It was no dull recital of dry facts, the mere bone
and muscle of History that he offered them, but the living story, the
warm blood pulsating through it all, and every nerve instinct with life,
In our own day, if the historian would forget the so-called dignity of
History, which is but another name for lifelessness, and after having
filled his mind with a clear, bright image of what he would relate,
would present his story vividly to the Imagination of the reader, we
should have no more complaints of the dulness of History. Who ever found
Irving or Prescott dull? and yet they are accurate and faithful as the
most stately and oracular. The carping critic may sneer at them because
they are not philosophical and profound; but to have been read with
delight by thousands who would never have reached a second chapter had
they been other than they are, may well satisfy their ambition, and make
them careless of the opinion of the critic. Such writers belong to the
_Republic_ of letters, not to that literary _Oligarchy_ which insists
that books should be written according to certain conventional rules
which have been manufactured in the closet, instead of looking at the
wants of the human mind, and then addressing themselves to those wants.
The class of minds that crave instruction for its own sake must always
be very small; and it is this class alone that will read books in spite
of their lack of imaginative power.
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