Book Reviews 115 Becker was satisfied to know that he could not get away com- pletely from his “climate of opinion,” that, in other words, his judgments and values would reflect his personal biases, assumptions, and his total cultural conditioning. The author sums it all up, felicitously, in one sentence: “Becker’s relativ- ism is a modest philosophy akin to Justice Holmes’ concep- tion of truth as ‘the system of my limitations’” (p. 120). There are two chapters which at first sight may seem to some to be superfluous, chapter four, “The Art of Writ- ing,” and chapter five, “The Practice of Writing.” But upon getting into the first of these it becomes clear at once that the author has done well to include them. In fact, these two chapters deserve serious study by anyone who wishes to write history. Becker was not only a scholarly historian, one who knew how to carry on the most painstaking research; he was also one of this country’s outstanding literary historians. In fact, he is considered by many to be our most brilliant writer of history. It is safe to predict that for generations to come his books will be read, if only for the beauty and charm of their literary quality. In the second of the chapters re- ferred to the author does something quite unusual. She shows Becker at work by comparing word for word specimen drafts of some of his manuscripts. One can almost see him struggling for the precise term, the happy phrase, the accur- ate wording, and all that goes into a finished literary prod- uct. These two chapters could be extremely helpful to all who aspire to write well, history or anything else. Valparaiso University Walter E. Bauer

The Legend of the Founding Fathers. By Wesley Frank Craven. (New York: New York University Press, 1956. Pp. viii, 191. Foreword and index. $4.50.)

Charles McLean Andrews: A Study in American Historical Writing. By A. S. Eisenstadt. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956. Pp. xx, 273. Frontispiece, intro- duction, chronology, notes, bibliography, and index. $5.00.) The first of these books is a printing of six Anson Phelps lectures on the Stokes Foundation at New York Uni- versity which Professor Craven delivered in 1955. It is not, 116 Indium Magazine of History as its title might suggest, an exercise in iconoclasm. If any- thing, Professor Craven somewhat surprisingly lends his well-cultured voice to the chorus of those historians from Samuel Eliot Morison to Alan Simpson who are busily re- habilitating the reputation of the Puritan. The author’s pur- pose, however, in these lectures is not so much to argue either for or against the soundness of American legendary history as to describe its development. This he does with a wealth of illustrative detail from an amazing variety of source mate- rials. Professor Craven traces the legend of the Founding Fathers to its roots, not only in the writings of our rela- tively uncritical early historians, but in sermons, tracts, poli- tical pamphlets, orations, the activities of patriotic and an- cestor-worshiping societies, and that most American of all historical phenomena-the anniversary celebrations. As a by-product of this exploration, he gives his readers an ex- cellent bibliography of little-known Americana. In spite of wandering rather far afield, however, Professor Craven does not mention such legend makers as Parson Weems and Na- thaniel Hawthorne, who had much more to do with the shaping of America’s concept of its own history than did George Ban- croft. In his first lecture, Professor Craven discusses the orig- ins of American tradition in regard to its own history during the colonial period when the principal concern was the ques- tion “Why came we here?” and the inspired answer, “To seek liberty-religious and political,” became firmly rooted in American consciousness. His second lecture deals with the contributions of this tradition to the polemics of the Revolu- tionary period, when it served to bolster the argument that Americans were seeking only to preserve what they had orig- inally crossed the Atlantic to find. The third lecture traces the growth of the varying colonial traditions (Roger Wil- liams, for example, was originally regarded very differently in Massachusetts and Rhode Island) into a more or less com- mon, national hagiography, with the Fourth of July serving as a bond of union between peoples who still differed over their celebrations of Christmas and Thanksgiving. The last three lectures deal for the most part with the ways in which racial groups, societies, and patriotic organizations have en- crusted the Legend of the Founding Fathers and how the legend has been first battered and then refurbished in the Book Reviews 117 twentieth century. These last chapters make easier reading than the first, but they are less rewarding. Lectures are designed to be heard, not read, and the criteria for judging them in print cannot be quite the same as for other books. Professor Craven’s lectures are peppered with ear-catching and thought-provoking phrases (for ex- ample, “It is a remarkable fact that the American who finds himself rejected as an American quarrels not so much with the test by which he is rejected as with the proposition that he cannot meet the test” p. log), but on the whole they do not emerge as readily digestible prose. There are such flat contradictions as that on page 176 where it is first said of James Truslow Adams that “For the old heroes, he offered new ones,” then five lines later that he, “Like other idol smashers. . . showed little inclination to set up new ones.” This may, of course, be a typographical error, like the two which appear in footnote 90, p. 117 (Merle Curtis rather than Curti, and Dictionary of American History, where Biog- raphy is obviously intended). Aside from a very few slips (Isaac Backus preached in Massachusetts rather than Con- necticut, p. 79) Professor Craven’s scholarship is impeccable, and his theme full of challenging suggestions. In an area of such unlimited vistas, however, it is difficult to avoid resort to doubtful generalizations and proof which sometimes denies rather than supports. One of the great American historians whom Craven rightly treats as a deflator of the Founding Fathers was the late Charles McLean Andrews, a Connecticut Yankee in King Ranke’s court for more than fifty years. Andrews first dedicated himself to the cause of “scientific history” through the inspiration of Herbert Baxter Adams at Johns Hopkins and Frederick William Maitland in England. According to Eisenstadt, he was a tireless cruader at Bryn Mawr, Johns Hopkins, and, for thirty-three years at Yale, under that ban- ner with the strange device, wie es eigentlich gewesen. To- gether with Herbert Levi Osgood and George Louis Beer, he founded the “imperial school” and put back the L‘colonial” into American colonial history. He saved incalculable man- hours of labor for future historians by publishing his three- volume Guide to the Materials for American History to 1783 in the Public Record Office, the British Museum, and various other British archives. He wrote a series of scholarly and 118 Indiana Magazine of Historv incisive books on English and American history, and, during the last decade of his life, capped a brilliant career of re- search and synthesis by publishing his summa historim, the four volume Colonial Period of American History. All this, and something more, is told in considerable de- tail, with brilliant exposition and a slightly euphemistic style (of which my preceding paragraph is a deliberate imita- tion) in Mr. Eisenstadt’s study. Although it contains biog- raphical facts, it is not a biography of Professor Andrews, and while it discusses his writings at some length it is not by any means a complete analysis of them. It is, rather, an essay on the Rankean influence in American historiography, particularly upon the study of American colonial history with special reference to the writings of Andrews. As such, it is a worthy, even though somewhat soporific and highly inflated piece of work. The author not only knows the writings of Andrews intimately, which is no small accomplishment, but he writes competently of works by Maitland, Stubbs, Bancroft, Adams, Beer, Channing, Fisher, Greene, Jameson, Jernegan, Osgood, Root, Tyler, Van Tyne, Beard, Bridenbaugh, Dicker- son, Gipson, Harper, Labaree, Morison, and Schlesinger. His best chapters are probably the last two, 7 and 8, in which he discusses these various contemporaries of Andrews. In spite of the obvious competence of the author, this book will probably contribute little to those who are already acquainted with the works of Andrews. In fact, it will prob- ably annoy them by its insistent repetitions, even of the same quotations, and its gross exaggeration both of the importance and of the intensity of Andrews’ fight on behalf of “scientific history.” Even the most dedicated “relativist” today would heartily concur in Andrews’ insistence upon a thorough ex- amination of the evidence of every side of the question, and few colonial historians would quarrel with the validity of his new perspective in the period prior to 1783 (or even later) . Eisenstadt recognizes that Andrews himself often failed to keep the new perspective in focus-that he found it easier to preach a cause in his preface than to practice it in his text. For this very reason, because Andrews was actually less wedded to Leopold von Ranke than Eisenstadt seems to think, his great Colonial Period of American History will appear upon the reading lists of American history courses for a long time to come. Between the disciples of Book Reviews 119

