THE LIFE OF

WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT

1796-1859

 

by

GEORGE TICKNOR

 

 

CHAPTER I Birth and Parentage.

CHAPTER II College Life. Injury to his Sight

CHAPTER III Visit to St. Michael’s

CHAPTER IV Goes to London and Paris

CHAPTER V Determines to become a Man of Letters

CHAPTER VI He Studies Spanish. Thinks of writing Ferdinand and Isabella

CHAPTER VII Death of his Daughter—Finishes the History of Ferdinand and Isabella

CHAPTER VIII Reviews of it in the United States and in Europe

CHAPTER IX Illness of his Mother, and her Recovery—Opinions in Europe concerning his History

CHAPTER X. His Infirmity of Sight— The Noctograph

CHAPTER XI Mr. Prescott’s Social Character

CHAPTER XII Mr. Prescott’s Industry and General Character based on Principle and on Self-Sacrifice

CHAPTER XIII Thinks of writing the Conquest of Mexico— Correspondence with Washington Irving

CHAPTER XIV. His Correspondence with Sismondi, Thierry, Tytler, Rogers, Gayango

CHAPTER XV Conquest of Mexico published—Its Success

CHAPTER XVI His Infirmity of Sight

CHAPTER XVII Begin to write the Conquest of Peru— Death of his Father—Election into the French Institute, and into the Royal Society of Berlin

CHAPTER XVIII Publication of a Volume of Miscellanies

CHAPTER XIX Publishes the Conquest of Peru

CHAPTER Beginning the History of Philip the Second

CHAPTER XXI Anxiety about his Hearing—Voyage and Arrival to London

CHAPTER XXII Paris, Brussels, and Antwerp

CHAPTER XXIII Letters to Friends in England

CHAPTER XXIV Correspondence with Mr. Bancroft, Mr.Everett, and Mr. Sumner—Conversation on Political Subjects

CHAPTER XXV Death of Mr. Prescott’s Mother

CHAPTER XXVI Rheumatism at Nahant—Life at Nahant and at Lynn

CHAPTER XXVII Addition to Robertson’s Charles the Fifth—Goes on with Philip the Second—Illness

CHAPTER XXVIII First attack of Apoplexy—Yields readily— Prints the third Volume of Philip the Second

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

GEORGE TICKNOR was born in Boston, August 1, 1791, and died in the same city, January 26th, 1871. He was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1807, and six years later was admitted to the Boston bar. He never practised law, however, preferring always the life of a scholar and teacher to that of a lawyer. From 1815 to 1820 he studied and travelled in Europe, coming back to America in 1820 to become Smith Professor of the French and Spanish Languages and Literatures in Harvard University. In 1849 he published the History of Spanish Literature, which is still admitted, even in Spain, to be the standard authority upon the subject.

It was not as an author that his best work was done, but as an instructor at Harvard. In his professorial chair he perhaps did more, both by example and precept, to develop historical writing in America than did any other teacher of his day. His own scholarship was remarkably broad and accurate, while his intense enthusiasm in his work was constantly arousing an answering enthusiasm in others. From the opening of the Boston Public Library, of which he was one of the founders, until his death he was one of its most zealous and able supporters. During his life he contributed several thousand volumes to its shelves, and after his death his library of Spanish and Portuguese books, numbering more than four thousand volumes, passed into its possession. In his relations with the library, as in his relations to the community at large, he was ever an example of what a public-spirited citizen should be.

For many years he was Prescott’s most intimate associate. The tastes of the two men were always very much alike, and the acquaintance begun in early youth in Dr. Gardiner’s school ripened into a life-long friendship. When Prescott died the eloquent tribute to his memory which sprang from the lips of his friend, at the memorial exercises held by the Massachusetts Historical Society, moved all hearts. To the demand that his address should be expanded into a memorial volume Ticknor willingly acceded. The work was to him a labor of love. The image of his friend and the memories of the long hours of intimate communion that they had passed together were ever before him as he wrote. The result of his labor is unquestionably one of the best—perhaps the best—and most charming of the biographies that have been published in America. Every page teems with loving appreciation. Every chapter breathes with tender regret. No one who reads the volume can help feeling an affection not only for Prescott himself but also for the writer who tells so beautifully the story of his friend's life. The work must always be regarded as an American classic.

Wilfred H. Munro.

Brown University, October 30, 1905.

 

CHAPTER I. 1796-1811

 

 

WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT was born in Salem, New England, on the fourth day of May, seventeen hundred and ninety-six. His father, then thirty-four years old,—a person of remarkable manly beauty, and great dignity and gentleness of character,—was already in the flush of his early success at the bar, where he subsequently rose to much eminence and honor. His mother, five years younger, was a woman of great energy, who seemed to have been born to do good, and who had from her youth those unfailing spirits which belong to the original temperament of the very few who have the happiness to possess them, and which, in her case, were controlled by a good sense and by religious convictions, that made her presence like a benediction in the scenes of sorrow and suffering, which, during her long life, it was her chosen vocation to frequent. They had been married between two and three years when William was born to them, inheriting not a few of the prominent characteristics of each. He was their second child; the first, also a son, having died in very early infancy.

The family of Mr. and Mrs. Prescott was always a happy one,—respected and loved by those who came within the reach of its influence. Their pleasant, hospitable house in Salem is no longer standing; but the spot it occupied is well remembered, and is pointed out to strangers with pride, as the one where the future historian was born. Its site is now that of “Plummer Hall”,— a building erected for literary and scientific purposes, from funds bequeathed by the lady whose name it bears and who was long a friend of the Prescott family.

William’s earliest education was naturally in the hands of his affectionate and active mother, his great obligations to whom he always loved to acknowledge, and from whom, with slight exceptions, it was his happiness never to be separated so long as they both lived. He felt, to the last, that her influence upon him had been one of the chief blessings of his life. On the afternoon of her death he spoke of it to me, as a guiding impulse for which he could not be too grateful.

But, like the children of most of the persons who constituted the society in Salem to which his family belonged, he was sent to a school for the very young, kept by Miss Mehitable Higginson, a true gentlewoman, descended from the venerable Francis Higginson, who emigrated to Salem in 1629, when there were only seven houses on the spot now covered by the whole city, and who, from his scholarship, eloquence, and piety, has sometimes been called the founder of the churches of New England. Miss Higginson understood, with an instinct for which experience affords no sufficient substitute, what belongs to childhood, and how best to direct and mould its opening faculties. It was her wont to call herself, not the school mistress, but the school mother, of her little flock; and a system of discipline which might be summed up in such a phrase could hardly fail of being effectual for good. Certainly it succeeded to a remarkable degree with her many pupils, during the half-century in which she devoted herself with truth and love to her calling. Of her more favorable children, William was one.

From the tender and faithful hands of Miss Higginson, he passed to the school of Mr. Jacob Newman Knapp, long known in Salem as “Master Knapp”,—a person who, as the best teacher to be obtained, had been procured by Mr. Prescott and a few of his more intimate friends, all of whom were anxious, as he was, to spare neither pains nor expense in the education of their children. Under Mr. Knapp’s care William was placed at New-Year, 1803, when he was less than seven years old; and he continued there until the midsummer of 1808, when his father removed to Boston.

The recollections of him during these four or five years are distinct in the minds of his teacher, who still survives (1862) at a venerable old age, and of a few schoolmates, now no longer young. He was a bright, merry boy, with an inquisitive mind, quick perceptions, and a ready, retentive memory. His lessons were generally well learned; but he loved play better than books, and was too busy with other thoughts than those that belonged to the school-room to become one of Master Knapp’s best pupils. He was, though large for his years, not very vigorous in his person. He never fancied rude or athletic sports, but amused himself with such boys of his own age as preferred games requiring no great physical strength; or else he made himself happy at home with such light reading as is most attractive to all children, and especially to those whose opening tastes and tendencies are quiet, if not intellectual. In the latter part of his life he used to say, that he recollected no period of his childhood when he did not love books; adding, that often, when he was a very little boy, he was so excited by stories appealing strongly to his imagination, that, when his mother left the room, he used to take hold of her gown, and follow her as she moved about the house, rather than be left alone. But in school he did not love work, and made no remarkable prog­ress in his studies.

Neither was he so universally liked by the boys with whom he was associated in Salem, as he was afterwards by the boys in other schools. He had indeed his favorites, to whom he was much attached and who were much attached to him, and he never faltered in his kindness to them subsequently, however humble or unfortunate their condition became; but at home he had been encouraged to speak his mind with a boldness that was sometimes rude; partly from parental indulgence, and partly as a means of detecting easily any tendencies in his character that his conscientious father might think it needful to restrain. The consequence was, that a similar habit of very free speaking at school, joined to his great natural vivacity and excessive animal spirits, made him more confident in the expression of his opinions and feelings than was agreeable, and prevented him from becoming a favorite with a portion of his school-mates. It laid, however, I doubt not, the foundation for that attractive simplicity and openness which constituted prominent traits in his character through life.

His conscience was sensitive and tender from the first, and never ceased to be so. A sermon to children produced a striking effect upon him when he was still a child. It was a very simple, direct one, by Dr. Channing; and William’s mother told him to read it to her one evening when his conduct had required some slight censure, and she thought this the best way to administer it. He obeyed her reluctantly. But soon his lips began to quiver, and his voice to choke. He stopped, and with tears said, “Mother, if I am ever a bad boy again, won’t you set me to reading that sermon?”

His temperament was very gay, like his mother’s, and his eager and sometimes turbulent spirits led him into faults of conduct oftener, perhaps, than anything else. Like most school-boys, he was fond of practical jokes, and ventured them, not only in a spirit of idle mischief, but even rudely. Once he badly frightened a servant-girl in the family, by springing unexpectedly upon her from behind a door. But his father, busy and anxious as he was with the interests of others, and occupying himself less with the material concerns and affairs of his household than almost any person I ever knew, had yet an eye of unceasing vigilance for whatever related to the training of his children, and did not suffer even a fault so slight to pass without rebuke. After this, although William was always a boy full of life and mischief, he gave no more trouble by such rudeness at home.

No doubt, therefore, his early education, and the circumstances most nearly connected with it, were, on the whole, favorable to the formation of a character suited to the position in the world that he was likely to occupy,—a character, I mean, that would not easily yield to the temptations of prosperity, nor be easily broken down by adverse fortune, if such fortune should come upon it. It was, in fact, a condition of things that directly tended to develop those manly qualities which in our New-England society have always most surely contributed to progress and success.

HOME INFLUENCES

Nor was there anything in the circle with which his family was most connected to counteract these influences. Life in those days was a very simple thing in Salem, compared with what it is now. It was the period when Mr. Gray and Mr. Peabody, the Pickmans and the Derbys, were too busy with their widely extended commerce to think often of anything else; when Mr. Justice Putnam was a young lawyer struggling up to eminence; when Mr. Story, afterwards the distinguished jurist and judge, was only beginning to be heard of; and when the mathematical genius of Dr. Bowditch, and the classical studies of Mr. Pickering, which were destined later to have so wide an effect on our community, were hardly known beyond the limits of their personal acquaintance.

In those active, earnest days, the modest luxury of hackney-coaches and hired waiters had not come to be deemed needful in Salem, even among those who were already prosperous and rich. When, therefore, Mrs. Prescott had invited friends to dine,—a form of social intercourse which she and her husband always liked, and which they practised more freely than most persons then did,—if the weather proved unfavorable, she sent her own chaise to bring her lady guests to her house, and carried them safely home in the same way when the hospitable evening was ended. Or, if the company were larger than her usual arrangements would permit to be well served, she borrowed the servants of her friends, and lent her own in return. But the days of such unpretending simplicity are gone by, and a tasteful luxury has naturally and gracefully taken its place. They were days, however, on which my friend always looked back with satisfaction, and I doubt not, nor did he doubt, that it was well for him that his character received something of its early direction under their influence. He was always grateful that his first years were passed neither in a luxurious home nor in a luxurious state of society.

Mr. Prescott the elder removed with his family to Boston in the summer of 1808, and established himself in a house on Tremont Street. But although he had come to a larger town, and one where those of his own condition indulged in somewhat more free habits of expense, the manner of life that he preferred and followed in his new home was not different from the one to which he had been accustomed in Salem. It was a life of cordial, open hospitality, but without show or pretension of any sort. And so it continued to the last.

The promising son was sent in the early autumn to the best classical school then known in New England; for his father, bred at Dummer Academy by Master Moody, who in his time was without an equal among us as a teacher of Latin and Greek, always valued such training more than any other. And it was fortunate for William that he did so; for his early classical discipline was undoubtedly a chief element in his subsequent success.

DR. GARDINER’S SCHOOL

The school to which he was sent—if school it could properly be called—was one kept with few of the attributes of such an institution, but in its true spirit, by the Rev. Dr. Gardiner, Rector of Trinity Church, Boston. Dr. Gardiner was a good scholar, bred in England under Dr. Parr, who, some years afterwards, at Hatton, spoke of him to me with much regard and respect. But, besides his scholarship, Dr. Gardiner was a generous, warm-hearted man, who took a sincere interest in his pupils, and sympathized with them in their pursuits to a degree which, however desirable, is very rare. A great deal of his teaching was oral; some of it, no doubt, traditional, and brought from his English school; all of it was excellent. For, although recitations of careful exactness were required, and punishments not slight inflicted for negligence and breaches of discipline, still much knowledge was communicated by an easy conversational commentary, the best part of which could not readily have been found in books, while the whole of it gave a life and interest to the lessons that could have been given by nothing else.

It was in this school, as soon as he became a member of it, that I first knew William, as a bright boy a little more than twelve years old. I had then been under Dr. Gardiner’s instruction some months, not as a regular member of any class, but at private hours, with one or two others, to obtain a knowledge of the higher Greek and Latin classics, not elsewhere to be had among us. Very soon the young stranger was brought by his rapid advancement to recite with us, and before long we two were left to pursue a part of our studies quite by ourselves. From this time, of course, I knew him well, and, becoming acquainted in his father’s family, saw him not only daily at school, but often at home. It was a most agreeable, cheerful house, where the manners were so frank and sincere, that the son’s position in it was easily understood. He was evidently loved—much loved—of all; his mother showing her fondness without an attempt at disguise,—his father not without anxiety concerning his son’s spirits and the peculiar temptations of his age and position. Probably he was too much indulged. Certainly, in his fine, open nature there were great inducements to this parental infirmity; and a spirit of boyish mischief in his relations with those of his own age, and a certain degree of presumption in his manners towards those who were older, were not wanting to justify the suspicion. That he was much trusted to himself there was no doubt.

LOVE OF BOOKS

But he loved books of the lighter sort, and was kept by his taste for them from many irregular indulgences. Books, however, were by no means so accessible in those days as they are now. Few, comparatively, were published in the United States, and, as it was the dreary period of the commercial restrictions that preceded the war of 1812 with England, still fewer were imported. Even good school-books were not easily obtained. A copy of Euripides in the original could not be bought at any bookseller’s shop in New England, and was with difficulty borrowed. A German instructor, or means for learning the German language, were not to be had either in Boston or Cambridge. The best publications that appeared in Great Britain came to us slowly, and were seldom reprinted. New books from the Continent hardly reached us at all. Men felt poor and anxious in those dark days, and literary indulgences, which have now become almost as necessary to us as our daily food, were luxuries enjoyed by few.

