In 1861 Mr. Ephraim George Squier published at New York a monograph on authors who had written in the languages of Central America, enumerating one hundred and ten, with a list of the books and manuscripts on the history, the aborigines, and the antiquities of Central America, borrowed from other sources in part. At the sale of Mr. Squier’s library in 1876, the catalogue[55] of which was made by Mr. Sabin, the entire collection of his manuscripts fell, as mentioned elsewhere,[56] into the hands of Mr. Hubert Howe Bancroft of San Francisco.
Probably the largest collection of books and manuscripts[57] which any American has formed for use in writing is that which belongs to Mr. Bancroft. He is the organizer of an extensive series of books on the antiquities and history of the Pacific coast. To accomplish an examination of the aboriginal and civilized history of so large a field[58] as thoroughly as he has unquestionably made it, within a lifetime, was a bold undertaking, to be carried out in a centre of material rather than of literary enterprise. The task involved the gathering of a library of printed books, at a distance from the purely intellectual activity of the country, and where no other collection of moment existed to supplement it. It required the seeking and making of manuscripts, from the labor of which one might well shrink. It was fortunate that during the gathering of this collection some notable collections—like those of Maximilian,[59] Ramirez, and Squier, not to name others—were opportunely brought to the hammer, a chance by which Mr. Bancroft naturally profited.
Mr. Bancroft had been trained in the business habits of the book trade, in which he had established himself in San Francisco as early as 1856.[60] He was at this time twenty-four years old, having been born of New England stock in Ohio in 1832, and having had already four years residence—since 1852—in San Francisco as the agent of an eastern bookseller. It was not till 1869 that he set seriously to work on his history, and organized a staff of assistants.[61] They indexed his library, which was now large (12,000 volumes) and was kept on an upper floor of his business quarters, and they classified the references in paper bags.[62] His first idea was to make an encyclopædia of the antiquities and history of the Pacific Coast; and it is on the whole unfortunate that he abandoned the scheme, for his methods were admirably adapted to that end, but of questionable application to a sustained plan of historical treatment. It is the encyclopedic quality of his work, as the user eliminates what he wishes, which makes and will continue to make the books that pass under his name of the first importance to historical students.
In 1875 the first five volumes of the series, denominated by themselves The Native Races of the Pacific States, made their appearance. It was clear that a new force had been brought to bear upon historical research,—the force of organized labor from many hands; and this implied competent administrative direction and ungrudged expenditure of money. The work showed the faults of such a method, in a want of uniform discrimination, and in that promiscuous avidity of search, which marks rather an eagerness to amass than a judgment to select, and give literary perspective. The book, however, was accepted as extremely useful and promising to the future inquirer. Despite a certain callowness of manner, the Native Races was extremely creditable, with comparatively little of the patronizing and flippant air which its flattering reception has since begotten in its author or his staff. An unfamiliarity with the amenities of literary life seems unexpectedly to have been more apparent also in his later work.
In April, 1876, Mr. Lewis H. Morgan printed in the North American Review, under the title of “Montezuma’s Dinner,” a paper in which he controverted the views expressed in the Native Races regarding the kind of aboriginal civilization belonging to the Mexican and Central American table-lands. A writer of Mr. Morgan’s reputation commanded respect in all but Mr. Bancroft, who has been unwise enough to charge him with seeking “to gain notoriety by attacking” his (Mr. B.’s) views or supposed views. He dares also to characterize so well-known an authority as “a person going about from one reviewer to another begging condemnation for my Native Races.” It was this ungracious tone which produced a divided reception for his new venture. This, after an interval of seven years, began to make its appearance in vol. vi. of the “Works,” or vol. i. of the History of Central America, appearing in the autumn of 1882.
The changed tone of the new series, its rhetoric, ambitious in parts, but mixed with passages which are often forceful and exact, suggestive of an ill-assorted conjoint production; the interlarding of classic allusions by some retained reviser who served this purpose for one volume at least; a certain cheap reasoning and ranting philosophy, which gives place at times to conceptions of grasp; flippancy and egotism, which induce a patronizing air under the guise of a constrained adulation of others; a want of knowledge on points where the system of indexing employed by his staff had been deficient,—these traits served to separate the criticism of students from the ordinary laudation of such as were dazed by the magnitude of the scheme.
Two reviews challenging his merits on these grounds[63] induced Mr. Bancroft to reply in a tract[64] called The Early American Chroniclers. The manner of this rejoinder is more offensive than that of the volumes which it defends; and with bitter language he charges the reviewers with being “men of Morgan,” working in concert to prejudice his success.
But the controversy of which record is here made is unworthy of the principal party to it. His important work needs no such adventitious support; and the occasion for it might have been avoided by ordinary prudence. The extent of the library upon which the work[65] is based, and the full citation of the authorities followed in his notes, and the more general enumeration of them in his preliminary lists, make the work pre-eminent for its bibliographical extent, however insufficient, and at times careless, is the bibliographical record.[66]
The library formed by the late Henry C. Murphy of Brooklyn to assist him in his projected history of maritime discovery in America, of which only the chapter on Verrazano[67] has been printed, was the creation of diligent search for many years, part of which was spent in Holland as minister of the United States. The earliest record of it is a Catalogue of an American library chronologically arranged, which was privately printed in a few copies, about 1850, and showed five hundred and eighty-nine entries between the years 1480 and 1800.[68]