Croce, who profess to believe that no histories (except their own, perhaps) will outlast the generation which produced them, and the followers of Ranke, who thought that a history of absolute and eternal value could be written, a humble votary of Clio may prefer to pronounce a plague on both their houses and read them ail for whatever they can give him. Indiana University Lynn W. Turner

American Life in Autobiography: A Descriptive Guide. By Richard G. Lillard. (Stanford : Stanford University Press, 1956. Pp. 140. Index. $3.75.) Although this hook contains an annotated list of over four hundred American autobiographies, Mr. Lillard makes it clear at the outset that he is not working in the service of “experts in research.” “It is my intention,” he writes in his “Note on Purpose and Method,” “that this descriptive guide be useful to present day readers of all sorts who consult lists of books and welcome annotations. This is a selected list of general interest of hooks that I have read and thought worth someone else’s time-granting wide variations in taste and reading skill.” Mr. Lillard deals primarily with twentieth century American autobiographies (including twentieth century editions and reprints of older books) ; one of his prime requisites for listing a book is its availability: “I have wanted to list hooks that are available, that library patrons can get hold of.” He has “ignored autobiographies, however good,” that have not been published in “complete, separate volumes,” for he realizes that “only graduate stu- dents with their eyes on degrees will look up such material.” He has annotated only books which he has read; he admits candidly that he has not mentioned books which he “never heard of.” Mr. Lillard groups the autobiographies under broad oc- cupational headings such as “Actors and Show People,” “DOC- tors,’’ “Musicians,” and “Society Leaders.” (He shrewdly lists Polly Adler’s A House is Not a Home under “Business- men, Financiers, Industrialists”). In his introductory essay he sets forth criteria of judging autobiography : formula writing, details of trips, racing too fast, name dropping, and