There was, however, a respectable, but very miscellaneous collection of books just beginning to be made by the proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum; an institution imitated chiefly from the Athenaeum of Liverpool, and established in an unpretending building not far from the house of the Prescott family in Tremont Street. Its real founder was Mr. William S. Shaw, who, by a sort of common consent, exercised over it a control all but unlimited, acting for many years gratuitously as its librarian. He was a near connection of the two Presidents Adams, the first of whom he had served as private secretary during his administration of the government; and in consequence of this relationship, when Mr. John Quincy Adams was sent as Minister of the United States to Russia, he deposited his library, consisting of eight or ten thousand volumes, in the Athenaeum, and thus materially increased its resources during his absence abroad. The young sons of its proprietors had then, by the rules of the institution, no real right to frequent its rooms; but Mr. Shaw, with all his passion for books, and his anxiety to keep safely and strictly those intrusted to him, was a kind-hearted man, who loved bright boys, and often gave them privileges in his Athenaeum to which they had no regular claim. William was one of those who were most favored, and who most gladly availed themselves of the opportunity which was thus given them. He resorted to the Athenaeum, and to the part of it containing Mr. Adam’s library, as few boys cared to do, and spent many of his play-hours there in a sort of idle reading, which probably did little to nourish his mind, but which, as he afterwards loved to acknowledge, had a decided influence in forming his literary tendencies and tastes.

Of course such reading was not very select. He chiefly fancied extravagant romances and books of wild adventure. How completely he was carried away by the Amadis de Gaula in Southey’s translation he recorded long afterwards, when he looked back upon his boyish admiration, not only with surprise, but with a natural regret that all such feelings belonged to the remote past. The age of chivalry, he said sadly, was gone by for him.

But, whatever may have been his general reading at this early period, he certainly did not, in the years immediately preceding his college life, affect careful study, or serious intellectual cultivation of any kind. His lessons he learned easily, but he made a characteristic distinction between such as were indispensable for his admission to the University, and such as were prescribed merely to increase his classical knowledge and accomplishments. He was always careful to learn the first well, but equally careful to do no more, or at least not to seem willing to do it, lest yet further claims should be made upon him. I remember well his cheerful and happy recitations of the Oedipus Tyrannus; but he was very fretful at being required to read the more difficult Prometheus Vinctus of Aeschylus, because it was not a part of the course of study which all must pass through. Horace, too, of which we read some parts together, interested and excited him beyond his years, but Juvenel he disliked, and Persius he could not be made to read at all. He was, in short, neither more nor less than a thoroughly natural, bright boy, who loved play better than work, but who could work well under sufficient inducements and penalties.

During the whole of his school days in Boston, although he was a general favorite among the boys, his friend and fidus Achates was a son of his teacher, Dr. Gardiner, of just about his own age; and, if not naturally of a more staid and sober character, kept by a wise parental discipline under more restraint. It was a happy intimacy, and one that was never broken or disturbed. Their paths in life diverged, indeed, somewhat later, and they necessarily saw each other less as they became engrossed by pursuits so different;—the one as a severe, retired student; the other as an active, eminent lawyer, much too busy with the affairs of others to be seen often out of his own office and family. But their attachment always rested on the old foundation, and the friend of his boyhood became in time Mr. Prescott's chief confidential adviser in his worldly affairs, and was left at last the sole executor of his considerable estate.

In the first few years of their acquaintance they were constantly together. Dr. Gardiner gave instruction only in Greek, Latin, and English. The two boys, therefore, took private lessons, as they were called, of other teachers in arithmetic and in writing; but made small progress in either. They played, too, with French, Italian, and Spanish, but accomplished little; for they cared nothing about these studies, which they accounted superfluous and which they pursued only to please their friends. They managed, however, always to have the same instructors, and so were hardly separated at all. They learnt, indeed, the slight and easy lessons set them, but were careful to do no more, and so made no real progress.

Much of their free time they gave to amusements not altogether idle, but certainly not tending very directly to intellectual culture. Some of them were such as might have been readily expected from their age. Thus, after frequenting a circus, they imitated what they had seen, until their performances were brought to a disastrous conclusion by cruelly scorching a favorite family cat that was compelled to play a part in them. At another time they fired pistols till they disturbed the quiet neighborhood, and came near killing a horse in the Prescott stable. This was all natural enough, because it was boyish, though it was a little more adventurous, perhaps, than boys’ sports commonly are. Of the same sort, too, was a good deal of mischief in which they indulged themselves, with little harm to anybody, in the streets as they went to their school exercises, especially in the evening, and then came home again, looking all the graver for their frolics. But two of their amusements were characteristic and peculiar, and were, perhaps, not without influence on the lives of each of them, and especially on the life of the historian.

They devised games of battles of all sorts, such as they had found in their school-books, among the Greeks and Romans, or such as filled the news­papers of the time during the contest between the English and the French in the Spanish Peninsula; carrying them out by an apparatus more than commonly ingenious for boys of their age. At first, it was merely bits of paper arranged so as to indicate the different arms and commanders of the different squadrons; which were then thrown into heaps, and cut up at random with shears as ruthless as those of the Fates; quite severing many of the imaginary combatants so as to leave no hope of life, and curtailing others of their fair proportions in a way to indicate wounds more or less dangerous. But this did not last long. Soon they came to more personal and soldier-like encounters; dressing themselves up in portions of old armor which they found among the curiosities of the Athenaeum, and which, I fear, they had little right to use as they did, albeit their value for any purpose was small indeed. What was peculiar about these amusements was, that there was always an idea of a contest in them,—generally of a battle,— whether in the plains of Latium with Aeneas, or on Bunker Hill under William’s grandfather, or in the fanciful combats of knights-errant in the Amadis de Gaula; and Prescott apparently cared more about them on this account than on any other.

The other especial amusement of the two friends was that of alternately telling stories invented as they went along. It was oftener their street-talk than anything else; and, if the thread of the fiction in hand were broken off, by arriving at school or in any other way, they resumed it as soon as the interruption ceased, and so continued until the whole was finished; each improvising a complete series of adventures for the entertainment of the other and of nobody else. Prescott’s inventions were generally of the wildest; for his imagination was lively, and his head was full of the romances that prevailed in our circulating libraries before Scott’s time. But they both enjoyed this exercise of their faculties heartily, and each thought the other’s stories admirable. The historian always remembered these favorite amusements of his boyish days with satisfaction; and, only two or three years before his death, when he had one of his grandchildren on his knee, and was gratifying the boy’s demand for a fairy tale, he cried out, as Mr. Gardiner entered the room: “Ah, there's the man that could tell you stories. You know, William”, he continued, addressing his friend, “I never had any inventive faculty in my life; all I have done in the way of story-telling, in my later years, has been by diligent hard work”. Such, near the close of his life, was his modest estimate of his own brilliant powers and performances.

How much these amusements may have influenced the character of the narrator of the Conquest of Mexico, it is not possible to determine. Probably not much. But one thing is certain. They were not amusements common with boys of his age; and in his subsequent career his power of describing battles, and his power of relating a succession of adventures, are among his most remarkable attributes.

But his boyish days were now over. In August, 1811, he was admitted to the Sophomore Class in Harvard College, having passed his examination with credit. The next day he wrote to his father, then attending the Supreme Court at Portland, in Maine, the following letter, characteristic of the easy relations which subsisted between them, but which, easy as they were, did not prevent the son, through his whole life, from looking on his admirable father with a sincere veneration.

 

TO THE HON. WILLIAM PRESCOTT.

Boston, Aug. 23, [1811].

 

Dear Father, I now write you a few lines to inform you of my fate. Yesterday at eight o'clock I was ordered to the President’s, and there, together with a Carolinian, Middleton, was examined for Sophomore. When we were first ushered into their presence, they looked like so many judges of the Inquisition. We were ordered down into the parlor, almost frightened out of our wits, to be examined by each separately; but we soon found them quite a pleasant sort of chaps. The President sent us down a good dish of pears, and treated us very much like gentlemen. It was not ended in the morning; but we returned in the afternoon, when Professor Ware examined us in Grotius de Veritate. We found him very good-natured, for I happened to ask him a question in theology, which made him laugh so that he was obliged to cover his face with his hands. At half-past three our fate was decided, and we were declared “Sophomores of Harvard University”.

As you would like to know how I appeared, I will give you the conversation, verbatim, with Mr. Frisbie, when I went to see him after the examination. I asked him, “Did I appear well in my examination?”. Answer. “Yes”. Question. “Did I appear very well, Sir?” Answer. “Why are you so particular, young man? Yes, you did yourself a great deal of credit”.

I feel today twenty pounds lighter than I did yesterday. I shall dine at Mr. Gardiner’s. Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner both say that on me depends William’s going to college or not. If I behave well, he will go; if not, that he certainly shall not go. Mr. W. P. Mason has asked me to dine with him on Commencement Day, as he gives a dinner. I believe I shall go. As I had but little time, I thought it best to tell a long story, and write it badly, rather than a short one written well.

I have been to see Mr. H this morning; — no news.

Remember me to your fellow-travellers, C., & M., &c., &c. Love to mother, whose affectionate son I remain,

Wm. Hickling Prescott.

 

 

CHAPTER II 1811-1815

 

 

At the time William thus gayly entered on his career, he had, thanks to the excellent training he had received from Dr. Gardiner, a good taste formed and forming in English literature, and he probably knew more of Latin and Greek—not of Latin and Greek literature, but of the languages of Greece and Rome—than most of those who entered college with him knew when they were graduated. But, on the other hand, he had no liking for mathematics, and never acquired any; nor did he ever like metaphysical discussions and speculations. His position in his class was, of course, determined by these circumstances, and he was willing that it should be. But he did not like absolutely to fail of a respectable rank. It would not have been becoming the character of a cultivated gentleman, to which at that time he more earnestly aspired than to any other; nor would it have satisfied the just expectations of his family, which always had much influence with him. It was difficult for him, however, to make the efforts and the sacrifices indispensable to give him the position of a real scholar. He adopted, indeed, rules for the hours, and even the minutes, that he would devote to each particular study; but he was so careful never to exceed them, that it was plain his heart was not in the matter, and that he could not reasonably hope to succeed by such enforced and mechanical arrangements. Still, he had already a strong will concealed under a gay and light-hearted exterior. This saved him from many dangers. He was always able to stop short of what he deemed flagrant excesses, and to keep within the limits, though rather loose ones, which he had prescribed to himself. His standard for the character of a gentleman varied, no doubt, at this period, and sometimes was not so high on the score of morals as it should have been; but he always acted up to it, and never passed the world’s line of honor, or exposed himself to academical censures by passing the less flexible line drawn by college rules. He was, however, willing to run very near to both of them.

Among the modes he adopted at this time to regulate his conduct, was one which had much more influence with him later, than it had at first. It was that of making good resolutions,—a practice in which he persevered through life to an extraordinary extent, not always heeding whether he kept them with great exactness, but sure to repeat them as often as they were broken, until at last, some of them took effect, and his ultimate purpose was, in part at least, accomplished. He pardoned himself, I suppose, too easily for his manifold neglects and breaches of the compacts he had thus made with his conscience; but there was repentance at the bottom of all, and his character was strengthened by the practice. The early part of his college career, however, when for the first time he left the too gentle restraints of his father’s house, was less affected by this system of self- control, and was the most dangerous period of his life. Upon portions of it he afterwards looked back with regret.

“It was about this time”—says Mr. Gardiner, in a very interesting paper concerning his acquaintance with Mr. Prescott, which he has been good enough to place at my disposition,—“it was about this time, that is, pretty early in his college life, when the first excitements of perfect liberty of action were a little abated, that he began to form good resolutions,—to form them, not to keep them. This was, so far as I remember, the feeble beginning of a process of frequent self-examination and moral self-control, which he afterwards cultivated and practised to a degree beyond all example that has come under my observation in cases of like constitutional tendency. It was, I conceive, the truly great point of his moral character, and the chief foundation of all he accomplished in after life as a literary man; a point which lay always concealed to transient observers under lightness and gayety of manner.

“This habit of forming distinct resolutions about all sorts of things, sometimes important, but often in themselves the merest trifles in the world, grew up rapidly to an extent that became rather ludicrous; especially as it was accompanied by another habit, that of thinking aloud, and concealing nothing about himself, which led him to announce to the first friend he met his latest new resolution. The practice, I apprehend, must have reached its acme about the time when he informed me one day that he had just made a new resolution, which was,—since he found he could not keep those which he had made before,—that he would never make another resolution as long as he lived. It is needless to say that this was kept but a very short time.

“These resolutions, during college days, related often to the number of hours, nay, the number of minutes, per day to be appropriated to each particular exercise or study; the number of recitations and public prayers per week that he would not fail to attend; the number of times per week that he would not exceed in attending balls, theatrical entertainments in Boston, &c., &c. What was most observable in this sort of accounts that he used to keep with himself was, that the errors were all on one side. Casual temptations easily led him, at this time of life, to break through the severer restrictions of his rule, but it was matter of high conscience with him never to curtail the full quantity of indulgences which it allowed. He would be sure not to run one minute over, however he might sometimes fall short of the full time for learning a particular lesson, which he used to con over with his watch before him, lest by any inadvertence he might cheat himself into too much study.

“On the same principle, he was careful never to attend any greater number of college exercises, nor any less number of evening diversions in Boston, than he had bargained for with himself. Then, as he found out by experience the particular circumstances which served as good excuses for infractions of his rule, he would begin to complicate his accounts with himself by introducing sets of fixed exceptions, stringing on amendment, as it were, after amendment to the general law, until it became extremely difficult for himself to tell what his rule actually was in its application to the new cases which arose; and, at last, he would take the whole subject, so to speak, into a new draft, embodying it in a bran-new resolution. And what is particularly curious is, that all the casuistry attending this process was sure to be published, as it went along, to all his intimates.

“The manner in which he used to compound with his conscience in such matters is well illustrated by an anecdote, which properly belongs to a little later period, but which may well enough be inserted here. It is one which I was lately put in mind of by Mr. J. C. Gray, but which I had heard that gentleman tell long ago in Prescott’s presence, who readily admitted it to be substantially true. The incident referred to occurred at the time he and Mr. Gray were travelling together in Europe. An oculist, or physician, whom he had consulted at Paris, had advised him, among other things, to live less freely, and when pushed by his patient, as was his wont, to fix a very precise limit to the quantity of wine he might take, his adviser told him that he ought never to exceed two glasses a day. This rule he forthwith announced his resolution to adhere to scrupulously. And he did. But his manner of observing it was peculiar. At every new house of entertainment they reached in their travels, one of the first things Prescott did was to require the waiter to show him specimens of all the wine-glasses the house afforded. He would then pick out from among them the largest; and this, though it might contain two or three times the quantity of a common wine-glass, he would have set by his plate as his measure at dinner to observe the rule in”.

INJURY TO HIS EYE

But just at the period of his college history to which Mr. Gardiner chiefly refers, or a very little later, the painful accident befell him which, in its consequences, changed the whole aspect of the world to him, and tended, more than any single event in his life, to make him what he at last became. I refer, of course, to the accident which so fatally impaired his sight. It occurred in the Com­mons Hall, one day after dinner, in his Junior year. On this occasion there was some rude frolicking among the undergraduates, such as was not very rare when the college officers had left the tables, as they frequently did, a few minutes before the room was emptied. There was not, however, in this particular instance, any considerable disorder, and Prescott had no share in what there was. But when he was passing out of the door of the Hall, his attention was attracted by the disturbance going on behind him. He turned his head quickly to see what it was, and at the same instant received a blow from a large, hard piece of bread, thrown undoubtedly at random, and in mere thoughtlessness and gayety. It struck the open eye,—a rare occurrence in the case of that vigilant organ, which, on the approach of the slightest danger, is almost always protected by an instant and instinctive closing of the lids. But here there was no notice,—no warning. The missile, which must have been thrown with great force, struck the very disk of the eye itself. It was the left eye. He fell,—and was immediately brought to his father’s house in town, where, in the course of two or three hours from the occurrence of the accident, he was in the hands of Dr. James Jackson, the kind friend, as well as the wise medical adviser, of his father’s family.

The first effects of the blow were remarkable. They were, in fact, such as commonly attend a concussion of the brain. The strength of the patient was instantly and completely prostrated. Sickness at the stomach followed. His pulse was feeble. His face became pale and shrunken, and the whole tone of his system was reduced so low, that he could not sit up in bed. But his mind was calm and clear, and he was able to give a distinct account of the accident that had befallen him, and of what had preceded and followed it.

