Every writer carries more or less of his own character into his book, of
course. A great professor has told me that there is a personal flavor in
the mathematical work of a man of genius like Poisson. Those who have
known Motley and Prescott would feel sure beforehand that the impulsive
nature of the one and the judicial serenity of the other would as surely
betray themselves in their writings as in their conversation and in their
every movement. Another point which the critic of "Blackwood's Magazine"
has noticed has not been so generally observed: it is what he calls "a
dashing, offhand, rattling style,"--"fast" writing. It cannot be denied
that here and there may be detected slight vestiges of the way of writing
of an earlier period of Motley's literary life, with which I have no
reason to think the writer just mentioned was acquainted. Now and then I
can trace in the turn of a phrase, in the twinkle of an epithet, a faint
reminiscence of a certain satirical levity, airiness, jauntiness, if I
may hint such a word, which is just enough to remind me of those perilous
shallows of his early time through which his richly freighted argosy had
passed with such wonderful escape from their dangers and such very slight
marks of injury. That which is pleasant gayety in conversation may be
quite out of place in formal composition, and Motley's wit must have had
a hard time of it struggling to show its spangles in the processions
while his gorgeous tragedies went sweeping by.