Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[118] John Lothrop Motley, laborious, but delightful; and Francis Parkman, more original in his work and probably more permanent in his fame than any of these.

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History and literature.

But it must be remembered, as the drawback to historical writing, that very little work of that kind can, from the nature of things, be immortal. Just as the most solid building of marble or granite crumbles, while the invisible and wandering air around it remains unchanged for ages, so a narrative of great events is likely to last only until it is superseded by other narrative, while the creations of pure imagination, simply because they are built of air, can never be superseded. The intuitions of Emerson, the dream-children of Hawthorne and of Poe, remain untouched. Systems of philosophy may change and supersede one another, while that which is above all system has a life of its own. The most valuable part of historic work, as such, moreover, consists not in the style, but in the substance. It is the result of research. The books that sell and are quoted are those of the popularizer, those, for instance, of the late John Fiske, which no historical student would for a moment