Under such circumstances no active treatment was deemed advisable. Quiet was strictly prescribed. Whatever could tend to the least excitement, physical or intellectual, was forbidden. And then nature was left to herself. This, no doubt, was the wisest course. At any rate, the system, which had at first yielded so alarmingly to the shock, gradually recovered its tone, and in a few weeks he returned to Cambridge, and pursued his studies as if nothing very serious had happened,— a little more cautiously, perhaps, in some respects, but probably with no diminution of such very moderate diligence as he had previously practised. But the eye that had been struck was gone. No external mark, either then or afterwards, indicated the injury that had been inflicted; and, although a glimmering light was still perceptible through the ruined organ, there was none that could be made useful for any of the practical purposes of life. On a careful examination, such as I once made, with magnifying lenses, at his request, under the direction of a distinguished oculist, a difference could indeed be detected between the injured eye and the other, and sometimes, as I sat with him, I have thought that it seemed more dim; but to common observation, in society or in the streets, as in the well-known case of the author of the Paradise Lost, no change was perceptible. It was, in fact, a case of obscure, deep paralysis of the retina, and as such was beyond the reach of the healing art from the moment the blow was given.

TRAITS OF CHARACTER 

One circumstance, however, in relation to the calamity that thus fell on him in the freshness of his youth, should not be overlooked, because it shows, even at this early period, the development of strong traits in his character, such as marked his subsequent life. I refer to the fact that he rarely mentioned the name of the young man who had thus inflicted on him an irreparable injury, and that he never mentioned it in a way which could have given pain either to him or to those nearest to him. Indeed, he so often spoke to me of the whole affair as a mere chance-medley, for which nobody could be to blame, and of which little could be distinctly known, that, for a time, I supposed he was really ignorant, and preferred to remain ignorant, from whose hand the fatal blow had come. But it was not so. He always knew who it was; and, years afterwards, when the burden of the injury he had received was much heavier on his thoughts than it had been at first, and when an opportunity occurred to do an important kindness to the unhappy person who had inflicted it, he did it promptly and cordially. It was a Christian act, —the more truly Christian, because although the blow was certainly given by accident, he who inflicted it never expressed any sympathy with the terrible suffering he had occasioned. At least, the sufferer, to whom, if to anybody, he should have expressed it, never knew that he regretted what he had done.

When William returned to College, and resumed his studies he had, no doubt, somewhat different views and purposes in life from those which had most influenced him before his accident. The quiet and suffering of his dark room had done their work, at least in part. He was, compared with what he had been, a sobered man. Not that his spirits were seriously affected by it. They survived even this. But inducements and leisure for reflection had been afforded him such as he had never known before; and, whether the thoughts that followed his accident were the cause or not, he now determined to acquire a more respectable rank in his class as a scholar, than he had earlier deemed worth the trouble.

It was somewhat late to do it; but, having no little courage and very considerable knowledge in elegant literature, he in part succeeded. His remarkable memory enabled him to get on well with the English studies; even with those for which, as for the higher metaphysics, he had a hearty disrelish. But mathematics and geometry seemed to constitute an insurmountable obstacle. He had taken none of the preparatory steps to qualify himself for them, and it was impossible now to go back to the elements, and lay a sufficient foundation. He knew, in fact, nothing about them, and never did afterwards. He became desperate, therefore, and took to desperate remedies.

The first was to commit to memory, with perfect exactness, the whole mathematical demonstration required of his class on any given day, so as to be able to recite every syllable and letter of it as they stood in the book, without comprehending the demonstration at all or attaching any meaning to the words and signs of which it was composed. It was, no doubt, a feat of memory of which few men would have been capable, but it was also one whose worthlessness a careful teacher would very soon detect, and one, in itself, so intolerably onerous, that no pupil could long practise it. Besides, it was a trick; and a fraud of any kind, except to cheat himself, was contrary to his very nature.

After trying it, therefore, a few times and enjoying whatever amusement it could afford him and his friends, who were in the secret, he took another method more characteristic. He went to his Professor, and told him the truth; not only his ignorance of geometry, and his belief that he was incapable of understanding a word of it, but the mode by which he had seemed to comply with the requisitions of the recitation-room, while in fact he evaded them; adding, at the same time, that, as a proof of mere industry, he was willing to persevere in committing the lessons to memory, and reciting by rote what he did not and could not understand, if such recitations were required of him, but that he would rather be permitted to use his time more profitably. The Professor, struck with the honesty and sincerity of his pupil, as well as with the singularity of the case, and seeing no likelihood that a similar one would occur, merely exacted his attendance at the regular hours, from which, in fact, he had no power to excuse him; but gave him to understand that he should not be troubled further with the duty of reciting. The solemn farce, therefore, of going to the exercise, book in hand, for several months, without looking at the lesson, was continued, and Prescott was always grateful to the kindly Professor for his forbearance.

On another occasion, he was in danger of more serious trouble with one of the Professors. In this case it arose from the circumstance, that, at all periods of his life, Prescott was now and then affected with a nervous laugh, or fit of laughter, which, as it was always without adequate cause, sometimes broke out most inopportunely. In a very interesting sketch of some passages in his life, by his friend Gardiner, which I have received since this Memoir was prepared, there is an account of two such outbreaks, both of which I will give here, because they are connected, and belong to nearly the same period in his life, and because the last is strictly to be placed among his college adventures. Speaking of this involuntary merriment, Mr. Gardiner says:—

“How mirthful he was,—how fond of a merry laugh,— how overflowing with means to excite one on all admissible occasions,—I have already mentioned. But what I now speak of was something beyond this. He had a sense of the ludicrous so strong, that it seemed at times quite to overpower him. He would laugh on such occasions,—not vociferously indeed, but most inordinately, and for a long time together, as if possessed by the spirit of Momus himself. It seemed to be something perfectly uncontrollable, provoked often by the slightest apparent cause; and sometimes, in his younger days, under circumstances that made its indulgence a positive impropriety. This seemed only to aggravate the disease. I call it a disease; for it deprived him at the time of all self-control, and in one of the other sex would have been perhaps hysterical. But there was something irresistibly comic in it to the by-standers, accompanied, as it used to be, by imperfect efforts, through drolleries uttered in broken, half-intelligible sentences, to communicate the ludicrous idea. This original ludicrous idea he seldom succeeded in communicating; but the infection of laughter would spread, by a sort of animal magnetism, from one to another, till I have seen a whole company perfectly convulsed with it, no one of whom could have told what in the world he was laughing at, unless it were at the sight of Prescott, so utterly overcome, and struggling in vain to express himself.

“To give a better idea of this, I may cite an instance that I witnessed in his younger days, either shortly before, or just after, his first European tour. A party of young gentlemen and ladies—he and I among them—undertook to entertain themselves and their friends with some private theatricals. After having performed one or two light pieces with some success, we attempted the more ambitious task of getting up Julius Caesar. It proceeded only to two partial rehearsals; but the manner in which they ended is to the present point. When all had sufficiently studied their parts, we met for a final rehearsal. The part of Mark Antony had been allotted to Prescott. He got through with it extremely well till he came to the speech in the third act which begins, ‘O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth!’. This was addressed to one of our company, extended on the floor, and enacting the part of Caesar’s murdered corpse, with becoming stillness and rigidity. At this point of the performance the ludicrous seized upon Prescott to such a degree, that he burst out into one of his grand fits of laughing, and laughed so immoderately and so infectiously, that the whole company, corpse and all, followed suit, and a scene of tumult ensued which put a stop to further rehearsal. Another evening we attempted it again, after a solemn assurance from Prescott that he should certainly command himself, and not give way to such a folly again. But he did,—in precisely the same place, and with the same result. After that we gave up Julius Caesar.

“A more curious instance occurred while he was in college. I was not present at this, but have heard him tell it repeatedly in after-life. On some occasion it happened that he went to the study of the Rhetorical Professor, for the purpose of receiving a private lesson in elocution. The Professor and his pupil were entirely alone. Prescott took his attitude as orator, and began to declaim the speech he had committed for the purpose; but, after proceeding through a sentence or two, something ludicrous suddenly came across him, and it was all over with him at once,—just as when he came to the ‘bleeding piece of earth’, in the scene above narrated. He was seized with just such an uncontrollable fit of laughter. The Professor—no laughing man—looked grave, and tried to check him; but the more he tried to do so, the more Prescott was convulsed. The Professor began to think his pupil intended to insult him. His dark features grew darker, and he began to speak in a tone of severe reprimand. This only seemed to aggravate Prescott’s paroxysm, while he endeavored, in vain, to beg pardon; for he could not utter an intelligible word. At last, the sense of the extreme ludicrousness of the situation, and the perception of Prescotts utter helplessness, seized hold of the Professor himself. He had caught the infection. His features suddenly relaxed, and he too began to laugh; and presently the two, Professor and pupil, the more they looked at each other the more they laughed, both absolutely holding on to their sides, and the tears rolling down their cheeks. Of course, there was an end of all reprimand, and equally an end of all declamation. The Professor, as became him, recovered himself first, but only enough to say, ‘Well, Prescott, you may go. This will do for today’.”

Mathematics, by the indulgence of his teacher, being disposed of in the manner I have mentioned, and several other of the severer studies being made little more than exercises of memory, he was obliged to depend, for the distinction he desired to obtain at college, and which his family demanded from him, almost entirely on his progress in Latin and Greek, and on his proficiency in English literature. These, however, together with his zeal in pursuing them, were, by the kindness of those in academical authority, admitted to be sufficient. He received, in the latter part of his college career, some of the customary honors of successful scholarship, and at its close a Latin poem was assigned to him as his exercise for Commencement.

No honor, however, that he received at college was valued so much by him, or had been so much an object of his ambition, as his admission to the Society of the Phi Beta Kappa, which was composed, in its theory and pretensions, and generally in its practice, of a moderate number of the best scholars in the two upper classes. As the selection was made by the undergraduates themselves, and as a single black-ball excluded the candidate, it was a real distinction; and Prescott always liked to stand well with his fellows, later in life no less than in youth. From his own experience, therefore, he regarded this old and peculiar society with great favor, and desired at all periods to maintain its privileges and influence in the University.

The honor that he received on his graduation was felt to be appropriate to his tastes, and was not a little valued by him and by his father, as a proof of diligence in his classical studies. It is a pity that the poem cannot be found; but it seems to be irrecoverably lost. Only a few months before his death, his college classmate, Mr. S. D. Bradford, sent him one of a few copies, which he had privately printed for his children and friends, of his own scattered miscellanies, among which was a college exercise in Latin prose. Prescott then said, alluding to his own Latin poem: “I wish I had taken as good care of it as you have of your exercises. I have hunted for it in every quarter where I supposed I could have mislaid it, but in vain. If I should find it”, he adds, with his accustomed kindliness, “I shall feel content if the Latin will pass muster as well as in your performance”.

It was a pleasant little poem, on Hope, “Ad Spem”, and, if I remember rightly, it was in hexameters and pentameters. It was delivered in a hot, clear day of August, 1814, in the old meeting­house at Cambridge, to a crowded audience of the most distinguished people of Boston and the neighborhood, attracted in no small degree by an entertainment which Mr. and Mrs. Prescott were to give the same afternoon in honor of their son’s success,—one of the very last of the many large entertainments formerly given at Cambridge on such occasions, and which, in their day, rendered Commencement a more brilliant festival than it is now. I was there to hear my friend. I could see, by his tremulous motions, that he was a good deal frightened when speaking before so large an assembly; but still his appearance was manly, and his verses were thought well of by those who had a right to judge of their merit. I have no doubt they would do credit to his Latinity if they could now be found, for at school he wrote such verses better than any boy there.

After the literary exercises of the day came, of course, the entertainment to the friends of the family. This was given as a reward to the cherished son, which he valued not a little, and the promise of which had much stimulated his efforts in the latter part of his college life. It was, in fact, a somewhat sumptuous dinner, under a marquee, at which above five hundred persons of both sexes sat down, and which was thoroughly enjoyed by all who took an interest in the occasion. His mother did not hesitate to express the pleasure her son’s success had given her, and if his father, from the instincts of his nature, was more reserved, he was undoubtedly no less satisfied. William was very gay, as he always was in society, and perfectly natural; dancing and frolicking on the green with great spirit after the more formal part of the festivities was over. He was not sorry that his college life was ended, and said so; but he parted from a few of his friends with sincere pain, as they left Cambridge to go their several ways in the world, never to meet again as free and careless as they then were. Indeed, on such occasions, notwithstanding the vivacity of his nature, he was forced to yield a little to his feelings, as I have myself sometimes witnessed.

Immediately after leaving college, he entered as a student in his father’s office; for the law was, in some sort, his natural inheritance, and—with his own talents already sufficiently developed to be recognized, and with the countenance and aid of a lawyer as eminent as his father was—the path to success at the bar seemed both tempting and sure. But his tastes were still for the pursuits which he had always most loved. He entertained, indeed, no doubt what would be his ultimate career in life; but still he lingered fondly over his Greek and Latin books, and was encouraged in an indulgence of his preference by his family and friends, who rightly regarded such studies as the safest means and foundations for forensic eminence. He talked with me about them occasionally, and I rejoiced to hear his accounts of himself; for, although I had then been myself admitted to the bar, my tastes were the same, and it was pleasant for me to have his sympathy, as he always had mine.

Four or five months were passed in this way, then another dark and threatening cloud came over his happy life. In January, 1815, he called one day on his medical adviser, Dr. Jackson, and consulted him for an inconsiderable inflammation of his right eye. It was his sole dependence for sight, and therefore, although it had served him tolerably well for above a year and a half since the accident to the other, the slightest affection of its powers inevitably excited anxiety. The inflammation was then wholly on the surface of the organ, but yet he complained of a degree of difficulty and pain in moving it, greater than is commonly noticed in a case of so little gravity as this otherwise seemed to be. Leeches, therefore, were ordered for the temple, and a saturnine lotion,—simple remedies, no doubt, but such as were sufficient for the apparent affection, and quite as active in their nature as was deemed judicious.

But in the course of the night the pain was greatly increased, and on the following morning the inflammation, which at first had been trifling, was found to be excessive,—greater, indeed, than his physician, down to the present day, after a very wide practice of above sixty years, has, as he informs me, ever witnessed since. The eye itself was much swollen, the cornea had become opaque, and the power of vision was completely lost. At the same time the patient’s skin was found to be very hot, and his pulse hard and accelerated. The whole system, in short, was much disturbed, and the case had evidently become one of unusual severity.

To his calm and wise father, therefore,—to his physician, who was not less his friend than his professional adviser,—and to himself, for he too was consulted,—it seemed that every risk, except that of life, should be run, to save him from the permanent and total blindness with which he was obviously threatened. Copious bleedings and other depletions were consequently at once resorted to, and seemed, for a few hours, to have made an impression on the disease; but the suffering returned again with great severity during the subsequent night and the inflammation raged with such absolute fury for five days, as to resist every form of active treatment that could be devised by his anxious physician, and by Dr. John C. Warren, who had been summoned in consultation. The gloomiest apprehensions, therefore, were necessarily entertained; and even when, on the sixth day, the inflammation began to yield, and, on the morning of the seventh, had almost wholly subsided, little encouragement for a happy result could be felt; for the retina was found to be affected, and the powers of vision were obviously and seriously impaired.

But in the afternoon of the seventh day the case assumed a new phasis, and the father, much alarmed, hastened in person to Dr. Jackson, telling him that one of the patient’s knees had become painful, and that the pain, accompanied with redness and swelling, was increasing fast. To his surprise, Dr. Jackson answered very emphatically that he was most happy to hear it.

