Part 5 (1/2)
XV
1860 AT 46
PUBLICATION OF THE FIRST TWO VOLUMES OF THE ”HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS”--THEIR RECEPTION
We know so of the manner in which Mr Motley collected his materials We know the labors, the difficulties, the cost of his toils aained by the years he spent in his researches is so well stated by himself that I shall borrow his oords:--
”Thanks to the liberality of overnments of Europe, the archives where the state secrets of the buried centuries have so long mouldered are now open to the student of history To him who has patience and industry, acity or critical acumen could have divined He leans over the shoulder of Philip the Second at his writing-table, as the King spells patiently out, with cipher-key in hand, the lyphics of Parhts of 'Fabius' [Philip II] as that cunctative Roinal apostilles on each dispatch; he pries into all the stratagems of Camillus, Hortensius, Mucius, Julius, Tullius, and the rest of those ancient heroes who lent their names to the diplomatic masqueraders of the sixteenth century; he enters the cabinet of the deeply pondering Burghley, and takes from the most private drawer the s; he pulls fro Walsinghaeon-holes or the Pope's pocket, and which not Hatton, nor Buckhurst, nor Leicester, nor the Lord Treasurer is to see,--nobody but Elizabeth herself; he sits invisible at the most secret councils of the Nassaus and Barneveld and Buys, or pores with Farnese over co victories and vast schemes of universal conquest; he reads the latest bit of scandal, theorVenetians for the edification of the Forty; and after all this prying and eavesdropping, having seen the cross-purposes, the bribings, the windings in the dark, he is not surprised if those ere systematically deceived did not always arrive at correct conclusions”
The fascination of such a quest is readily conceivable A drao behind the scenes and look upon and talk with the kings and queens between the acts; to examine the scenery, to handle the properties, to study the ”es of full-dress histories; to deal with them all as Thackeray has done with the Grand Monarque in one of his caustic sketches,--this would be as exciting, one h a play one knows by heart at Drury Lane or the Theatre Francais, and h to the curious idler as only in search of entertainibleof the intentional obscurities of diplomatic correspondence, stand, however, in the way of all but the resolute and unwearied scholar These difficulties, in all their complex obstinacy, had been met and overcome by the heroic efforts, the concentrated devotion, of the new laborer in the unbroken fields of secret history
Without stopping to take breath, as it were,--for his was a task 'de longue haleine,'--he proceeded to his second great undertaking
The first portion--consisting of two volumes--of the ”History of the United Netherlands” was published in the year 1860 It ained by his first history
”The London Quarterly Review” devoted a long article to it, beginning with this handsome tribute to his earlier and later volumes:--
”Mr Motley's 'History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic' is already known and valued for the grasp of mind which it displays, for the earnest and manly spirit in which he has communicated the results of deep research and careful reflection Again he appears before us, rich with the spoils of time, to tell the story of the United Netherlands from the time of William the Silent to the end of the eventful year of the Spanish Arreat argument' Indeed, it seems to us that he proceeds with an increased facility of style, and with a more complete and easy command over his materials These materials are indeed splendid, and of thelish State Paper Office, the Spanish archives froian repositories, have all yielded up their secrets; and Mr Motley has enjoyed the advantage of dealing with a vast mass of unpublished documents, of which he has not failed to avail himself to an extent which places his work in the foremost rank as an authority for the period to which it relates By means of his labor and his art we can sit at the council board of Philip and Elizabeth, we can read their most private dispatches Guided by his demonstration, we are enabled to dissect out to their ultiue We join in the amusement of the popular lampoon; we visit the prison-house; we stand by the scaffold; we are present at the battle and the siege
We can scan the inmost characters of men and can view them in their habits as they lived”
After a few criticisms upon lesser points of form and style, the writer says:--
”But the work itself must be read to appreciate the vast and conscientious industry bestowed upon it His delineations are true and life-like, because they are not mere compositions written to please the ear, but are really taken from the facts and traits preserved in those authentic records to which he has devoted the labor ofas the humblest chronicler, he has availed himself of many sources of information which have not been made use of by any previous historical writer
At the saacity to estimate their real value, and he has combined with scholarly power the facts which they contain He has rescued the story of the Netherlands froeneral narrative, and has labored, with ment and ability, to unfold the 'Belli causas, et vitia, et n to every man and every event their own share in the contest, and their own influence upon its fortunes We do not wonder that his earlier publication has been received as a valuable addition, not only to English, but to European literature”
One or two other contehts A critic in ”The Edinburgh Review” for January, 1861, thinks that ”Mr Motley has not always been successful in keeping the graphic variety of his details subordinate to the main theme of his work” Still, he excuses the fault, as he accounts it, in consideration of the new light thrown on various obscure points of history, and--
”it is atoned for by striking reat events faithfully, powerfully, and vividly executed, by the clearest and most life-like conceptions of character, and by a style which, if it sacrifices the severer principles of co and picturesque, is always vigorous, full of anienuine enthusiasm of the writer
Mr Motley combines as an historian two qualifications seldoreat capacity for historical research he adds es we find characters and scenes minutely set forth in elaborate and characteristic detail, which is relieved and heightened in effect by the artistic breadth of light and shade thrown across the broader prospects of history In an Alish spirit in which the book is written; and fertile as the present age has been in historical works of the highest rand qualities of interest, accuracy, and truth”
A writer in ”Blackwood” (May, 1861) contrasts Motley with Froude somewhat in the way in which another critic had contrasted him with Prescott
Froude, he says, reolden threads in the black robe of the Dominican Motley ”finds it black and thrusts it farther into the darkness”
Every writer carries more or less of his own character into his book, of course A great professor has told me that there is a personal flavor in the enius like Poisson Those who have known Motley and Prescott would feel sure beforehand that the impulsive nature of the one and the judicial serenity of the other would as surely betray thes as in their conversation and in their every azine”
has noticed has not been so generally observed: it is what he calls ”a dashi+ng, offhand, rattling style,”--”fast” writing It cannot be denied that here and thereof an earlier period of Motley's literary life, hich I have no reason to think the writer just mentioned was acquainted Now and then I can trace in the turn of a phrase, in the twinkle of an epithet, a faint reminiscence of a certain satirical levity, airiness, jauntiness, if I h to reh which his richly freighted argosy had passed with such wonderful escape froht ayety in conversation may be quite out of place in formal composition, and Motley's wit les in the processions while his gorgeous tragedies went sweeping by
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY
A MEMOIR
By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr