364 GEORGE BANCROFT. 



conceive of tributes more gratifying to an author. If there had 

 been no voice in England to raise the charge of partisanshij) 

 against this ardent American while engaged in depicting the 

 preliminary struggles of the Colonies with the mother country, 

 it would have been because he had failed to accomplish what he 

 had undertaken. If the English people, as a whole, had not been 

 able to appreciate Bancroft's labor and conscientious research, his 

 fairness of purpose, and the real liberality beneath his sharp, inci- 

 sive criticism, it could only have been because they had become 

 less tolerant than we know them to be. 



In the composition of the first three volumes, which are devoted 

 to Colonial History, Bancroft relied upon resources such as are 

 at command of ordinary writers. ''I have been most liberally 

 aided," he says in his Preface, **by the directors of our chief 

 public libraries; especially the library at Cambridge, on American 

 history the richest in the world, has been opened to me as freely 

 as if it had been my own." The period covered topics concerning 

 which an expression of opinion did not necessarily raise a contro- 

 versy. Believers in the historic value of the Sagas did not feel it 

 their duty to attack one who accepted the visits of the Norsemen 

 to this coast as a natural probability, because he thought the 

 Sagas themselves mythological in form and obscure in meaning. 

 The exercise of discriminating judgment as to the voyages of the 

 period, while it might arouse criticism as to the accuracy of the 

 adoption of this or that narrative, did not provoke acrimonious 

 discussion. The wide difference between the reception of the ear- 

 lier volumes, and of the series which bore upon Revolutionary 

 topics, calls attention to the scheme of the History, and empha- 

 sizes the manner in which that scheme was developed. The whole 

 History is divided into three parts: the history of the Colonies; 

 the history of the Revolution, which in turn is separated by the 

 Declaration of Independence into two subdivisions; and the his- 

 tory of the formation of the Constitution. The publication of the 

 portion dealing with the Revolution stirred up a series of con- 

 troversies. Bancroft was compelled to express himself frankly 

 concerning men who had living descendants. Family pride was 

 aroused, and pamphlets were issued in defence of ancestors whose 

 reputations were supposed to have been injured by the strictures of 

 the historian. Mr. Winsor, in a note in the eighth volume of the 

 ''Narrative and Critical History of America," gives an account of 

 the literature of this description bearing upon the most important 