The mystery which had hung over the disease, from the first intimation of a peculiar difficulty in moving the organ, was now dispelled. It was a case of acute rheumatism. This had not been foreseen. In fact, an instance in which the acute form of that disease—not the chronic—had seized on the eye was unknown to the books of the profession. Both of his medical attendants, it is true, thought they had, in their previous practice, noticed some evidence of such an affection; and therefore when the assault was made on the knee in the present case, they had no longer any doubt concerning the matter. As the event proved, they had no sufficient reason for any. In truth, the rheumatism, which had attacked their patient in this mysterious but fierce manner, was the disease which, in its direct and indirect forms, persecuted him during the whole of his life afterwards, and caused him most of the sufferings and privations that he underwent in so many different ways, but, above all, in the impaired vision of his remaining eye. Bad, however, as was this condition of things, it was yet a relief to his anxious advisers to be assured of its real character;—not, indeed, because they regarded acute rheumatism in the eye as a slight disease, but because they thought it less formidable in its nature, and less likely at last to destroy the structure of the organ, than a common inflammation so severe and so unmanageable as this must, in the supposed case, have been.

The disease now exhibited the usual appearances of acute rheumatism; affecting chiefly the large joints of the lower extremities, but occasionally showing itself in the neck, and in other parts of the person. Twice, in the course of the next three months after the first attack, it recurred in the eye, accompanied each time with total blindness; but, whenever it left the eye, it resorted again to the limbs, and so severe was it, even when least violent, that, until the beginning of May, a period of sixteen weeks, the patient was unable to walk a step.

But nothing was able permanently to affect the natural flow of his spirits,—neither pain, nor the sharp surgical remedies to which he was repeatedly subjected, nor the disheartening darkness in which he was kept, nor the gloomy vista that the future seemed to open before him. His equanimity and cheerfulness were invincible.

During nearly the whole of this trying period I did not see him; for I was absent on a journey to Virginia from the beginning of December to the end of March. But when I did see him,—if seeing it could be called, in a room from which the light was almost entirely excluded,—I found him quite unchanged, either in the tones of his voice or the animation of his manner. He was perfectly natural and very gay; talking unwillingly of his own troubles, but curious and interested concerning an absence of several years in Europe which at that time I was about to commence. I found him, in fact, just as his mother afterwards described him to Dr. Frothingham, when she said: “I never in a single instance, groped my way across the apartment, to take my place at his side, that he did not salute me with some expression of good cheer,— not a single instance,—as if we were the patients, and his place were to comfort us”.

The following summer wore slowly away; not without much anxiety on the part of his family, as to what might be the end of so much suffering, and whether the patient’s infirmities would not be materially aggravated by one of our rigorous winters. Different plans were agitated. At last, in the early autumn, it was determined that he should pass the next six months with his grandfather Hickling, Consul of the United States at St. Michael’s, and then that he should visit London and Paris for the benefit of such medical advice as he might find in either metropolis; travelling, perhaps, afterwards on the Continent, to recruit the resources of his constitution, which by such long-continued illness had been somewhat impaired. It was a remedy which was not adopted without pain and misgiving on both sides; but it was evidently the best thing to be done, and all submitted to it with patience and hope.

 

CHAPTER III

1815-1816

 

IN fulfillment of the plan for travel mentioned in the last chapter, he embarked at Boston, on the 26th of September, 1815, for the Azores. Be­sides the usual annoyances of a sea-voyage in one of the small vessels that then carried on our commerce with the Western Islands, he suffered from the especial troubles of his own case;—sharp attacks of rheumatism and an inflammation of the eye, for which he had no remedies but the twilight of his miserable cabin, and a diet of rye pudding, with no sauce but coarse salt. The passage, too, was tediously long. He did not arrive until the twenty-second day. Before he landed, he wrote to his father and mother, with the freedom and affection which always marked his intercourse with them:—

“I have been treated”, he said, “with every attention by the captain and crew, and my situation rendered as com­fortable as possible. But this cabin was never designed for rheumatics. The companion-way opens immediately upon deck, and the patent binnacle illuminators, vice windows, are so ingeniously and impartially constructed, that for every ray of light we have half a dozen drops of water. The consequence is, that the orbit of my operations for days together has been very much restricted. I have banished ennui, however, by battling with Democrats and bed-bugs, both of which thrive on board this vessel, and in both of which contests I have been ably seconded by the cook, who has officiated as my valet de chambre, and in whom I find a great congeniality of sentiment”

An hour after writing this letter, October 18th, he landed. He was most kindly received by his grandfather,—a generous, open-handed, open-hearted gentleman, seventy-two years old, who had long before married a lady of the island as his second wife, and was surrounded by a family of interesting children, some of whom were so near the age of their young nephew of the half-blood, that they made him most agreeable companions and friends. They were all then residing a few miles from Ponta Delgada, the capital of the island of St. Michael’s, at a place called Rosto de Cao, from the supposed resemblance of its rocks to the head of a dog. It was a country-house, in the midst of charming gardens and the gayest cultiva­tion. The young American, who had been little from home, and never beyond the influences of the rude climate in which he was born, enjoyed excessively the all but tropical vegetation with which he found himself thus suddenly surrounded; the laurels and myrtles that everywhere sprang wild; and the multitudinous orange-groves which had been cultivated and extended chiefly through his grandfather’s spirit and energy, until their fruit had become the staple of the island, while, more than half the year, their flowers filled large por­tions of it with a delicious fragrance; “Hesperian fables true, if true, here only”.

But his pleasures of this sort were short-lived.

He had landed with a slight trouble in his eye, and a fortnight was hardly over before he was obliged to shut himself up with it. From November 1st to February 1st he was in a dark room;—six weeks of the time in such total darkness, that the furniture could not be distinguished; and all the time living on a spare vegetable diet, and applying blisters to keep down active inflammation. But his spirits were proof alike against pain and abstinence. He has often described to me the exercise he took in his large room,—hundreds of miles in all,—walking from corner to corner, and thrusting out his elbows so as to get warning through them of his approach to the angles of the wall, whose plastering he absolutely wore away by the constant blows he thus inflicted on it. And all this time, he added, with the exception of a few days of acute suffering, he sang aloud in his darkness and solitude, with unabated cheer. Later, when a little light could be admitted, he carefully covered his eyes, and listened to reading; and, at the worst, he enjoyed much of the society of his affectionate aunts and cousins.

But he shall speak for himself, in two or three of the few letters which are preserved from the period of his residence in the Azores and his subsequent travels in Europe.

 

TO HIS FATHER AND MOTHER.

Rosto de CAO, 13 Nov., 1815.

It is with heart-felt joy, my beloved parents, that I can address you from this blessed little isle. I landed on Wednesday, October 18th, at 10 a.m., after a most tedious passage of twenty-two days, although I had made a fixed determination to arrive in ten. I cannot be thankful enough to Heaven that it had not cased in these rheumatic shackles the navigating soul of a Cook or a Columbus, for I am very sure, if a fifth quarter of the globe depended upon me for its exposure, it would remain terra incognita forever. . . . I was received on the quay by my Uncles Thomas and Ivers, and proceeded immediately to the house of the latter, where I disposed of a nescio quantum of bread and milk, to the no small astonishment of two or three young cousins, who thought it the usual American appetite.

The city of Ponta Delgada, as seen from the roads, presents an appearance extremely unique, and, to one who has never been beyond the smoke of his own hamlet, seems rather enchantment than reality. The brilliant whiteness of the buildings, situated at the base of lofty hills, whose sides are clothed with fields of yellow corn, and the picturesque, admirably heightened by the turrets which rise from the numerous convents that disgrace and beautify the city, pre­sent a coup d'oeil on which the genius of a Radcliffe, or indeed any one, much less an admirer of the beauties of nature than myself, might expend a folio of sentimentality and nonsense. After breakfast I proceeded to Rosto de Cao, where I have now the good fortune to be domesticated. My dear grand­father is precisely the man I had imagined and wished him to be. Frank and gentlemanly in his deportment, affectionate to his family, and liberal to excess in all his feelings, his hand serves as the conductor of his heart, and when he shakes yours, he communicates all the overflowings of his own benevolent disposition. His bodily virtues are no less inspiring than his mental. He rises every morning at five, takes a remarkable interest in everything that is going for­ward, and is so alert in his motions, that, at a fair start, I would lay any odds he would distance the whole of his posterity. He plumes himself not a little upon his constitution, and tells me that I am much more deserving of the title of “old boy” than himself.

  I should give you a sort of biography of the whole family, but my aunt, who officiates as secretary, absolutely refuses to write any more encomiums on them, and, as I have nothing very ill to say of them at present, I shall postpone this until you can receive some official documents sub mea manu. The truth is, I am so lately recovered from a slight inflammation, which the rain water, salt water, and other marine comforts are so well calculated to produce, that I do not care to exert my eyes at present, for which reason my ideas are communicated to you by the hand of my aunt.

We move into town this week, where I have been but seldom since my arrival, and have confined my curiosity to some equestrian excursions round the country. Novelty of scenery is alone sufficient to interest one who has been accustomed to the productions of Northern climates. It is very curious, my dear parents, to see those plants which one has been accustomed to see reared in a hot-house, flourishing beneath the open sky, and attaining a height and perfection which no artificial heat can command. When I wander amid the groves of boxwood, cypress, and myrtle, I feel myself transported back to the ages of Horace and Anacreon, who consecrated their shades to immortality.

The climate, though very temperate for winter, is much too frigid for summer, and before I could venture a flight of poesy, I should be obliged to thaw out my imagination over a good December fire. The weather is so capricious, that the inhabitants are absolutely amphibious;—if they are in sunshine one half of the day, they are sure to be in water the other half. . . .

Give my best affection to Aunt A…’s charming family, and be particular respecting Mrs. H…’s health. Tell my friends, that, when my eyes are in trim, I shall not fail to fatigue their patience.

Remember me to our good people, and think often, my beloved parents, of your truly affectionate son,

William.

 

TO HIS SISTER.

St. Michael’s, Ponta Delgada, March 12, 1816.

I am happy, my darling sister, in an opportunity of declaring how much I love, and how often I think of you....

Since my recovery—to avail myself of a simile not exactly Homeric—I may be compared to bottled beer, which, when it has been imprisoned a long time, bursts forth with tremendous explosion, and evaporates in froth and smoke. Since my emancipation I have made more noise and rattled more nonsense than the ball-rooms of Boston ever witnessed. Two or three times a week we make excursions into the country on jacks, a very agreeable mode of riding, and visit the orangeries, which are now in their prime. What a prospect presents itself for the dead of winter! The country is every­where in the bloom of vegetation;—the myrtles, the roses, and laurels are in full bloom, and the dark green of the orange groves is finely contrasted with “the golden apples” which glitter through their foliage. Amidst such a scene I feel like a being of another world, new lighted on this distant home ...

The houses of this country are built of stone, covered with white lime. They are seldom more than two stories in height, and the lower floors are devoted to the cattle. They are most lavish of expense on their churches, which are profusely or­namented with gilding and carving, which, though poorly executed, produces a wonderful effect by candle-light. They are generally fortified with eight or ten bells, and when a great character walks off the carpet, they keep them in continual jingle, as they have great faith in ringing the soul through Purgatory. When a poor man loses his child, his friends congratulate him on so joyful an occasion; but if his pig dies, they condole with him. I know not but this may be a, fair estimate of their relative worth ...

The whole appearance of this country is volcanic. In the environs I have seen acres covered with lava, and incapable of culture, and most of the mountains still retain the vestiges of craters. Scarcely a year passes without an earthquake. I have been so fortunate as to witness the most tremendous of these convulsions within the memory of the present inhabitants. This was on the 1st of February, at midnight. So severe was the shock, that more than forty houses and many of the public edifices were overthrown or injured, and our house cracked in various places from top to bottom. The whole city was thrown into consternation. Our family assembled en chemise in the corridor. I was wise enough to keep quiet in bed, as I considered a cold more dangerous to me than an earthquake. But we were all excessively alarmed. There is no visitation more awful than this. From most dangers there is some refuge, but when nature is convulsed, where can we fly? An earthquake is commonly past before one has time to estimate the horrors of his situation; but this lasted three minutes and a half, and we had full leisure to summon up the ghosts of Lisbon and Herculaneum, and many other recollections equally soothing, and I confess the idea of terminating my career in this manner was not the most agreeable of my reflections.

A few weeks since, my dear sister, I visited some hot springs in Ribeira Grande, at the northern part of the island; but, as I have since been to “the Furnace”, where I have seen what is much more wonderful and beautiful in nature, I shall content myself with a description of the latter excursion.

Our road lay through a mountainous country, abounding in wild and picturesque scenery. Our party consisted of about twenty, and we travelled upon jacks, which is the pleasantest conveyance in the world, both from its sociability, and the little fatigue which attends it. As we rode irregularly, our cavalcade had a very romantic appearance; for, while some of us were in the vale, others were on the heights of the mountains, or winding down the declivities, on the brink of precipices two hundred feet perpendicular.

As my imagination was entirely occupied with the volcanic phenomena for which the Furnace is so celebrated, I had formed no ideas of any milder attractions. What was my surprise, then, when, descending the mountains at twilight, there burst upon our view a circular valley, ten miles in circumference, bounded on all sides by lofty hills, and in the richest state of cultivation. The evening bell was tolling, as we descended into the plain, to inform the inhabitants of sunset,—the Angelus,—and this, with the whistle of the herdsmen, which in this country is peculiarly plaintive, and the “sober gray” of evening, all combined to fill my bosom with sentiments of placid contentment ...

I consider it almost fruitless to attempt to describe the Caldeiras [the Caldrons], as I can convey no adequate idea of their terrible appearance. There are seven principal ones, the largest about twenty feet in diameter. They are generally circular, but differing both in form and dimensions. They boil with such fervor as to eject the water to the height of twenty feet, and make a noise like distant thunder ...

Grandfather’s house is situated in the centre of this beautiful valley. It has undergone several alterations since mother was here. The entrance is through a long avenue of shady box-trees, and you ascend to it by a flight of fifty stone steps. Near the house is a grove which was not even in embryo when mother was here. In front of it is a pond, with a small island in the middle, connected with the main land by a stone bridge. In this delightful spot I had some of the happiest hours which I have spent since I quitted my native shores. At “Yankee Hall” every one is sans souci. The air of the place is remarkably propitious both to good spirits and good appetites.

In my walks I met with many villagers who recollected Donna Catherina, and who testified their affection for her son in such hearty embrassades as I am not quite Portuguese enough to relish ...

Adieu, my darling sister. I know not how I shall be able to send you this letter. I shall probably take it with me to London, where opportunities will be much more frequent, and where your patience will be much oftener tried by your sin­cerely affectionate

W.

 

TO WILLIAM H. GARDINER.

Ponta Delgada, St. Michael’s, March, 1816.

I am fortunate, my dear Will, in an opportunity of addressing you from the orange bowers of St. Michael’s, and of acknowledging the receipt of your Gazettes, with their budgets scandalous and philosophical. I must pronounce you, my friend, the optimus editorum, for, in the language of the commentators, you have not left a single desideratum ungratified. It is impossible to be too minute. To one absent from home trifles are of importance, and the most petty occurrences are the more acceptable, as they transport us into scenes of former happiness, and engage us in the occupations of those in whom we are the most interested. I was much distressed by the death of my two friends. R…’s I had anticipated, but the circumstances which attended it were peculiarly afflicting. Few I believe have spent so long a life in so short a period. He certainly had much benevolence of disposition; but there was something uncongenial in his temper, which made him unpopular with the mass of his acquaintance. If, however, the number of his enemies was great, that of his virtues exceeded them. Those of us who shared his friendship knew how to appreciate his worth.

P---, with less steadiness of principle, had many social qualities which endeared him to his friends. The sprightliness of his fancy has beguiled us of many an hour, and the vivacity of his wit, as you well know, has often set our table in a roar ...

Your letters contain a very alarming list of marriages and matches. If the mania continues much longer, I shall find at my return most of my fair companions converted into sober matrons. I believe I had better adopt your advice, and, to execute it with a little more éclat, persuade some kind nun to scale the walls of her convent with me.

