his heroines are more expansively endowed than would be thought genteel in our country, where cryptogams are so much in fashion, nevertheless there is always something very tremendous about him, and very often much that is sublime, pathetic, and moving.  I defy any one of the average amount of imagination and sentiment to stand long before the Descent from the Cross without being moved more nearly to tears than he would care to acknowledge.  As for color, his effects are as sure as those of the sun rising in a tropical landscape.  There is something quite genial in the cheerful sense of his own omnipotence which always inspired him.  There are a few fine pictures of his here, and I go in sometimes of a raw, foggy morning merely to warm myself in the blaze of their beauty.”

I have been more willing to give room to this description of Rubens’s pictures and the effect they produced upon Motley, because there is a certain affinity between those sumptuous and glowing works of art and the prose pictures of the historian who so admired them.  He was himself a colorist in language, and called up the image of a great personage or a splendid pageant of the past with the same affluence, the same rich vitality, that floods and warms the vast areas of canvas over which the full-fed genius of Rubens disported itself in the luxury of imaginative creation.

XI.

1856-1857.  AEt. 42-43.

Publication of his first historical work, “Rise of the Dutch republic.”  —­Its reception.—­Critical notices.

The labor of ten years was at last finished.  Carrying his formidable manuscript with him,—­and how formidable the manuscript which melts down into three solid octavo volumes is, only writers and publishers know,—­he knocked at the gate of that terrible fortress from which Lintot and Curll and Tonson looked down on the authors of an older generation.  So large a work as the “History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic,” offered for the press by an author as yet unknown to the British public, could hardly expect a warm welcome from the great dealers in literature as merchandise.  Mr. Murray civilly declined the manuscript which was offered to him, and it was published at its author’s expense by Mr. John Chapman.  The time came when the positions of the first-named celebrated publisher and the unknown writer were reversed.  Mr. Murray wrote to Mr. Motley asking to be allowed to publish his second great work, the “History of the United Netherlands,” expressing at the same time his regret at what he candidly called his mistake in the first instance, and thus they were at length brought into business connection as well as the most agreeable and friendly relations.  An American edition was published by the Harpers at the same time as the London one.

If the new work of the unknown author found it difficult to obtain a publisher, it was no sooner given to the public than it found an approving, an admiring, an enthusiastic world of readers, and a noble welcome at the colder hands of the critics.