As regards his historical genius, it is sufficient to say that he exhibits both sympathy and imagination. He has so completely assimilated his materials that his narrative of events is that of an eye-witness rather than that of a chronicler. Reproducing the passions, without participating in the errors of the age about which he writes, he intensely realizes everything he recounts. The siege of Antwerp and the defeat of the Spanish Armada are the two prominent and obvious illustrations of his power of pictorial description: in these he has presented facts with a vividness and coherence worthy of the great masters of poetry and romance; and his capacity of thus giving unmistakable reality to events is not merely exercised in harmony with the literal truth of things, but makes that truth more clearly appreciated. Desirous as he is to impress the imagination, he never sacrifices accuracy to effect.
The same picturesque truthfulness characterizes his descriptions of individuals. In the present volumes he has analyzed and represented a wide variety of human character, separated not only by personal, but national traits. Philip II., Farnese, and Mendoza,—Olden-Barneveld, Paul Buys, St. Aldegonde, Hohenlo, Martin Schenk, and Maurice of Nassau,—Henry III., Henry of Navarre, and the Duke of Guise,—Queen Elizabeth, Burleigh, Walsingham, Buckhurst, Leicester, Davison, Raleigh, Sidney, Howard, Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, and Norris,—all, as delineated by him, have vital reality, all palpably live and move before the eye of his mind.
The method which Mr. Motley has adopted is admirably calculated to insure accuracy as well as reality to his representation of events and persons. His plan is always to allow the statesmen and soldiers who appear in his work to express themselves in their own way, and convey their opinions and purposes in their own words. This mode is opposed to compression, but favorable to truth. Macaulay's method is to re-state everything in his own language, and according to his own logical forms. He never allows the Whigs and Tories, whose opinions and policy he exhibits, to say anything for themselves. He detests quotation-marks. His summaries are so clear and compact that, we are tempted to forget that they leave out the modifications which opinions receive from individual character. The reason that his statements are so often questioned is due to the fact that he insists on his readers viewing everything through the medium of his own mind. Mr. Motley is more objective in his representations; and his readers can dispute his summaries of character and expositions of policy by the abundant materials for differing judgment which the historian himself supplies.
Life of Andrew Jackson. By JAMES PARTON, Author of the "Life of Aaron Burr," etc., etc. 3 vols. 8vo. New York: Mason Brothers. 1860.
We criticized Mr. Parton's "Life of Aaron Burr" with considerable severity at the time of its appearance; and we are the more glad to meet with a book of his which we can as sincerely and heartily commend. The same quality of sympathy with his subject, which led him in his former work to palliate the moral obliquity and overlook the baseness of his hero, in consideration of brilliant gifts of intellect and person, gives vigor and spirit to his delineation of a character in most respects so different as that of Jackson. This man, who filled so large a place in our history, and left perhaps a stronger impress of himself on our politics than any other of our public men except Jefferson, was well worthy to be made a subject of careful study and elucidation. Mr. Parton has given us the means of understanding a character hitherto a puzzle, and deserves our hearty thanks for the manner in which he has done it.
We think the book remarkably fair in its tone, though perhaps Mr. Parton is now and then led to exaggerate the positive greatness of Jackson, who, as it appears to us, was rather eminent by comparison and contrast with the men around him. But there were many strong, if not great qualities in his composition, and so much that was picturesque and strange in the incidents of his career and the state of society which formed his character, that we have found this biography one of the most instructive and entertaining we ever read. If Mr. Parton sometimes exaggerates his hero's merits, he is also outspoken in regard to his faults. If here and there a little Carlylish, his style has the merit of great liveliness, and his pictures of frontier-life are full of interest and vivacity.
Mr. Parton begins his book with a new kind of genealogy, and one suited to our Western hemisphere, where men are valued more for what they themselves are than for what their grandfathers were,—for making than for wearing an illustrious name. He shows that Jackson came of a good stock,—pious, tenacious of opinion and purpose, and brave,—the Scotch-Irish. He then tells us how young Jackson imbibed his fierce patriotism, riding as a boy-trooper, and wellnigh dying a prisoner, during the last years of the Revolutionary War. He lets us see his hero cock-fighting, horse-racing, bad-whiskey-drinking, studying law, and fighting by turns, leaving behind him somewhat dubious but on the whole favorable memories, yet somehow getting on, till he is appointed District-Attorney among the wolves, wildcats, and redskins of Tennessee. The story of his emigration thither and his early life there is wonderfully picturesque, and told by Mr. Parton with the spirit which only sympathy can give.
A great part of the material is wholly new, and we are at last enabled to get at the real Jackson, and to gain something like an adequate and consistent conception, of him. We are particularly glad to learn the truth about Mrs. Jackson, after so many years of slander and misunderstanding, and to find something really touching and noble, instead of ludicrous, in the grim General's devotion to his first and only love. We get also for the first time an understandable account of the Battle of New Orleans, made up with praiseworthy impartiality from the accounts of both sides. Nor is it only here that the author gives us new light. He enables us to judge fairly of the sad story of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, and throws a great deal of light on many points of our political history which much needed honest illumination. The book is of especial interest at the present time, as it contains the best narrative we have ever seen of the Nullification troubles of 1832. Mr. Parton not only shows a decided talent for biography, but his work is characterized by a thoroughness of research and honesty of purpose that make it, on the whole, the best life yet written of any of our public men.
Poems. By ROSE TERRY. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1861. pp. 231.
We forget who it was that once charitably christened one of his volumes "Prose by a Poet," in order that the public might be put on their guard as to the difference between it and the others,—inexperienced critics are so apt to make mistakes! The example seems to us worth following, and, were this dangerous frankness made a point of honor in title-pages, we should be able at a glance to distinguish the books that must be bought from those that may be read. We should then see advertised "The Ten-Inch Bore, or Sermons by Rev. Canon So-and-so,"—"Essays to do Good, by a Victim of Original Sin,"—"Poems by a Proser,"—"Political Economy, by a Bankrupt," and the like. We should know, at least, what we had to expect.