Apropos of nunneries: the novelty of the thing has induced me to visit them frequently, but I find that they answer very feebly to those romantic notions of purity and simplicity which I had attached to them. Almost every nun has a lover; that is, an innamorato who visits her every day, and swears as many oaths of constancy, and imprints as many kisses on the grates as ever Pyramus and Thisbe did on the unlucky chink which separated them. I was invited the other day to select one of these fair penitents, but, as I have no great relish for such a correspondence, I declined the politeness, and content myself with a few ogles and sighs en passant.

It is an interesting employment for the inhabitants of a free country, flourishing under the influences of a benign religion, to contemplate the degradation to which human nature may be reduced when oppressed by arbitrary power and papal superstition. My observation of the Portuguese character has half inclined me to credit Monboddo’s theory, and consider the inhabitants in that stage of the metamorphosis when, having lost the tails of monkeys, they have not yet acquired the brains of men. In mechanical improvements, and in the common arts and conveniences of life, the Portuguese are at least two centuries behind the English, and as to literary acquisitions, if, as some writers have pretended, “ignorance is bliss”, they may safely claim to be the hap­piest people in the world.

But, if animated nature is so debased, the beauties of the inanimate creation cannot be surpassed. During the whole year we have the unruffled serenity of June. Such is the temperature of the climate, that, although but a few degrees south of Boston, most tropical plants will flourish; and such is the extreme salubrity that nothing venomous can exist. These islands, however, abound in volcanic phenomena. I have seen whole fields covered with lava, and most of the mountains still retain the vestiges of craters. I have, too, had the pleasure of experiencing an earthquake, which shook down a good number of houses, and I hope I shall not soon be gratified with a similar exhibition.

But the most wonderful of the natural curiosities are the hot wells, which are very numerous, and of which it would be impossible to give you an adequate conception. The fertility of the soil is so great, that they generally obtain two crops in a year, and now, while you are looking wofully out of the window waiting for the last stroke of the bell before you encounter the terrific snow-banks which threaten you, with us the myrtle, the rose, the pomegranate, the lemon and orange groves are in perfection, and the whole country glowing in full bloom. Indeed, there is everything which can catch the poet’s eye, but you know, Sine Venere, friget Apollo, and, until some Azorian nymph shall warm my heart into love, the beauties of nature will hardly warm my imagination into poesy.

I must confess, however, that friendship induced me to make an effort this way. I have been confined to my chamber for some time by an indisposition; and while in duress I commenced a poetical effusion to you, and had actually com­pleted a page, when, recovering my liberty, there were so many strange objects to attract the attention, and I thought it so much less trouble to manufacture bad prose than bad poetry, that I dismounted from Pegasus, whom, by the by, I found a confounded hard trotter. Now, as you are professedly one of the genus irritabile, I think you cannot employ your leisure better than in serving me an Horation dish secundum artem. Give my warmest affection to your father, mother, and sisters, and be assured, my dear Will, whether rhyme or reason, your epistles will ever confer the highest gratification on your friend,

 

Wm. H. Prescott. TO HIS FATHER AND MOTHER.

St. Michael’s, March 15, 1816.

 

I cannot regret, my beloved parents, that the opportunities of writing have not been more frequent; for, although it would be cruel to inform you of distresses, while actually existing, which it was not in your power to alleviate, yet it is so soothing to the mind to communicate its griefs, that I doubt if I could refrain from it.

The windows in Rosto de Cao are constructed on much the same principle as our barn-doors. Their uncharitable quan­tity of light and a slight cold increased the inflammation with which I landed to such a degree, that, as I could not soften the light by means of blinds, which are unknown here, I was obliged to exclude it altogether by closing the shutters. The same cause retarded my recovery; for, as the sun introduced himself sans ceremonie whenever I attempted to admit the light, I was obliged to remain in darkness until we re­moved to the city, where I was accommodated with a room which had a northern aspect, and, by means of different thicknesses of baize nailed to the windows, I was again restored to the cheering beams of heaven. This confinement lasted from the 1st of November to the 1st of February, and during six weeks of it I was in such total darkness it was impossible to distinguish objects in the room. Much of this time has been beguiled of its tediousness by the attentions of A-- and H--, particularly the latter, who is a charming creature, and whom I regard as a second sister.

I have had an abundance of good prescriptions. Grand­father has strongly urged old Madeira as a universal nostrum, and my good uncle the doctor no less strenuously recommended beef-steak. I took their advice, for it cost me nothing; but, as following it cost me rather too dear, I adhered with Chinese obstinacy to bread and milk, hasty pudding, and gruel. This diet and the application of blisters was the only method I adopted to preserve my eye from inflammation.

I have not often, my dear parents, experienced depression of spirits, and there have been but few days in which I could not solace my sorrows with a song. I preserved my health by walking on the piazza with a handkerchief tied over a pair of goggles, which were presented to me by a gentleman here, and by walking some hundreds of miles in my room, so that I emerged from my dungeon, not with the emaciated figure of a prisoner, but in the florid bloom of a bon vivant. Indeed, everything has been done which could promote my health and happiness; but darkness has few charms for those in health, and a long confinement must exhaust the patience of all but those who are immediately interested in us. A person situated as I have been can be really happy nowhere but at home, for where but at home can he experience the affectionate solicitude of parents. But the gloom is now dissipated, and my eyes have nearly recovered their former vigor. I am under no apprehension of a relapse, as I shall soon be wafted to a land where the windows are of Christian dimensions, and the medical advice such as may be relied upon.

The most unpleasant of my reflections suggested by this late inflammation are those arising from the probable necessity of abandoning a profession congenial with my taste, and recommended by such favorable opportunities, and adopting one for which I am ill qualified, and have but little inclination. It is some consolation, however, that this latter alternative, should my eyes permit, will afford me more leisure for the pursuit of my favorite studies. But on this subject I shall consult my physician, and will write you his opinion. My mind has not been wholly stagnant during my residence here. By means of the bright eyes of H-- I have read part of Scott, Shakespeare, Travels through England and Scotland, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. A-- has read some of the Grecian and Roman histories, and I have cheated many a moment of its tedium by composition, which was soon banished from my mind for want of an amanuensis.

 

CHAPTER IV

1816

 

HIS relations to the family of his venerable grandfather at St. Michael’s, as the preceding letters show, were of the most agreeable kind, and the effect produced by his character on all its members, old and young, was the same that it produced on everybody. They all loved him. His grandmother, with whom, from the difference of their languages, he could have had a less free intercourse than with the rest, wept bitterly when he left them; and his patriarchal grandfather, who had, during his long life, been called to give up several of his house to the claims of the world, pressed him often in his arms on the beach, and, as the tears rolled down his aged cheeks, cried out, in the bitterness of his heart, “God knows, it never cost me more to part from any of my own children”.

On the 8th of April, 1816, he embarked for London. His acute rheumatism and the consequent inflammation in his eye recurred almost of course, from the exposures incident to a sea life with few even of the usual allowances of sea comforts. He was, therefore, heartily glad when, after a passage prolonged to four and twenty days, two and twenty of which he had been confined to his state-room, and kept on the most meagre fare, his suffering eye rested on the green fields of old England.

In London he placed himself in the hands of Dr. Farre; of Mr. Cooper, afterwards Sir Astley Cooper; and of Sir William Adams, the oculist. He could not, perhaps, have done better. But his case admitted of no remedy and few alleviations; for it was ascertained, at once, that the eye originally injured was completely paralyzed, and that for the other little could be done except to add to its strength by strengthening the whole physical system. He followed, however, as he almost always did, even when his hopes were the faintest, all the prescriptions that were given him, and submitted conscientiously to the privations that were imposed. He saw few persons that could much interest him, because evening society was forbidden, and he went to public places and exhibitions rarely, and to the theatre never, although he was sorely tempted by the farewell London performances of Mrs. Siddons and Mr. John Kemble. A friend begged him to use an excellent library as if it were his own; “but”, he wrote to his father and mother, “when I look into a Greek or Latin book, I experience much the same sensation one does who looks on the face of a dead friend, and the tears not infrequently steal into my eyes”. He made a single excursion from London. It was to Richmond; visiting at the same time Slough, where he saw Herschel’s telescopes, Eton, Windsor, and Hampton Court,—all with Mr. John Quincy Adams, then our Minister at the Court of St. James. It was an excursion which he mentions with great pleasure in one of his letters. He could, indeed, hardly have made it more agreeably or more profitably. But this was his only pleasure of the sort.

A fresh and eager spirit, however, like his, could not stand amidst the resources of a metropolis so magnificent as London without recognizing their power. Enjoyments, therefore, he certainly had, and, if they were rare, they were high. Nothing in the way of art struck him so much as the Elgin Marbles and the Cartoons of Raphael. Of the first, which he visited as often as he dared to do so, he says, “There are few living beings in whose society I have experienced so much real pleasure”, and of the last, that “they pleased him a great deal more than the Stafford collection”. It may, as it seems to me, be fairly accounted remarkable, that one whose taste in sculpture and painting could not have been cultivated at home should at once have felt the supremacy of those great works of ancient and modern art, then much less acknowledged than it is now, and even yet, perhaps, not so fully confessed as it will be.

He went frequently to the public libraries and to the principal booksellers’ shops, full of precious editions of the classics which he had found it so difficult to obtain in his own country, and which he so much coveted now. But of everything connected with books his enjoyment was necessarily imperfect. At this period he rarely opened them. He purchased a few, however, trusting to the future, as he always did.

Early in August he went over to Paris, and remained there, or in its neighborhood, until October. But Paris could hardly be enjoyed by him so much as London, where his mother tongue made everything seem familiar in a way that nothing else can. He saw, indeed, a good deal of what is external; although, even in this, he was checked by care for his eye, and by at least one decided access of inflammation. Anything, however, beyond the most imperfect view of what he visited was out of the question.

The following winter, which he passed in Italy, was probably beneficial to his health, so far as his implacable enemy, the rheumatism, was concerned, and certainly it was full of enjoyment. He travelled with his old schoolfellow and friend, Mr. John Chipman Gray, who did much to make the journey pleasant to him. After leaving Paris, they first stopped a day at La Grange to pay their respects to General Lafayette, and then went by Lyons, the Mont Cenis, Turin, Genoa, Milan, Venice, Bologna, and Florence to Rome. In Rome they remained about six weeks; after which, giving a month to Naples, they returned through Rome to Florence, and, embarking at Leghorn for Marseilles, made a short visit to Nimes, not forgetting Avignon and Vaucluse, and then hastened by Fontainebleau to Paris, where they arrived on the 20th of March. It was the customary route, and the young travellers saw what all travellers see, neither more nor less, and enjoyed it as all do who have cultivation like theirs and good taste. In a letter written to me the next year, when I was myself in Italy, he speaks with great interest of his visit there, and seems to regret Naples more than any other portion of that charming country. But twenty and also forty years later, when I was again in Italy, his letters to me were full, not of Naples, but of Rome. “Rome is the place”, he said, “that lingers longest, I suppose, in everybody’s recollection; at least, it is the brightest of all I saw in Europe”. This was natural. It was the result of the different vistas through which, at widely different periods of his life, he looked back upon what he had so much enjoyed.

One thing, however, in relation to his Italian journeyings, though not remarkable at the time, appears singular now, when it is seen in the light of his subsequent career. He passed over the battlefields of Gonsalvo de Cordova, and all that made the Spanish arms in Italy so illustrious in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, without a remark, and, I suppose, without a thought. But, as he often said afterwards, and, indeed, more than once wrote to me, he was then fresh from the classical studies he so much loved; Horace and Livy, I know, were suspended in the net of his travelling-carriage; and he thought more, I doubt not, of Caesar and Cicero, Virgil and Tacitus, than of all the moderns put together.

Indeed, the moderns were, in one sense, beyond his reach. He was unable to give any of his time to the language or the literature of Italy, so wholly were his eyes unfitted for use. But he was content with what his condition permitted;—to walk about among the ruins of earlier ages, and occasionally look up a passage in an ancient classic to explain or illustrate them. The genius loci was at his side wherever he went, and showed him things invisible to mortal sight. As he said in one of his letters to me, it was to him “all a sacred land”, and the mighty men of old stood before him in the place of the living.

A few days after he reached Paris, April 7, I arrived there from Germany, where I had been passing nearly two years; and, as we both had accidentally the same banker, our lodgings had been engaged for us at the same hotel. In this way he was one of the very first persons I saw when I alighted. His parlor, I found, was darkened, and his eye was still too sensitive for any healthy use of it; but his spirits were light, and his enthusiasm about his Italian journey was quite contagious. We walked a little round the city together, and dined that day without hospitable banker very gayly. But this was the last of his pleasures in Paris. When we reached our hotel, he complained of feeling unwell, and I was so much alarmed by the state of his pulse that I went personally for his physician, and brought him back with me, fearing, as it was already late at night, that there might otherwise be some untoward delay. The result showed that I had not been unreasonably anxious. The most active treatment was instantly adopted, and absolute quiet prescribed. I watched with him that night; and, as I had yet made no acquaintances in Paris, and felt no interest there, so strong as my interest in him, I shut myself up with him, and thought little of what was outside the walls of our hotel till he was better.

I was, in fact, much alarmed. Nor was he in­sensible to his position, which the severity of the remedies administered left no doubt was a critical one. But he maintained his composure throughout, begging me, however, not to tell him that his illness was dangerous unless I should think it indispensable to do so. In three or four days my apprehensions were relieved. In eight or ten more, during which I was much with him, he was able to go out, and in another week he was restored. But it was in that dark room that I first learned to know him as I have never known any other person beyond the limits of my immediate family; and it was there that was first formed a mutual regard over which, to the day of his death— a period of above forty years,—no cloud ever passed.

In the middle of May, after making a pleasant visit of a week to Mr. Daniel Parker at Draveil, he left Paris, and went, by the way of Brighton, to London, where he remained about six weeks, visiting anew, so far as his infirmities would permit, what was most interesting to him, and listening more than he had done before to debates in the House of Lords and the House of Commons. But the country gave him more pleasure than the city. His eyes suffered less there, and, besides, he was always sensible to what is beautiful in nature. Two excursions that he made gratified him very much. One was to Oxford, Blenheim, and the Wye; in which the Gothic architecture of New-College Chapel and the graceful ruins of Tintern Abbey, with the valley in which they stand, most attracted his admiration, the last “surpassing”, as he said, “anything of the sort he had ever seen”. He came back by Salisbury, and then almost immediately went to Cambridge, where he was more interested by the manuscripts of Milton and Newton than by anything else, unless, perhaps, it were King’s College Chapel. But, after all, this visit to England was very unsatisfactory. He spoke to me in one of his letters of being “invigorated by the rational atmosphere of London”, in comparison with his life on the Continent. But still the state of his eyes, and even of his general health, deprived him of many enjoyments which his visit would otherwise have afforded him. He was, therefore, well pleased to turn his face towards the comforts of home.

Of all this, pleasant intimations may be found in the following letter to his friend Gardiner:—

London, 29th May, 1817.

I never felt in my life more inclined to scold any one, my dear Gardiner, than I do to scold you at present, and I should not let you off so easily, but that my return will prevent the benefits of a reformation. You have ere this received a folio of hieroglyphics which I transmitted to you from Rome. To read them, I am aware, is impossible; for, as I was folding them up, I had occasion to refer to something, and found myself utterly unable to decipher my own writing. I preferred, however, to send them, for, although unintelligible, they would at least be a substantial evidence to my friend that I had not forgotten him. As you probably have been made acquainted with my route by my family, I shall not trouble you with the details.

Notwithstanding the many and various objects which Italy possesses, they are accompanied with so many désagrémens, —poor inns, worse roads, and, above all, the mean spirit and dishonesty of its inhabitants,—that we could not regret the termination of our tour. I was disappointed in France, that is to say, the country. That part of it which I have seen, excepting Marseilles, Nimes, Avignon, and Lyons, possesses few beauties of nature, and little that is curious or worthy of remark. Paris is everything in France. It is certainly unique. With a great parade of science and literary institutions, it unites a constant succession of frivolities and public amusements. I was pleased as long as the novelty lasted, and satiated in less than two months. The most cheerful mind must become dull amidst unintermitted gayety and dissipation, unless it is constructed upon a French anatomy.

