Mat 11, 1883.] 



SCIENCi:. 



379 



FRIDAY, MAY 11, 1883. 



A STRANGE PERFORMANCE. 

 Whom the gods would destroj^, thej' first 

 make mad. Mr. Hubert Howe Bancroft, hav- 

 ing shown great capacity as an organizer of an 

 eucj-elopaedia compau}-, and having assumed 

 not only to be an historian, liut to dispense 

 opinions oraeularh', and to patronize and dis- 

 credit distinguished writers, now throws the 

 ethics of trade aside, and exalts himself to a 

 place among self-praising martyrs. He gravely 

 announces that purchasers of his earlier volumes 

 must now subscribe to them over again in 

 order to get the rest of the series, and sends 

 out an extraordinary lithographed form of sub- 

 scribing, in one corner of which is a list of the 

 thirty-nine volumes, with the prices. 



" 188 . 



" To HuRERT Howe Bancroft, San Francisco, Cal. 



" Dear .sir, — In token of my high appreciation of 

 the value to the Pacific coast and to the world, of 

 your long and arduous historical labors in a new field, 

 and after a manner peculiar to yourself, I hereby 

 tender my subscription to a complete set of your 

 literary works in thirty-nine volumes, payments to 

 be made at the regular published price as the volumes 

 are issued and delivered. 



"After your signature, please designate style of 

 binding." 



We doubt if a more flagrant piece of folly 

 was ever perpetrated bj' a book-maker. 



It is melancholy and significant, that while 

 the few historical students, as tested in diflferent 

 centres, who are competent to pronounce on 

 the value of Mr. Bancroft's History, are agreed 

 in a qualified, and in some respects a condem- 

 natory, estimate of its methods and perform- 

 ance, the general reviewers of the book have 

 been simplj- dazed by its magnitude. 



Any departure from laudation strikes Mr. 

 Bancroft as inquisitorial, and unkind to a man 

 who never made anj' pretensions to being an 

 historian. Such a spirit is commendable and 

 disarming ; but when he becomes mad and 

 militant, he arms his critics. Two protests 

 against this universal flattery have struck him 

 deeplj'. 



Tliese offenders are the New- York independ- 

 ent, which took up his claim of making a con- 

 tribution in his notes to the bibliography of 

 the subject, and which showed how preposter- 

 ous such claim was ; and the New- York post 

 and Nation, which took him to task for his 

 opinions on the earl3' Mexican civilization, and 

 for his churlish discourtesj' to the late Lewis 

 H. Morgan, — aman of pre-eminent reputation, 

 whom Mr. Bancroft modestly accused of seek- 

 ing to obtain a little cheap notoriety bj- attack- 

 ing his (Mr. Bancroft's) views. Mr. Bancroft 

 has made answer to these reviews in a tract, of 

 which he requests an opinion, which we give 

 him. He does not print or quote in any com- 

 prehensible waj' the articles which annoj' him ; 

 and so the reader is left, unless otherwise in- 

 formed, to infer the nature of these questioners' 

 criticism from his own discourteous and spe- 

 cious language, which takes on a humorous 

 sort of mongrel admiration in the juncture of 

 such words as ' astute hair-splitter ' and ' eru- 

 dite dogmatist.' Without citing proofs, he 

 accuses them of ignorance and mud-throwing, 

 and thus makes but the vaguest responses to 

 clear exemplifications of his own ignorance, 

 to citations of the inadequaej- of his index- 

 mougerj', and to instances of perversions, 

 which the reviewers adduced. The reviews in 

 question were severe, and, from the nature of 

 the case, cutting ; but they were not disfigured 

 by foul language, and were explicit. His 

 answer is vituperative and general. This 

 pamphlet is eked out with extracts of lau- 

 datorj' comment growing out of the average 

 conception of ' a big thing ' from all sorts 

 of sources, including a fresh commendation 

 from certain California judges, who have 

 no status, certainly, as students in this field, 

 however reputable their legal qualifications 

 and general intelligence. Some of Mr. Ban- 

 croft's g3-rations are not more strange than 

 the opinions which seem to have been wrung 

 by him from various eminent people concern- 

 ing this ' Macaulay of the west.' More than 

 one distinguished gentleman has discovered 

 to his annoyance, that polite sentences, in 

 notes of acknowledgment for presentation 



