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In spite of personal wishes, intentions, and prejudices; in spite of civil wars and diplomatic education; in spite of determination to be actual, daily, and practical, Henry Adams found himself, at twenty-eight, still in English society, dragged on one side into English dilettantism, which of all dilettantism he held the most futile; and, on the other, into American antiquarianism, which of all antiquarianism he held the most foolish.
For Cosway's wonderful collection of articles of art, antiquarianism, and vertû, Hazlitt has only good-natured banter. Of what a strange jumble of apocryphal treasures the painter believed himself the possessor! And he was without the doubts and anxieties of ordinary collectors. They strive to believe and to cast aside all suspicion.
Thayer there have made important contributions which will not be forgotten, and in England the recent history of early English law by Sir Frederick Pollock and Mr. Maitland has lent the subject an almost deceptive charm. We must beware of the pitfall of antiquarianism, and must remember that for our purposes our only interest in the past is for the light it throws upon the present.
It will not be a question with some whether a man must be endowed with the energy and aptitude of genius, to excel in antiquarianism, in natural history, and similar pursuits.
"The principal excuse," says he, "which engages men in false studies, is, that they have attached the idea of learned where they should not." Astronomy, antiquarianism, history, ancient poetry, and natural history, are all mowed down by his metaphysical scythe.
The whole of the left side of the chapel of SS. James and Christopher the life of S. James and the martyrdom of S. Christopher are his, and in these, his earliest remaining works, we already see the result of pedantic antiquarianism combined with his extraordinary individuality.
Here we take leave, for a time, of Antony Wood, who has been allowed to tell his story in his own words; unwilling leave, for though he is provoking, he is charming, with a keen eye for character, both of parties and individuals, and for the issues and events of real importance, never dull or lengthy, save when he descants on his family affairs or on the minutiæ of his occasionally meticulous antiquarianism, and even then to be forgiven for his zeal and industry.
Nevertheless, it would be sheer antiquarianism to catalogue the treaty and conventions of 1803 and the several acts of Congress establishing the District of Louisiana, the Territory of Louisiana, the Territory of Missouri, and the Territory of Michigan as Constitutions of Iowa.
One could not at first see what this novelty meant; it had the air of mere antiquarian emotion like Wenlock Abbey and Pteraspis; but it expelled archaic law and antiquarianism once for all, without seeming conscious of it; and Adams drifted back to Washington with a new sense of history.
I got hold of the Bibliotheca Monastica, containing a copious account of Anglo-Norman authors, with notices of their works, and set seriously to reading every one of them." One profit of his antiquarianism, however, was, as he says, his attention to foreign languages, French, Spanish, German, especially in their earliest and rudest forms of literature.
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