I left S--in a retired part of the city, diligently occupied with the transition of the Roman language into the Italian, and with the ancient French Provençal dialect. There are some men who can unravel problems in the midst of a ball­room. In the fall goes down to Italy.

I have now been a fortnight in London. Its sea-coal atmosphere is extremely favorable to my health. I am convinced, however, that travelling is pernicious, and, instead of making the long tour of Scotland, shall content myself with excursions to the principal counties and manufacturing towns in England. In a couple of months I hope to embark, and shall soon have the pleasure of recapitulating with you, my friend, my perils and experiences, and treading in retrospection the classic ground of Italy. I sincerely hope you may one day visit a country which contains so much that is interesting to any man of liberal education.

I anticipate with great pleasure the restoration to my friends; to those domestic and social enjoyments which are little known in the great capitals of Europe. Pray give my warmest regards to your father, mother, and sisters, and n'oublez jamais

Your sincerely affectionate

Wm. H. Prescott.

 

CHAPTER V

1817-1824

 

HE embarked from England for home at mid­summer, and arrived before the heats of our hot season were over. His affectionate mother had arranged everything for his reception that could insure the rest he needed, and the alleviations which, for an invalid such as he was, can never be found except in the bosom of his family. Fresh paper and paint were put on his own room, and everything external was made bright and cheerful to welcome his return. But it was all a mistake. His eye, to the great disappointment of his friends, had not been strengthened during his absence, and could ill bear the colors that had been provided to cheer him. The white paint was, therefore, forthwith changed to gray, and the walls and carpet became green. But neither was this thought enough. A charming country-house was procured, since Nature furnishes truer carpets and hangings than the upholsterer; but the house was damp from its cool position, and from the many trees that surrounded it. His old enemy, the rheumatism, therefore, set in with renewed force; and in three days, just as his father was driving out to dine, for the first time, in their rural home, he met them all hurrying back to the house in town, where they remained nearly two years, finding it better for the invalid than any other. It was a large, comfortable old mansion in Bedford Street, and stood where the Second Congregational Church now stands.

The winter of 1817-18 he passed wholly at home. As he wrote to me, his “eyes made him a very domestic, retired man”. He avoided strong light as much as he could; and, extravagantly as he loved society, indulged himself in it not at all, because he found, or rather because he thought he found, its excitements injurious to him. But his old schoolfellow and friend Gardiner, who was then a student-at-law in the elder Mr. Prescott’s office, read some of his favorite classics with him a part of each day; and his sister, three years younger than he was, shut herself up with him the rest of it, in the most devoted and affectionate manner, reading to him sometimes six or even eight hours consecutively. On these occasions he used to place himself in the corner of the room, with his face to the angle made by the walls, and his back to the light. Adjusted thus, they read history and poetry, often very far into the night, and, although the reader, as she tells me, sometimes dozed, he never did. It was a great enjoyment to them both,—to her, one of the greatest of her life; but it was found too much for her strength, and the father and mother interfered to restrain and regulate what was unreasonable in the indulgence.

It was during this period that he made his first literary adventure. The North-American Review had then been in existence two or three years, and was already an extremely respectable journal, with which some of his friends were connected. It offered a tempting opportunity for the exercise of his powers, and he prepared an article for it. The project was a deep secret; and when the article was finished, it was given to his much trusted sister to copy. He felt, she thinks, some misgivings, but on the whole looked with favor on his first-born. It was sent anonymously to the club of gentlemen who then managed the Review, and nothing was heard in reply for a week or more. The two who were in the secret began, therefore, to consider their venture safe, and the dignity of authorship, his sister says, seemed to be creeping over him, when one day he brought back the article to her, saying: “There! it is good for nothing. They refuse it. I was a fool to send it”. The sister was offended. But he was not. He only cautioned her not to tell of his failure.

He was now nearly twenty-two years old, and it was time to consider what should be his course in life. So far as the profession of the law was concerned, this question had been substantially settled by circumstances over which he had no control.

His earliest misgivings on the subject seemed to have occurred during his long and painful confinement at St. Michael’s, and may be found in a letter, before inserted, which was written March 15th, 1816.

A little later, after consulting eminent members of the medical profession in London, he wrote more decisively and more despondingly: “As to the future, it is too evident I shall never be able to pursue a profession. God knows how poorly I am qualified, and how little inclined, to be a merchant. Indeed, I am sadly puzzled to think how I shall succeed even in this without eyes, and am afraid I shall never be able to draw upon my mind to any large amount”,—a singular prophecy, when we consider that his subsequent life for nearly forty years was a persistent contradiction of it.

After his return home this important question became, of course, still more pressing, and was debated in the family with constantly increasing anxiety. At the same time he began to doubt whether the purely domestic life he was leading was the best for him. The experiment of a year’s seclusion, he was satisfied, and so were his medical advisers, had resulted in no improvement to his sight, and promised nothing for the future if it should be continued. He began, therefore, to go abroad, gradually and cautiously at first, but afterwards freely. No harm followed, and from this time, except during periods when there was some especial inflammation of the eye, he always mingled freely in a wide range of society, giving and receiving great pleasure.

The consequence followed that might have been anticipated from a nature at once so susceptible and so attractive. He soon found one to whom he was glad to intrust the happiness of his life. Nor was he disappointed in his hopes; for, if there was ever a devoted wife, or a tender and grateful husband, they were to be found in the home which this union made happy. As he said in a letter long afterwards, “Contrary to the assertion of La Bruyère,—who somewhere says, that the most fortunate husband finds reasons to regret his condition at least once in twenty-four hours,—I may truly say that I have found no such day in the quarter of a century that Providence has spared us to each other”. And so it continued to the last. I am sure that none who knew them will think me mistaken. The lady was Susan, daughter of Thomas C. Amory, Esq., a successful and cultivated merchant, who died in 1812, and of Hannah Linzee, his wife, who survived him, enjoying the great happiness of her child, until 1845.

In the summer of 1819 I returned from Europe, after an absence of more than four years. The first friends who welcomed me in my home, on the day of my arrival, were the Prescott family; and the first house I visited was theirs, in which from that day I was always received as if I were of their kin and blood. William was then in the freshest glow of a young happiness which it was delightful to witness, and of which he thought for some months much more than he did of anything else. I saw him constantly; but it was apparent that, although he read a good deal, or rather listened to a good deal of reading, he studied very little, or not at all. Real work was out of the question. He was much too happy for it.

On the evening of the 4th of May, 1820, which was his twenty-fourth birthday, he was married at the house of Mrs. Amory, in Franklin Place. It was a wedding with a supper, in the old-fashioned style, somewhat solemn and stately at first; many elderly people being of the party, and especially an aged grandmother of the bride, whose presence enforced something of formality. But later in the evening our gayety was free in proportion to the restraints that had previously been laid upon it.

The young couple went immediately to the house of the Prescott family in Bedford Street, the same house, by a pleasant coincidence, in which Miss Linzee, the mother of the bride, had been married to Mr. Amory five and twenty years before; and there they lived as long as that ample and comfortable old mansion stood.

Another coincidence connected with this marriage should be added, although it was certainly one that augured little of the happiness that followed. The grandfathers of Mr. Prescott and Miss Amory had been engaged on opposite sides during the war for American Independence, and even on opposite sides in the same fight; Colonel Prescott having commanded on Bunker Hill, while Captain Linzee, of the sloop-of-war Falcon, cannonaded him and his redoubt from the waters of Charles River, where the Falcon was moored during the whole of the battle. The swords that had been worn by the soldier and the sailor on that memorable day came down as heirlooms in their respective families, until at last they met in the library of the man of letters, where, quietly crossed above his books, they often excited the notice alike of strangers and of friends. After his death they were transferred, as he had desired, to the Historical Society of Massachusetts, on whose walls they have become the memorials at once of a hard-fought field and of “victories no less renowned than those of war”. A more appropriate resting-place for them could not have been found. And there, we trust, they may rest in peace so long as the two nations shall exist, trophies, indeed, of the past, but warnings for the future.

At the time of his marriage my friend was one of the finest-looking men I have ever seen; or, if this should be deemed in some respects a strong expression, I shall be fully justified, by those who remember him at that period, in saying that he was one of the most attractive. He was tall, well formed, manly in his bearing but gentle, with light-brown hair that was hardly changed or diminished by years, with a clear complexion and a ruddy flush on his cheek that kept for him to the last an appearance of comparative youth, but, above all, with a smile that was the most absolutely contagious I ever looked upon. As he grew older, he stooped a little. His father’s figure was bent at even an earlier age, but it was from an organic infirmity of the chest, unknown to the constitution of his son, who stooped chiefly from a downward inclination which he instinctively gave to his head so as to protect his eye from the light. But his manly character and air were always, to a remark­able degree, the same. Even in the last months of his life, when he was in some other respects not a little changed, he appeared at least ten years younger than he really was. And as for the gracious, sunny smile that seemed to grow sweeter as he grew older, it was not entirely obliterated even by the touch of death. Indeed, take him for all in all, I think no man ever walked our streets, as he did day by day, that attracted such regard and good-will from so many; for, however few he might know, there were very many that knew him, and watched him with unspoken welcomes as he passed along.

A little before his marriage he had, with a few friends nearly of his own age and of similar tastes, instituted a club for purposes both social and literary. Their earliest informal gathering was in June, 1818. On the first evening they numbered nine, and on the second, twelve. Soon, the number was still further enlarged; but only twenty-four were at any time brought within its circle; and of these, after an interval of above forty years, eleven still survive (1862).

Prescott, from his happy, social nature, as well as from his love of letters, was eminently fitted to be one of the members of such a club, and rarely failed to be present at its meetings, which he always enjoyed. In their earliest days, after the fashion of such youthful societies, they read papers of their own composition, and amused themselves by criticising one another, and sometimes their neighbors. As a natural consequence of such intercourse, it was not long before they began to think that a part, at least, of what they had written was too good to be confined to their own meetings; and chiefly, I believe, under Prescott’s leading, they determined to institute a periodical, or rather a work which should appear at uncertain intervals, and be as little subject to rules and restrictions of any sort as their own gay meetings were. At any rate, if he were not the first to suggest the project, he was the most earnest in promoting it after it was started, and was naturally enough, both from his leisure and his tastes, made editor.

It was called “The Club-Room”, and the first number was published February 5th, 1820. But its life, though it seems to have been a merry one, was short; for the fourth and last number appeared on the 19th of July of the same year. Nor was there any especial reason to lament its fate as untimely. It was not better than the average of such publications, perhaps not so good. Prescott, I think, brought but three contributions to it. The first is the leading article in the second number, and gives, not without humor, an account of the way in which the first number had been received when it was ushered into a busy, bustling world, too careless of such claims to its notice. The others were tales; one of which, entitled “The Vale of Alleriot”, was more sentimental than he would have liked later; and one, “Calais”, was a story which Allston, our great artist, used to tell with striking effect. Neither of them had anything characteristic of what afterwards distinguished their author, and neither could be expected to add much to the popular success of such a publication. The best of the contributions to it were, I think, three by Mr. Franklin Dexter, his brother-in-law; two entitled “Recollections”, and the other, “The Ruins of Rome”; the very last being, in fact, a humorous anticipation of the mean and miserable appearance Boston would make, if its chief edifices should crumble away, and become what those of the mistress of the ancient world are now. And here ended this precious publication, as its editor, apparently with a slight feeling of vexation, recorded its failure. Not that he could be much mortified at its fate; for, if it was nothing else, it was an undertaking creditable to the young men who engaged in it so as to accustom themselves to write for the public, and it had, besides, not only enlivened their evenings, but raised the tone of their intercourse with each other.

When the last number of “The Club-Room” appeared, its editor had been married two months. The world was before him. Not only was his decision made to give up the law as a profession, but he had become aware that he must find some other serious occupation to take its place; for he was one of those who early discover that labor is the condition of happiness, and even of content, in this world. His selection of a pursuit, however, was not suddenly made. It could not be. Many circumstances in relation to it were to be weighed, and he had many misgivings, and hesitated long. But his tastes and employments had always tended in one direction, and therefore, although the decision might be delayed, the result was all but inevitable. He chose a life of literary occupation; and it was well that he chose it so deliberately, for he had time, before he entered on its more serious labors, to make an estimate of the difficulties that he must encounter in the long path stretched out before him.

In this way he became fully aware, that, owing to the infirmity under which he had now suffered during more than six of the most important years of his life, he had much to do before he could hope even to begin a career that should end with such success as is worth striving for. In many respects, the very foundations were to be laid, and his first thought was that they should be laid deep and sure. He had never neglected his classical studies, and now he gave himself afresh to them during a fixed portion of each day. But his more considerable deficiencies were in all modern literature. Of the English he had probably read as much as most persons of his age and condition, or rather it had been read to him; but this had been chiefly for his amusement in hours of pain and darkness, not as a matter of study, and much less upon a regular system. French he had spoken a little, though not well, while he was in France and Italy; but he knew almost nothing of French literature. And of Italian and Spanish, though he had learnt something as a school-boy, it had been in a thoughtless and careless way, and, after the injury to his sight, both of them had been neglected. The whole, therefore, was not to be relied upon; and most young men at the age of four or five and twenty would have been disheartened at the prospect of attempting to recover so much lost ground, and to make up for so many opportunities that had gone by never to return. When to this is added the peculiar discouragement that seemed almost to shut out knowledge by its main entrance, it would have been no matter of reproach to his courage or his manhood, if he had turned away from the undertaking as one beyond his strength.

But it is evident that he only addressed himself to his task with the more earnestness and resolu­tion. He began, I think wisely, with the English, being willing to go back to the very elements, and on the 30th of October, 1821, made a memorandum that he would undertake “a course of studies” involving—

1. Principles of grammar, correct writing, &c.;

2. Compendious history of North America;

3. Fine prose-writers of English from Roger Ascham to the present day, principally with reference to their mode of writing,—not including his­torians, except as far as requisite for an acquaintance with style;

4. Latin classics one hour a day.

 

The American history he did not immediately touch; but on the rest he entered at once, and carried out his plan vigorously. He studied, as if he had been a school-boy, Blair’s Rhetoric, Lindley Murray’s Grammar, and the prefatory matter to Johnson’s Dictionary, for the grammatical portion of his task; and then he took up the series of good English writers, beginning with Ascham, Sir Philip Sidney, Bacon, Browne, Raleigh, and Milton, and coming down to our own times,—not often reading the whole of any one author, but enough of each to obtain, what he more especially sought, an idea of his style and general characteristics. Occasionally he noted down his opinion of them,—not always such an opinion as he would have justified or entertained later in life, but always such as showed a spirit of observation and a purpose of improvement. Thus, under the date of November, 1821, he says:—

“Finished Roger Ascham’s Schoolmaster”. Style vigorous and polished, and even euphonious, considering the period; his language often ungrammatical, inelegant, and with the Latin idiom. He was one of the first who were bold and wise enough to write English prose. He dislikes rhyme, and thinks iambics the proper quantity for English verse. Hence blank verse. He was a critical scholar, but too fastidious.

Milton, Reasons of Church Government. Style vigorous, figurative to conceit; a rich and sublime imagination; often coarse, harsh; constant use of Latin idiom; inversion. He is very bold, confident in his own talent, with close, unre­lenting argument; upon the whole, giving the reader a higher idea of his sturdy principle than of his affections”.

In this way he continued nearly a year occupying himself with the good English prose-writers, and, among the rest, with the great preachers, Taylor, Tillotson, and Barrow, but not stopping until he had come down to Jeffrey and Gifford, whom he marked as the leading critics of our period. But during all this time, he gave his daily hour to the principal Latin classics, especially Tacitus, Livy, and Cicero; taking care, as he says, “to observe their characteristic physiognomies,— not style and manner as much as sentiments, &c.”

