Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

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[193] tory (1888); another saw the light as The beginnings of New England (1889); while still another after being presented many times on the platform was published as The American Revolution (2 vols., 1891). Before these volumes appeared he had made plans for a series to cover the whole period of American history, and he proposed to make these re-baked lectures fit into the scheme. It was necessary to go back to the beginnings and he accordingly set to work on The discovery of America (2 vols., 1892). This was followed by Old Virginia and her Neighbors (2 vols., 1897) and The Dutch and Quaker colonies (2 vols., 1899). Another instalment, New France and New England, carrying the story down to the Revolution, was not published until 1902, the year after Fiske died. A group of lectures was published in 1900 in a fascinating volume called The Mississippi Valley in the Civil War. He wrote two text-books which had remarkable success: Civil government in the United States (1890) and A history of the United States for schools (1892). A biography of his friend Edward L. Youmans (1892), a volume called A century of Science and other essays (1899), and two posthumous works, Essays, historical and literary (1902) and How the United States became a nation (1904), completed his historical works.

It has been said that Fiske applied the principles of evolution to history, and he asserted that such was his purpose. But a brief examination of his books is enough to show that he was the historian of episodes and human action. It is the dramatic rather than the philosophical that occupies his attention. In preparing to write he read many books and out of his capacious memory he wrote with feverish haste. Too ready dependence on memory, an unwillingness to look deeply into minute sources, and an extreme tendency to the picturesque undermined his sense of accuracy. None of the other men in the group under treatment equalled him in mere power of narration.

Historians of the latest period.¹ Of the men in this group not one rejected the dogma of the supremacy of accuracy, but in