It is this objective method and motive that chiefly accounts
for the numberless inert and the few vital histories. Like any
intellectual task assumed without special fitness therefor or motive
thereto,--without a comprehensive grasp of mind that impels to
historic exploration,--without a patriotic zeal that warms to national
heroism,--without, especially, a love of some principle, a conviction
of some truth, an admiration of some national development, irresistibly
urging the cultivated and ardent mind to seek for the facts, to
celebrate the persons, to evolve the truth involved in and manifest
through public events,--the annals recorded are but dry chronology,--a
monotonous, more or less authentic, perhaps quite respectable, but far
from a very important or peculiarly interesting work. Thousands of
such cumber the shelves of libraries and fill the pages of
catalogues,--dusted once a year, perhaps, to verify a date, to
authenticate the details of a treaty, or fix the statistics of a war,
but never read consecutively and with zest, because there was no genuine
relation between the writer and his book. He undertook the latter in
the spirit of a mechanical job; industry and learning may be embodied
therein, but no moral life, no human charm; yet the work is cited with
respect, the author enrolled with honor;--whereas, had he sought
in poetry or philosophy, in a novel or a drama, thus to occupy and
celebrate himself with literature, the failure would have been signal,
the attempt ignominious.
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