Having finished this course, he turned next to the French, going, as he intimates, “deeper and wider”, because his purpose was not, as in the Latin, to strengthen his knowledge, but to form an acquaintance with the whole of French literature, properly so called. He went back, therefore, as far as Froissart, and did not stop until he had come down to Chateaubriand. It was a good deal of it read by himself in the forenoons, thus saving much time; for in 1822-1823, except when an occasional inflammation occurred, his eye was in a condition to do him more service than it had done him for many years, and he husbanded its resources so patiently, and with so much care, that he rarely lost anything by imprudence.

But French literature did not satisfy him as English had done. He found it less rich, vigorous, and original. He, indeed, enjoyed Montaigne, and admired Pascal, whom he preferred to Bossuet or to Fenelon, partly, I think, for the same reasons that led him to prefer Corneille to Racine. But Lafontaine and Moliere stood quite by themselves in his estimation, although in some respects, and especially in the delineation of a particular humor or folly, he placed Ben Jonson before the great French dramatist. The forms of French poetry, and the rigorous system of rhymes enforced in its tragedies, were more than commonly distasteful to him.

While, however, he was thus occupied with French literature as a matter of serious study during parts of 1822 and 1823, he listened to a good deal of history read to him in a miscellaneous way for his amusement, and went through a somewhat complete course of the old English drama from Heywood to Dryden, accompanying it with the corresponding portions of August Wilhelm Schlegel’s Lectures, which he greatly relished. During the same period, too, we read together, at my house, three or four afternoons in each week, the Northern Antiquities, published by Weber, Jamieson, and Scott, in 1815; a good many of the old national romances in Ritson and Ellis, Sir Tristrem, Percy’s Reliques, and portions of other similar collections,—all relating either to the very earliest English literature or to its connection with the Scandinavian and the Teutonic. It was his first adventure in this direction, and he enjoyed it not a little,—the more, perhaps, because he was then going on with the French, in which he took less interest.

In the autumn of 1823, following out the same general purpose to which he had now devoted two years, he began the Italian. At first he only read such books as would soonest make him familiar with the language, and so much of Sismondi’s Litterature du Midi as would give him an outline of the whole field. Afterwards he took Ginguené and sometimes Tiraboschi for his guide, and went over an extraordinary amount of poetry, rather than prose, from Dante, and even from the Poeti del Primo Secolo, to Metastasio, Alfieri, and Monti. It seems quite surprising how much he got through with, and it would be almost incredible, if his notes on it were not full and decisive. He wrote, in fact, more upon Italian literature than he had written upon either the Eng­lish or the French, and it made apparently a much deeper impression upon him than the last. At different times he even thought of devoting a large part of his life to its study; and, excepting what he has done in relation to Spanish history, nothing of all he has published is so matured and satisfactory as two articles in the “North American Review”: one on Italian Narrative Poetry, published in October, 1824, and another on Italian Poetry and Romance, published in July, 1831, both to be noticed hereafter.

With what spirit and in what tone he carried on at this time the studies which produced an effect so permanent on his literary tastes and character will be better shown by the following familiar notes than by anything more formal:—

 

TO MR. TICKNOR.

Tuesday Morning, 8 o'clock, Dec. 15, 1823.

Dear George,

I am afraid you will think my study too much like the lion’s den; the footsteps never turn outwards. I want to borrow more books; viz. one volume of ancient Italian poetry; I should like one containing specimens of Cino da Pistoia, as I suspect he was the best versifier in Petrarch's time; also Ginguené; also, some translation of Dante.

I spoke very rashly of Petrarch the other day. I had only read the first volume, which, though containing some of his best, is on the whole much less moving and powerful than Part II. It is a good way to read him chronologically; that is, to take up each sonnet and canzone in the order, and understanding the peculiar circumstances, in which it was written. Ginguené has pointed out this course.

On the whole, I have never read a foreign poet that pos­sessed more of the spirit of the best English poetry. In two respects this is very striking in Petrarch;—the tender passion with which he associates every place in the country, the beautiful scenery about Avignon, with the recollections of Laura; and, secondly, the moral influence which his love for her seems to have had upon his character, and which shows itself in the religious sentiment that pervades more or less all his verses.

How anyone could ever doubt her existence who has read Petrarch’s poetry, is a matter of astonishment to me. Setting aside external evidence, which seems to me conclusive enough, his poetry could not have been addressed to an imaginary object; and one fact, the particular delight which he takes in the belief that she retains in heaven, and that he shall see her there, with the same countenance, complexion, bodily appearance, &c., that she had on earth, is so natural in a real lover, and would be so unlikely to press itself upon a fictitious one, that I think that it is worth noticing, as affording strong internal evidence of her substantial existence. I believe, however, that it is admitted generally now, from facts respecting his family brought to light by the Abbe de Sade, a descendant of her house.

The richness and perfection of the Italian in the hands of Petrarch is truly wonderful. After getting over the difficulty of some of his mystical nonsense, and reading a canzone two or three times, he impresses one very much; and the varied measures of the canzone put the facility and melody of verse-making to the strongest test. Gravina says, there are not two words in Petrarch’s verses obsolete. Voltaire, I remember, says the same thing of the Provincial Letters, written three hundred years later. Where is the work we can put our finger on in our own tongue before the eighteenth century and then say the same? Yet from long before Eliza­beth's time there were no invasions or immigrations to new-mould the language.

I hope you are all well under this awful dispensation of snow. I have shovelled a stout path this morning, and can report it more than a foot deep. A fine evening for the party at--, and I dine at--; so I get a morning and a half. Give my condolence to Anna, whom I hope to meet this evening, if the baby is well and we should not be buried alive in the course of the day.

Yours affectionately,

Wm. H. Prescott.

 

Being also shut up in the house by the snow­storm referred to, I answered him the same day with a long note entering into the question of the real existence of Laura, and the following rejoinder came the next day close upon the heel of my reply.

 

TO MR. TICKNOR.

  Bedford Street, Dec. 17, 1833.

Dear George,

 

I think better of snow-storms than I ever did before; since, though they keep a man's body in the house, they bring his mind out. I suppose, if it had been fair weather yesterday, I should not have had your little dissertation upon Madonna Laura, which interested as well as amused me. As to the question of the real existence of Madonna, I can have but little to say. . . . One thing seems to me clear, that the onus probandi is with those who would deny the substantiality of Laura; because she is addressed as a living person by Petrarch, and because no contemporary unequivocally states her to have been an ideal one. I say unequivocally, because the remark you refer to of one of the Colonna family seems to have been rather an intimation or a gratuitous supposition, which might well come from one who lived at a distance from the scene of attachment, amour, or whatever you call this Platonic passion of Petrarch's. The Idealists, however, to borrow a metaphysical term, would shift this burden of proof upon their adversaries. On this ground I agree with you, that internal evidence derived from poetry, whose essence, as you truly say, is fiction, is liable to great misinterpretation. Yet I think that, although a novel or a long poem may be written, addressed to, and descriptive of some imaginary goddess, &c. (I take it, there is not much doubt of Beatrice, or of the original of Fiammetta), yet that a long series of separate poems should have been written with great passion, under different circumstances, through a long course of years, from the warm period of boyhood to the cool retrospective season of gray hairs, would, I think, be, in the highest degree, improbable. But when with this you connect one or two external facts, e.g., the very memorandum, to which you refer, written in his private manuscript of Virgil, intended only for himself, as he expressly says in it, with such solemn, unequivocal language as this: “In order to preserve the melancholy recollections of this loss, I find a certain satisfaction mingled with my sorrow in noting this in a volume which often falls under my eye, and which thus tells me there is nothing further to delight me in this life, that my strongest tie is broken”, &c., &c. Again, in a treatise De Contemptu Mundi, a sort of confession in which he seems to have had a sober communion with his own heart, as I infer from Ginguené, he speaks of his passion for Laura in a very ambiguous manner. These notes or memoranda, intended only for his own eye, would, I think, in any court of justice be admitted as positive evidence of the truth of what they assert. I should be willing to rest the point at issue on these two facts.

Opening his poetry, one thing struck me in support of his sincerity, in seeing a sonnet, which begins with the name of the friend we refer to.

“Rotta e l'alta Colonna e 'l verde Lauro”.

Vile puns, but he would hardly have mingled the sincere elegy of a friend with that of a fictitious creation of his own brain. This, I admit, is not safe to build upon, and I do not build upon it. I agree that it may be highly probable that investigators, Italian, French, and English, have feigned more than they found,—have gone into details, where only a few general facts could be hoped for; but the general basis, the real existence of some woman named Laura, who influenced the heart, the conduct, the intellectual character, of Petrarch, is, I think, not to be resisted. And I believe your decision does not materially differ from this.

I return the Poeti del Primo Secolo. Though prosaic, they are superior to what I imagined, and give me a much higher notion of the general state of the Italian tongue at that early period than I had imagined it was entitled to. It is not more obsolete than the French in the time of Marot, or the English in the time of Spenser. Petrarch, however, you easily see, infused into it a warmth and richness—a splendor of poetical idiom—which has been taken up and incorporated with the language of succeeding poets. But he is the most musical, most melancholy, of all. Sismondi quotes Malaspina, a Florentine historian, as writing in 1280, with all the purity and elegance of modern Tuscan. But I think you must say, Sat prata biberunt. I have poured forth enough, I think, considering how little I know of the controversy.

I have got a long morning again, as I dine late. So, if you will let me have “Cary”, I think it may assist me in some very knotty passages, though I am afraid it is too fine [print] to read much.

Give my love to Anna, who, I hope, is none the worse for last night’s frolicking.

Yours affectionately,

W. H. Prescott.

 

He soon finished Dante, and of the effect produced on him by that marvellous genius, at once so colossal and so gentle, the following note will give some idea. It should be added, that the impression thus made was never lost. He never ceased to talk of Dante in the same tone of admiration in which he thus broke forth on the first study of him,—a noteworthy circumstance, because, owing to the imperfect vision that so crippled and curtailed his studies, he was never afterwards able to refresh his first impressions, except, as he did it from time to time, by reading a few favorite passages, or listening to them.

 

TO MR. TICKNOR.

Jan. 21, 1824.

Dear George,

I shall be obliged to you if you will let me have the Arcadia of Sannazaro, the Pastor Fido, and the Aminta, —together with the volumes of Ginguené, containing the criticism of those poems.

I have finished the Paradiso of Dante, and feel as if I had made a most important addition to the small store of my acquisitions. To have read the Inferno, is not to have read Dante; his genius shows itself under so very different an aspect in each of his three poems. The Inferno will always be the most popular, because it is the most—indeed the only one that is at all—entertaining. Human nature is so delightfully constituted, that it can never derive half the pleasure from any relation of happiness that it does from one of misery and extreme suffering. Then there is a great deal of narrative, of action in the Inferno, and very little in the two other parts. Notwithstanding all this, I think the impression produced on the mind of the reader by the two latter portions of the work much the most pleasing. You impute a finer, a more exquisite (I do not mean a more powerful), intellectual character to the poet, and, to my notion, a character more deeply touched with a true poetical feeling.

The Inferno consists of a series of pictures of the most ingenious, the most acute, and sometimes the most disgusting bodily sufferings. I could wish that Dante had made more use of the mind as a source and a means of anguish. Once he has done it with beautiful effect, in the description of a Barattiere, I believe, who compares his miserable state in hell with his pleasant residence on the banks of the Arno, and draws additional anguish from the comparison. In general, the sufferings he inflicts are of a purely physical nature. His devils and bad spirits, with one or two exceptions, which I remember you pointed out, are much inferior in moral grandeur to Milton's. How inferior that stupendous over­grown Satan of his to the sublime spirit of Milton, not yet stript of all its original brightness. I must say that I turn with more delight to the faultless tale of Francesca da Polenta, than to that of Ugolino, or any other in the poem. Perhaps it is in part from its being in such a dark setting, that it seems so exquisite, by contrast. The long talks in the Purgatorio and the dismal disputations in the Paradiso cer­tainly lie very heavy on these parts of the work; but then this very inaction brings out some of the most conspicuous beauties in Dante's composition.

In Purgatorio, we have, in the first ten cantos, the most delicious descriptions of natural scenery, and we feel like one who, has escaped from a dungeon into a rich and beautiful country. In the latter portions of it he often indulges in a noble tone of moral reflection. I look upon the Purgatorio, full of sober meditation and sweet description, as more a l'Anglaise than any other part of the Commedia. In the Paradiso his shocking argumentations are now and then enlivened by the pepper and salt of his political indignation, but at first they both discouraged and disgusted me, and I thought I should make quick work of the business. But upon reading further,—thinking more of it,—I could not help admiring the genius which he has shown in bearing up under so oppressive a subject. It is so much easier to describe gradations of pain than of pleasure,—but more especially when this pleasure must be of a purely intellectual nature. It is like a painter sitting down to paint the soul. The Scriptures have not done it successfully. They paint the physical tortures of hell, fire, brimstone, &c., but in heaven the only joys, i.e., animal joys, are singing and dancing, which to few people convey a notion of high delight, and to many are positively disagreeable.

Let any one consider how difficult, nay impossible, it is to give an entertaining picture of purely intellectual delight. The two highest kinds of pure spiritual gratification which, I take it, a man can feel,—at least, I esteem it so,—are that arising from the consciousness of a reciprocated passion (I speak as a lover), and, second, one of a much more philosophic cast, that arising from the successful exertion of his, own understanding (as in composition, for instance). Now Dante’s pleasures in the Paradiso are derived from these sources. Not that he pretends to write books there, but then he disputes like a doctor upon his own studies,—sub­jects most interesting to him, but unfortunately to nobody else. It is comical to see how much he plumes himself upon his successful polemical discussions with St. John, Peter, &c., and how he makes those good saints praise and flatter him.

As to his passion for Beatrice, I think there is all the internal evidence of its being a genuine passion, though her early death and probably his much musing upon her, exaggerated her good qualities into a sort of mystical personification of his own, very unlike the original. His drinking in all his celestial intelligence from her eyes, though rather a mystical sentimentalism, is the most glorious tribute that ever was paid to woman. It is lucky, on the whole, that she died when she was young, as, had she lived to marry him, he would very likely have picked a quarrel with her, and his Divine Comedy have lost a great source of its inspiration.

In all this, however, there was a great want of action, and Dante was forced, as in the Purgatorio, to give vent to his magnificent imagination in other ways. He has therefore, made use of all the meagre hints suggested metaphorically by the Scriptures, and we have the three ingredients, light, music, and dancing, in every possible and impossible degree and diversity. The Inferno is a sort of tragedy, full of action and of characters, all well preserved. The Paradiso is a great melodrama, where little is said, but the chief skill is bestowed upon the machinery,—the getting up,—and certainly, there never was such a getting up, anywhere. Every canto blazes with a new and increased effulgence. The very reading of it by another pained my poor eyes. And yet, you never become tired with these gorgeous illustrations,—it is the descriptions that fatigue.

Another beauty, in which he indulges more freely in the last than in the other parts, is his unrivalled similes. I should think you might glean from the Paradiso at least one hundred all new and appropriate, fitting, as he says, “like a ring to a finger”, and most beautiful. Where are there any com­parisons so beautiful?

I must say I was disappointed with the last canto; but then, as the Irishman said, I expected to be. For what mortal mind could give a portrait of the Deity. The most conspicuous quality in Dante, to my notion, is simplicity. In this I think him superior to any work I ever read, unless it be some parts of the Scriptures. Homer’s allusions, as far as I recollect, are not taken from as simple and familiar, yet not vulgar, objects, as are Dante’s,—from the most common intimate relations of domestic life, for instance, to which Dante often with great sweetness of nature alludes.

I think it was a fortunate thing for the world, that the first poem in modern times was founded on a subject growing out of the Christian religion, or more properly on that religion itself, and that it was written by a man deeply penetrated with the spirit of its sternest creed. The religion indeed would have had its influence sooner or later upon literature. But then a work like Dante’s, showing so early the whole extent of its powers, must have had an incalculable influence over the intellectual world,—an influence upon literature almost as remarkable as that exerted by the revelation of Christianity upon the moral world.

