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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[192] gone to forty volumes. Eggleston had undertaken it without realizing its greatness. The plan, however, was worthily made; and the two volumes completed deserve more esteem than they will get as fragments of a too ambitious dream by a man already old when he dreamed. They are characterized by accuracy, breadth of view, and great charm of narration. Eggleston combined research and good literary style as truly as Parkman, but he worked less persistently and gauged the situation less wisely.

There was a time when John Fiske seemed likely to pass into our literary history as the man who best combined the virtures of the new and old schools. Time has defeated the hope by discovering that he lacked accuracy. Nature gave him two excellent gifts, the art of writing and the art of lecturing as few others could write or lecture. Each was performed with great facility and in the use of each he surpassed most of his contemporaries. In early life he became an evolutionist and was much disliked by the orthodox until he finally appeared in the role of reconciler of evolution and religion. As the leading defender of the philosophy of Darwin and Spencer in the United States he gained a wide influence and wrote constantly.¹ By 1885 the battle of evolution had been won in high places and Fiske seems to have had no desire to pursue it in the lower circles. At the same time he was gradually drifting away from Spencer, through attempting to bring religion into the scope of his philosophy. After 1885 he wrote nothing philosophical.

In the same year he published American political ideals, a short sketch of our political history, and it opened a new field of activity. In 1879 he had given six lectures on ‘America's Place in History’ in the Old South Church, Boston. With a fine sense of the picturesque, he selected such subjects as the old sea kings, the Spanish and French explorers, and the causes of the Revolution. It was his first handling of historical events and the result was a revelation to himself. His own words were: ‘This thing takes the people, you see: they understand and feel it all, as they can't when I lecture on abstract things.’ Other lectures followed and met with such great success that he fully committed himself to history.

One of these courses was on the period following the Revolution and was published as The critical period of American his-