and adult reader alike find him acceptable. He sacrificed nothing to mere literary effect,—sincerity was of his essence. Passages in his books linger in one's memory like chords of grave music; but not as if the lamp and premeditation had enabled them to be put into the page. To Americans his works are of thoroughly high interest and importance; and even in view of the impermanency of so much that is delightful, useful, and distinguished in the world's literature, it is not easy to fancy that they can be superseded."
The extracts given below are from a long review of Parkman's Life and Works, in The Nation:—
"The passing away of Francis Parkman leaves vacant the first place among American writers of history. His title to this pre-eminence has been increasingly recognized with every new contribution to the fascinating series of volumes which bear his name.… The historical reputation of Mr. Parkman—in a considerable degree contrasted with that of Prescott and Motley, and very strikingly in contrast with that of Bancroft—is seen to be one which steadily grows with more intimate acquaintance with his work. That this is the case is due not so much to the dignity of his theme and its aptitude for splendid workmanship upon it, though his theme lacks nothing in this regard, as to the personal qualities which Mr. Parkman himself brought to his undertaking,—his absolute sincerity, his painstaking perseverance, his fine moral sense, his judicial equipoise, his wholesome, uncloistered sympathy with nature and with outdoor things, his self-repression, and his chaste, unexaggerating, conscientious literary taste and skill. The result is that we have in the volumes of Mr. Parkman the most graphic and most truthful of all our American historical writings, and the ones likely longest to retain a place not alone on library shelves, but in living contact with the eyes and hearts of men."
Critics and reviewers of Parkman's works have been fond of pointing out that they read like romances, and are more fascinating than novels, and readers have not found such phrases misplaced. It may be added that Parkman has influenced writers of fiction and inclined several to select themes from his own chosen field. One of the novelists who have paid tribute to the great historian is Mary Hartwell Catherwood, author of "The Story of Tonty," "The Lady of Fort St. John," etc. She says: "The humble disciple of a great man has always some timidity in approaching him or claiming any share of his attention. I have often wished I lived in the neighborhood of Francis Parkman, and might carry a flower to his door every day and ask about his health, and once in a while let loose upon him all that flood of questions which constantly rises in the mind of a student. The prime fascination of his books, beyond their lucid style, their compact form, their glow and breadth of forest life, their presentation of transplanted Latin men and aboriginal savage as each existed, is their reliability. When you have sifted a dozen contradictory records, you may turn to him and find that he has been through much more labor before you, and long ago from just conclusions wrested the truth. There is scarcely a day in one's life when his histories are not turned to as handbooks. What a loss if he had never written them!"