Excerpt from Seminary Notes on Recent Historical Literature
The following Seminary Notes on Recent Historical Literature represent some of the first fruits of cooperative reading and reviewing by Johns Hopkins graduate students in their own department of History and Politics. Many of these notices have been elsewhere printed and are here reproduced in a somewhat abridged form. It is hoped that this collection of student-reviews and digests may be of suggestive service in the development of other and better annual reports of American contributions to historical science. Such reports or annotated bibliographies are much needed by students and readers of history, as well as by librarians and book-buyers.
The present system of reviewing as represented by our popular magazines, weekly journals, and daily newspapers, while useful in a way to the book-trade and to the general reader, is very unsatisfactory to the specialist. Such notices are written from a great variety of motives. Some reviews are manifestly in the interest of science and good literature. Others are in the interest of publishing houses and the makers of text-books. Still others are for the encouragement of authors. Many are for the amusement and private satisfaction of critics, who sometimes embrace the opportunity of displaying their own superior wisdom and of indicating what clever books they could write if it were worth their while. Whatever the motives of the review and of the reviewer, he and his observations are soon lost sight of in the downward current of periodical literature. Few people ever take the trouble to look up that drift-wood called "back numbers" for the sake of book-notices. In order to give any real historic life and usefulness to literary decisions, the best judgments should be codified under generic titles. What Sydney Smith called "the trade of book-reviewing" must be more and more specialized in various departments of literary criticism. We should have in this country either an annual digest of the best opinions on all the books that have appeared in the various classes of publication, or at least a complete bibliography topically arranged.
The Revue Historique in Paris set the world a good example, in 1876, in beginning to publish systematic reports concerning the progress of historical literature in various countries.
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