III THE NEW ENGLAND SCHOLARS AND HISTORIANS REFERENCES GENERAL REFERENCES: Justin Winsor, "Libraries in Boston," Memorial History of Boston, IV, 235 ff; A. B. Hart, "The American School of Historians," International Monthly, Vol. II, No. 3 (September, 1900); J. F. Jameson, The History of Historical Writing in America, Boston: Houghton, 1891. SPARKS WORKS: No collected edition of Sparks's writings. The chief titles are: Library of American Biography, first series, 10 vols., Boston: Hilliard, Gray & Co., 1834-38; second series, 15 vols., Boston: Little & Brown, 1844-48; Washington's Writings, 12 vols., Boston: Hilliard, Gray & Co., 1834-37; Franklin's Works, 10 vols., Boston: Hilliard, Gray & Co., 1836– 40; Correspondence of the American Revolution, 4 vols., Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1853; The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, 12 vols., Boston: N. Hale and Gray & Bowen, 1829-30. BIOGRAPHY, CRITICISM, AND BIBLIOGRAPHY: H. B. Adams, The Life and Writings of Jared Sparks, 2 vols., Boston: Houghton, 1893. SELECTIONS: Stedman and Hutchinson, V, 191-196. TICKNOR WORKS: History of Spanish Literature, 3 vols., New York: Harper, 1849; Life of William Hickling Prescott, Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1864. There is no uniform edition of Ticknor's works. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM: The Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, 2 vols., Boston: Osgood, 1876. (Prepared by G. S. Hillard, with Mrs. and Miss Ticknor.) BIBLIOGRAPHY: Foley, 293-294. SELECTIONS: Duyckinck, II, 232-235; Stedman and Hutchinson, V, 240-248. PRESCOTT WORKS: Works, ed. J. F. Kirk, 12 vols., Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1890-92. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM: George Ticknor, Life of William Hickling Prescott, Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1864; Rollo Ogden, William Hickling Prescott, Boston: Houghton, 1904 (AML). BIBLIOGRAPHY: Foley, 232-233. SELECTIONS: *Carpenter, 175-186; Duyckinck, II, 237-242; *Stedman and Hutchinson, V, 399-428. MOTLEY WORKS: Historical Works, 17 vols., New York: Harper, 1900; Letters, ed. G. W. Curtis, 2 vols., New York: Harper, 1889. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM: Memoir by O. W. Holmes, Boston: Houghton, 1878. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Foley, 203-204. SELECTIONS: Carpenter, 326-337; Stedman and Hutchinson, VII, 253 268. PARKMAN WORKS: Works, 12 vols., Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1900-01. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM: *C. H. Farnham, A Life of Francis Parkman, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1900; John Fiske, "Francis Parkman" (A Century of Science and Other Essays), Boston: Houghton, 1900, pp. 194-264; H. D. Sedgwick, Francis Parkman, Boston: Houghton, 1904 (AML). BIBLIOGRAPHY: Foley, 217-218. SELECTIONS: Carpenter, 437-450; Stedman and Hutchinson, VIII, 95-110. THE high development of mental activity indicated by the renascent oratory of New England was not solitary: something similar appeared at the same period in the professional scholarship of the region. From the beginning, the centre of learning there had been Harvard College, founded to perpetuate a learned ministry. This it did throughout its seventeenth-century career; and in the eighteenth century it also had the distinction of educating many lawyers and statesmen who became eminent at the time of the Revolution. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, Harvard College remained little more than a boys' school. It received pupils very young; Science and of Learned Societies. it gave them a fair training in Latin and Greek, a little mathematics, and a touch of theology if they so inclined; and then it sent them forth to the careers of mature life. It contented itself, in brief, with preserving the tradition of academic training planted in the days of Charles I; and this it held, in rather mediæval spirit, to be chiefly valuable as the handmaiden of theology, and later of law. One principal function of a true university—that of acquiring and publishing fresh knowledge-it had not attempted. In the surrounding air, however, a new and fresh spirit of learning declared itself, and the leaders of this, as well as the followers, were generally either Harvard men or men who in mature life were closely allied with our oldest Growth of college. The celebrated Count Rumford, for one, a Yankee country boy, began his regular study of science by attending the lectures of Professor John Winthrop of Harvard, before the Revolution; and in spite of his permanent departure from his native country, he retained a keen interest in New England. In 1780 he had something to do with the founding in Boston of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which, with the exception of Franklin's Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, is the oldest learned society in America. For more than a century the American Academy has maintained, in its proceedings and its publications, a standard of learning recognized all over the world as excellent. Nor was it long alone. In 1791, the Massachusetts Historical Society was founded for the purpose of collecting, preserving, and publishing historical matter, chiefly relating to its ancestral Commonwealth. Like the American Academy this society still flourishes, and during its century of ex istence it has published a considerable amount of material, admirably set forth and often of more than local importance. In the early years of the nineteenth century, too, certain young gentlemen of Boston, mostly graduates of Harvard and chiefly members of the learned professions, formed themselves into an Anthology Club, with the intention of conducting a literary and scholarly review. Their An- Reviews. thology did not last long; but their Club developed on the one hand into the Boston Athenæum, and in 1815, on the other hand, into that periodical which long remained the serious vehicle of scholarly New England thought,the North American Review. This was modelled on the great British Reviews,-the "Edinburgh" and the "Quarterly"; and under the guidance of such men as William Tudor, Edward Tyrrell Channing, Jared Sparks, James Russell Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton, and Dr. Andrew Preston Peabody, it maintained its dignity for more than fifty years. Though the American Academy, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Athenæum, and the old North American Review may hardly be taken as comprehensive of the new learning which was springing into life among Boston men bred at Harvard, they are especially typical of it, in the fact that none of them was indigenous; all alike were successful efforts to imitate in our independent New England certain learned institutions of Europe. What they stand for-the real motive which was in the air was an awakening of American consciousness to the fact that serious contemporary standards existed in other countries than our own, and that our claim to respect as a civilized community could no longer be Chronicles. maintained by the mere preservation of a respectable classical school for boys. Our first outbreak of the spirit of learning, indeed, was even more imitative than the contemporary literature which sprang up in New York, or than the oratory which in the same years so elaborately developed itself in Massachusetts. It was not until a little later that the scholarly impulses of New England produced either persons or works of literary distinction; but the form which the characteristic literature of this scholarship was to take had already been indicated both by the early literary activities of this part of the country and by the nature of its most distinguished learned society. From the earliest period of Massachusetts, as we have seen, there was, along with theological writing, a considerable body of publications which may be roughly classified as historical. The Magnalia of Cotton Mather, for instance, the most typical literary production of seventeenth-century America, was almost as historical in impulse as it was theological. Earlier still, the most permanent literary monument of the Plymouth colony was Bradford's manuscript history; and such other manuscripts as Winthrop's history and Sewall's diary show how deeply rooted in the colony of Massachusetts too was our lasting fondness for historical record. Other than local history, indeed, seems to have interested the elder Yankees chiefly as it bore on the origins and development of New England. An extreme example of this fact is to be found in the Chronological History of New England in the Form of Annals, the first volume of which was published in 1736,* by the Reverend THOMAS PRINCE * In 1755 appeared the two pamphlet numbers which make up the second volume. |
