Lodge's Historical Studies

THESE Studies are a collection of the Essays heretofore contributed by Mr. Lodge to sundry reviews and magazines. Their permanent value and interest are amply sufficient to make this re-publication desirable. For example, the paper on Timothy Pickering is a wonderful piece of character-drawing. Some masterly touches, scattered generously through its forty pages, depict to the life, with infinitely more vividness than all the four great volumes of the Upham biography, the stern, unflinching, narrow, opinionated, uncompromising, honest, indefatigable, stubborn, intense statesman, the characteristic product of the mature youth of the old Puritan province. To appreciate this striking portrait is to make a long stride towards the comprehension of the singular and strongly marked people who grew into something like an individual race in New England. Pickering was a better exemplification of them than John Adams, who is so often spoken of as the typical Puritan and New Englander of that day ; for Pickering was limited and colonial, and therein closely resembled his fellow citizens, whereas Adams had a breadth and liberality which few of them had then acquired. Gloomy, almost repellent, as those bygone generations seem in comparison with the gayer tints of modern times, Hawthorne has long since taught us that our forefathers were picturesque. But no other writer has ever been able to draw the picture, and Hawthorne dealt mistily with fabled beings. Now, however, comes Mr. Lodge, and, sketching for us sundry real people, shows not only that he has caught the spirit, life, and character of the cisatlantic Puritan, but that he can, by a happy power of description, get these upon paper before us with the combined truthfulness of the photograph and of the painting.

In this connection, also, should be mentioned the article happily entitled A Puritan Pepys, wherein are reviewed the three large octavos of the famous Sewall Diary. This is altogether the pleasantest bit of reading in the book. Gleaning in fields full of stubble, Mr. Lodge has yet gathered a delightful sheaf, and presents it to us so fragrant with the antique atmosphere that while we read we seem to be living two hundred years ago. We at once sympathize with and are diverted by that strange, hard, earnest life, wherein, after long wintry hours of prayer and sermons, the God-fearing flock partook of the sacramental morsels, frozen so that they rattled on the plate. The paper is in Mr. Lodge’s best vein ; he deals faithfully with a grave topic, yet constantly illuminates it with a humor that enlivens without falsifying the picture of a community in which “ the great and really the sole regular diversion was found in going to funerals.” Sewall himself, the worthy and pious magistrate, as Mr. Lodge says, “ regarded his offspring chiefly as conspicuous and instructive examples of original sin ; ” yet nothing could be more charmingly human than his amorous temperament, or more exquisitely amusing than his persevering efforts to escape the miseries of single life. His first wife lived with him forty-four years. Five months after her death he was courting Mrs. Winthrop, who received him so coldly that he “ turned to Mrs. Dennison, whose husband’s will he had lately probated.” But trouble about the settlements turned him from this quest, though “ his bowels yearned to ” the lady, and though she actually visited him and begged him to carry the matter through. But he would not, and married the widow Tilley. Her, too, he buried in less than a year, and then returned again to Mrs. Winthrop. He kissed her and held her hand, persuading her to allow him to draw off her glove by seductively arguing that “’t was great odds between handling a dead goat and a living lady.” But since he could not be induced either to keep a coach or to wear a wig, Mrs. Winthrop would not have him ; neither would Mrs. Ruggles ; and he was at last made happy by Mrs. Gibbs, who married and finally buried him. In this same paper occurs an admirable sketch of the old-time prayer : “ The wider range of subjects is the most striking feature of the practice, and it is this quality which is so highly characteristic and instructive. . . . Every topic of interest, personal and public; the thousand and one purely temporal matters, which to-day are discussed in the newspapers or around the dinner table ; the affairs of the state and of foreign nations, all alike met with due attention in the prayer of the Puritan.”

The contrast between these bygone days and our own time will be made to stand out boldly if, after reading the Puritan Pepys, we turn to the last two articles, Colonialism in the United States, and French Opinions of the United States, 1840-1881. These are historico-social essays, so to speak, dealing chiefly with the habits of life and thought of our people in the present and the next preceding generation ; witty, picturesque, full of wisdom and good sense, with sound and courageous criticism of certain of our now prevalent ways and manners.

The real reason, however, why this collection deserves a place in a well-chosen library lies not in the good sense or cleverness of the articles taken singly, — although they were originally written without connected design, — but in the fact that a large proportion of them, all which are of substantial value, are strung upon one thread. It is not as “ studies in history ” generally, but as studies in the history of the United States, that they merit preservation. The volume would have lost little by the omission of The Puritans and the Restoration, a paper somewhat brilliant and in the style of Macaulay, but which any clever essayist in England or in this country might easily have written. The same remark is true of The Early Days of Fox, and in a less degree of the paper on William Cobbett, though the latter has of course in parts a close bearing on American history. But if Mr. Lodge had nothing better than these to offer, his papers, good as they are, might have slept in peace with their comrades on the pages where first they fell. It is in dealing with the history of the United States, and especially of New England, that Mr. Lodge does work which has not yet been equaled by any writer. A few others have acquired a knowledge as extensive as his. but no other has manifested such a capacity for observing the connections between remote facts; for forming sound generalizations ; for conceiving and producing in accurate relationship all the parts of a broad picture ; for sketching typical individuals ; for appreciating the traits, sentiments, and motives of the several American communities ; and for tracing the changes without losing the continuity running through the modes of thought of successive generations.

In expressions of judgment Mr. Lodge is a trifle too dogmatic, announcing his opinions with the air of a chief justice of a court of last resort, whereas in fact there is no such tribunal in the domain of history. Fortunately, however, he is always conscientious, and in the main is fair, moderate, and dispassionate. He is a thorough-going Federalist, of course. Probably he is so by original nature ; but certainly, with his education and training, his personal and hereditary affiliations, he could not fail to sympathize with the most intellectual political party which ever existed in this or any other country, — a party, too, in the second ranks of which his greatgrandfather occupied a somewhat prominent position. He is less than just in dealing with Jefferson. All true Federalists always have undervalued Jefferson’s real ability in every respect except as regards his adroitness as a politician ; and they have been even more unjust in their strictures upon his moral character and his honesty. Jefferson was far greater, broader, sounder, and vastly more honorable than has been yet admitted by Mr. Lodge or any writer of his school. But on the other hand, perhaps by way of striking a fair average, Mr. Lodge offsets his disparagement of Jefferson by almost equally undeserved praise of Gallatin, — a man who never climbed above mediocrity in statesmanship, of meagre resources, scant courage, and with no principles so fixed that a little pressure would not induce him to replace them with others of precisely the opposite purport. If one wishes to be liberal in praising opponents, let him at least select those who furnish some fair basis for admiration, and show magnanimity by speaking well of the heroes who have hurt his friends rather than by building pedestals for the little fellows who never hit a hard blow. Occasional allusions to John Adams, also, in the volume, show only his faults ; and though this is in part due to the connection, the blunders of that great man playing a prominent part in the crisis under discussion, yet in the absence of a kind or modifying word the general impression left is unpleasant, derogatory, and imperfect. Pickering, on the other hand, is complimented somewhat overhighly when he is ranked beside Adams and Hamilton as a rival “ third leader of the Federalists.

Mr. Lodge, though a young man, has already written much, and it is to be expected and hoped that he will write much more. His manner, therefore, as well as his matter, demands consideration, and his style as a writer is, in a way, of public interest. He has many good points : his English is pure ; his pages are free from those inelegancies which Englishmen call “ Americanisms,” and equally so from those other inelegancies, not less disagreeable though hitherto less talked about, which Americans should pluck up courage to brand by their well-deserved name of “ Anglicisms.” He has the advantage of earnestness of manner, of vigor, often of animation ; he has a good vocabulary, and chooses his descriptive words very well ; but he has the very serious fault of constructing a large proportion of his sentences very ill. They are involved; they appear to have been rapidly written, and not to have been re-shaped with the aim of giving access to their meaning by a steady logical evolution, expanding through a clear advance from the first to the last word. The continuity is broken by interjectional bits, misplaced in the sentence. He constantly is obliged to help his reader to his meaning by the poor aid of punctuation. It is singular that this lack of lucidity in arrangement should disfigure his style, since the general framework of his essays and the construction of his paragraphs manifest a careful regard for clearness, logical sequence, and precision of thought. If this criticism seems too minute, it at least involves a subtle compliment; it would not be applied to men from whom we expect less and who can give us less than can rightfully be demanded at the hands of Mr. Lodge.

Of the book as a whole it may be truly said that not a dozen living Americans could produce its peer. Moreover, it is patriotic work. It is impossible not to observe with gratification the growing tendency of American writers to deal with American topics, and of American readers to find pleasure in such subjects. In the article on Colonialism in the United States Mr. Lodge is more generous than just when he praises Motley and Prescott as members of a new national school. They were not; they had abundance of American material at their disposal, and had they been free from colonialism they would have turned to this and embellished the annals of the American Provinces or of the United States rather than those of the Netherlands, Spain, Peru, or even Mexico. The same difference would have marked the demands of readers, had not they also suffered from the same taint. But that foolish prejudice against our own history is now happily moribund, if not altogether dead, and each such essay as we have in this volume is another stitch for the shroud. It is most encouraging to see that American historians to-day like to study and to write the history of their own land, and that American readers will not only buy, but will read and discuss, such volumes, with an eagerness and interest which the like material could by no means have awakened even a score of years ago.