As to Cary, I think Dante would have given him a place in his ninth heaven, if he could have foreseen his Translation. It is most astonishing, giving not only the literal corresponding phrase, but the spirit of the original, the true Dantesque manner. It should be cited as an evidence of the compactness, the pliability, the sweetness of the English tongue. It particularly shows the wealth of the old vocabulary,—it is from this that he has selected his rich stock of expressions. It is a triumph of our mother tongue that it has given every idea of the most condensed original in the Italian tongue in a smaller compass in this translation,—his cantos, as you have no doubt noticed, are five or six lines shorter generally than Dante’s. One defect, he has. He does not, indeed he could not, render the naive terms of his original. This is often noticeable, but it is the defect of our language, or rather of our use of it. One fault he has, one that runs through his whole translation, and makes it tedious; viz., a too close assimilation to, or rather adoption of, the Italian idiom. This leads him often to take liberties not allowable in English,—to be ungrammatical, and so elliptical as to be quite unintelligible.

Now I have done, and if you ask me what I have been doing all this for, or, if I chose to write it, why I did not put it in my Commonplace, I answer,—1st. That when I began this epistle, I had no idea of being so lengthy (as we say); 2d. That, in all pursuits, it is a great delight to find a friend to communicate one’s meditations and conclusions to, and that you are the only friend I know in this bustling, money-getting world, who takes an interest in my peculiar pursuits, as well as in myself. So, for this cause, I pour into your unhappy ear what would else have been decently locked up in my escritoire.

I return you Petrarca, Tasso, Ginguené, Vols. I.-IV., and shall be obliged to you, in addition to the books first specified, for any translation, &c., if you have any of those books; also for an edition—if you have such—of the Canterbury Tales, Vol. I., that contains a glossary at the bottom of each page below the text; Tyrrwhitt’s being a dictionary.

Give my love to Anna, and believe me, dear George, now and ever,

Yours affectionately,

W. H. Prescott.

 

Pursuing the Italian in this earnest way for about a year, he found that his main purposes in relation to it were accomplished, and he would gladly, at once, have begun the German, of which he knew nothing at all, but which, for a considerable period, he had deemed more important to the general scholarship at which he then aimed than any other modern language, and certainly more important than any one of which he did not already feel himself sufficiently master. “I am now”, he recorded, two years earlier, in the spring of 1822, “twenty-six years of age nearly. By the time I am thirty, God willing, I propose, with what stock I have already on hand, to be a very well read English scholar; to be acquainted with the classical and useful authors, prose and poetry, in Latin, French, and Italian, and especially in history; I do not mean a critical or profound acquaintance. The two following years I may hope to learn German, and to have read the classical German writers; and the translations, if my eye continues weak, of the Greek. And this is enough”, he adds quietly, “for general discipline”.

But the German, as he well knew, was much less easy of acquisition than any of the modern languages to which he had thus far devoted himself, and its literature much more unmanageable, if not more abundant. He was, however, unwilling to abandon it, as it afforded so many important facilities for the pursuits to which he intended to give his life. But the infirmity of his sight decided this, as it had already decided, and was destined later to decide, so many other questions in which he was deeply interested. After much deliberation, therefore, he gave up the German, as a thing either beyond his reach, or demanding more time for its acquisition than he could reasonably give to it. It seemed, in fact, all but an impossibility to learn it thoroughly; the only way in which he cared to learn anything.

At the outset he was much discouraged by the conclusion to which he had thus come. The acqui­sition of the German was, in fact, the first obstacle to his settled literary course which his patience and courage had not been able to surmount, and for a time he became, from this circumstance, less exact and methodical in his studies than he had previously been. He recorded late in the autumn of 1824: “I have read with no method and very little diligence or spirit for three months”. This he found an unsatisfactory state of things. He talked with me much about it, and seemed, during nearly a year, more unsettled as to his future course, so far as I can now recollect, than he had ever seemed to me earlier; certainly, more than he ever seemed to me afterwards. Indeed, he was quite unhappy about it.

 

CHAPTER VI

1824-1828

 

AN accident—as is sometimes the case in the life of even the most earnest and consistent men—had now an influence on him not at all anticipated by either of us at the time, and one which, if it ultimately proved a guiding impulse, became such rather from the force of his own character than through any movement imparted to him from without.

I had, at this period, been almost exclusively occupied for two or three years with Spanish literature, and had completed a course of lectures on Spanish literary history, which I had delivered to the highest class in Harvard College, and which became, many years afterwards, the basis of a work on that subject. Thinking simply to amuse and occupy my friend at a time when he seemed much to need it, I proposed to read him these lectures in the autumn of 1824. For this purpose he came to my house in the early part of a succession of evenings, until the whole was completed; and in November he determined, as a substitute for the German, to undertake the Spanish, which had not previously constituted any part of his plan of study.

He made his arrangements for it at once, and we prepared together a list of books that he should read. It was a great and unexpected pleasure to me to find him launched on a course of study in which I had long been interested, and I certainly encouraged him in it as much as I could without being too selfish.

Soon after this, however, I left home with my family, and was absent during the greater part of the winter. My house was, of course, shut up, except that servants were left in charge of it; but it had been understood between us, that, as he had no Spanish books of his own, he should carry on his Spanish studies from the resources he would find in my library. On the 1st of December he be­gan a regular drill in the language, with a teacher, and on the same day, by way of announcing it, wrote to me:—

“Your mansion looks gloomy enough, I promise you, and as I pass it sometimes in the evening, with no cheerful light within to relieve it, it frowns doubly dismal on me. As to the interior, I have not set my foot within its precincts since your departure, which, you will think, does not augur well for the Spanish. I propose, however, intruding upon the silence of the illustrious dead the latter part of this week, in order to carry off the immortal remains of Don Antonio de Solis, whom you, dear George, recommend me to begin with”.

This was the opening of the Spanish campaign, which ended only with his life; and it is worth noting that he was already more than twenty-eight years old. A few days afterwards he writes: “I snatch a fraction of the morning from the interest­ing treatise of Monsieur Josse on the Spanish language, and from the Conquista de Mexico, which, notwithstanding the time I have been upon it, I am far from having conquered”. But he soon became earnest in his work. On the 24th of January, 1825, he wrote to me again:—

“I have been much bent upon Spanish the last month, and have uncourteously resisted all invitations ... to break in upon my course of reading. I begin to feel my way percepti­bly in it now. Did you never, in learning a language, after groping about in the dark for a long while, suddenly seem to turn an angle, where the light breaks upon you all at once ? The knack seems to have come to me within the last fortnight, in the same manner as the art of swimming comes to those who have been spashing about for months in the water in vain ... Will you have the goodness to inform me in your next, where I can find some simple treatise on Spanish versi­fication,—also in which part of your library is the Amadis de Gaula. For I presume, as Cervantes spared it from the bonfire, you have it among your treasures. I have been accompanying my course with Sismondi and Bouterwek, and I have been led more than once to reflect upon the injustice you are doing yourself in secluding your own manuscript Lectures from the world. Neither of these writers has gone into the subject as thoroughly as you have”, &c., &c.

On coming back after my absence, he began to write me notes in Spanish, borrowing or returning books, and sometimes giving his opinion about those he sent home. His style was not, indeed, of the purest Castilian, but it was marked with a clearness and idiomatic vigor which not a little surprised me. Three of these notes, which he wrote in March and April, 1825, still survive to give proof of his great industry and success; and one of them is curious for opinions about Solis, more severe than he afterwards entertained when he came to study that historian's work on the Conquest of Mexico as a part of the materials for his own.

But, during the summer of 1825, his reading was very miscellaneous, and, excepting Doblado’s Letters on Spain, by Blanco White, no part of it, I think, was connected with his strictly Spanish studies. In the autumn, however, becoming much dissatisfied with this unsettled and irregular sort of life, he began to look round for a subject to which he could give continuous thought and labor. On the 16th of October he recorded: “I have been so hesitating and reflecting upon what I shall do, that I have, in fact, done nothing”. And October 30th: “I have passed the last fortnight in examination of a suitable subject for historical composition. It is well to determine with caution and accurate inspection”.

At first his thoughts were turned towards American history, on which he had bestowed a good deal of rather idle time during the preceding months, and to which he now gave more. But Spanish literature began, unexpectedly to him, to have stronger attractions. He read, or rather listened to, the whole of Mariana’s beautiful history, giving careful attention to some parts of it, and passing lightly over the rest. And in connection with this, as his mind became more directed to such subjects, he listened with great interest to Mably’s Etude de l'Histoire,—a work which had much influence in giving its final direction to his life, and which he always valued both for its acuteness and for its power of setting the reader to think for himself. The result was that, at Christmas, after no little reflection and anxiety, he made the following memorandum:—

“I have been hesitating between two topics for historical investigation,—Spanish history from the invasion of the Arabs to the consolidation of the monarchy under Charles V, or a history of the revolution of ancient Rome, which con­verted the republic into a monarchy. A third subject which invites, me is a biographical sketch of eminent geniuses, with criticisms on their productions and on the character of their times. I shall probably select the first, as less difficult of execution than the second, and as more novel and entertaining than the last. But I must discipline my idle fancy, or my meditations will be little better than dreams. I have devoted more than four hours per diem, to thinking or dreaming on these subjects”.

But this delay was no matter of serious regret to him. He always deliberated long before he under­took anything of consequence, and, in regard to his examination of this very matter, he had already recorded: “I care not how long a time I take for it, provided I am diligent in all that time”.

He was a little distracted, however, at this period, by the thought of writing something like a history or general examination of Italian literature. As we have noticed, he had in 1823 been much occupied with the principal Italian authors, and had found the study more interesting than any he had previously pursued in modern literature.

A little later—that is, in the autumn of 1824 and the spring of 1825—an accomplished Italian exile was in Boston, and, partly to give him occupation, and partly for the pleasure and improvement to be obtained from it, I invited the unfortunate scholar to come three or four times a week, and read aloud to me from the principal poets of his country. Prescott joined me in it regularly, and sometimes we had one or two friends with us. In this way we went over large portions of the Divina Commedia, and the whole of the Gerusalemme Liberata, parts of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and several plays of Alfieri. The sittings were very agreeable, sometimes protracted to two or three hours, and we not only had earnest and amusing, if not always very profitable, discussions about what we heard, but sometimes we followed them up afterwards with careful inquiries. The pleasure of the meetings, however, was their great attraction. The Italian scholar read well, and we enjoyed it very much. In consequence of this, Prescott now turned again to his Italian studies, and made the following record:—

“I have decided to abandon the Roman subject. A work on the revolutions of Italian literature has invited my consideration this week,—a work which, without giving a chronological and minute analysis of authors, should exhibit in masses the most important periods, revolutions, and characters in the history of Italian letters. The subject would admit of contraction or expansion ad libitum; and I should be spared—what I detest—hunting up latent, barren antiquities”.

The last remark is noteworthy, because it is one of the many instances in which, after severe consideration, he schooled himself to do well and thoroughly what he much disliked to do, and what was in itself difficult.

But on the same occasion he wrote further:—

“The subject would require a mass of [general] knowledge and a critical knowledge of the Italian in particular. It would not be new, after the production of Sismondi and the abundant notices in modern Reviews. Literary history is not so amusing as civil. Cannot I contrive to embrace the gift of the Spanish subject, without involving myself in the unwieldy, barbarous records of a thousand years? What new and interesting topics may be admitted—not forced—into the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella? Can I not indulge in a retrospective picture of the Constitutions of Castile and Aragon,—of the Moorish dynasties, and the causes of their decay and dissolution? Then I have the Inquisition, with its bloody persecutions; the Conquest of Granada, a brilliant passage; the exploits of the Great Captain in Italy,—a proper character for romance as well as history; the dis­covery of a new world, my own country; the new policy of the monarchs towards the overgrown aristocracy, &c., &c. A Biography will make me responsible for a limited space only; will require much less reading (a great consideration with me); will offer the deeper interest which always attaches to minute developments of character, and a continuous, closely connected narrative. The subject brings me to the point whence [modern] English history has started, is untried ground, and in my opinion a rich one. The age of Ferdi­nand is most important, as containing the germs of the mod­ern system of European politics; and the three sovereigns, Henry VII, Louis XI, and Ferdinand, were important engines in overturning the old system. It is in every respect an interesting and momentous period of history; the materials authentic, ample. I will chew upon this matter, and decide this week”.

In May, 1847, above twenty years afterwards, he noted in pencil on this passage, “This was the first germ of my conception of Ferdinand and Isabella”.

But he did not, as he hoped he should, decide in a week, although, having advanced well towards a decision, he soon began to act as if it were already made. On the 15th of January, 1826, when the week had expired, he recorded:—

“Still doubting, looked through Hita’s Guerras de Granada, Vol. I. The Italian subject has some advantages over the Spanish. It will save me at least one year’s introductory labor. It is in the regular course of my studies, and I am comparatively at home in literary history, particularly the Italian. This subject has not only exercised my studies, but my meditations, so that I may fairly estimate my starting ground at one year. Then I have tried this topic in public journals, and know the measure of my own strength in relation to it. I am quite doubtful of my capacity for doing justice to the other subject. I have never exercised my mind upon similar matters, and I have stored it with no materials for comparison. How can I pronounce upon the defects or virtues of the Spanish constitutions, when I am hardly acquainted with those of other nations? How can I estimate the consequences, moral, political, &c., of laws and institu­tions, when I have, in all my life, scarcely ever looked the subject in the face, or even read the most elementary treatise upon it? But will not a year's labor, judiciously directed, put me on another footing?”

After some further discussion in the nature of a soliloquy, he adds:—

“I believe the Spanish subject will be more new than the Italian; more interesting to the majority of readers; more useful to me by opening another and more practical department of study; and not more laborious in relation to authori­ties to be consulted, and not more difficult to be discussed with the lights already afforded me by judicious treatises on the most intricate parts of the subject, and with the allowance of the introductory year for my novitiate in a new walk of letters. The advantages of the Spanish topic, on the whole, overbalance the inconvenience of the requisite prelimi­nary year. For these reasons, I subscribe to the History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, January 19th, 1826”.

And then follows in pencil,—“A fortunate choice, May, 1847”.

He therefore began in earnest, and, on the 22d of January, prepared a list of books such as he should require, and wrote a long letter to Mr. Alexander H. Everett, then our Minister at Madrid, an accomplished scholar himself, and one who was always interested in whatever regarded the cause of letters. They had already been in corre­spondence on the subject, and Mr. Everett had naturally advised his younger friend to come to Spain, and make for himself the collections he needed, at the same time offering to serve him in any way he could.

“I entirely agree with you”, Prescott replied, “that it would be highly advantageous for me to visit Spain, and to dive into the arcana of those libraries which, you say, contain such ample stores of history, and I assure you, that, as I am situated, no consideration of domestic ease would detain me a moment from an expedition, which, after all, would not consume more than four or five months. But the state of my eyes, or rather eye,—for I have the use of only one half of this valuable apparatus,—precludes the possibility of it. During the last year this one has been sadly plagued with what the physicians are pleased to call a rheumatic inflammation, for which I am now under treatment. ... I have always found travelling, with its necessary exposures, to be of infinite disservice to my eyes, and in this state of them particularly I dare not risk it.

“You will ask, with these disadvantages, how I can expect to succeed in my enterprise. I answer, that I hope always to have a partial use of my eyes, and, for the rest, an intelligent reader, who is well acquainted with French, Spanish, and Latin, will enable me to effect with my ears what other people do with their eyes. The only material inconvenience will be a necessarily more tedious and prolonged labor. Johnson says, in his Life of Milton, that no man can compile a history who is blind. But although I should lose the use of my vision altogether (an evil not in the least degree probable), by the blessing of God, if my ears are spared me, I will disprove the assertion, and my chronicle, whatever other demerits it may have, shall not be wanting in accuracy and research. If my health continues thus, I shall necessarily be debarred from many of the convivial, not to say social pleasures of life, and consequently must look to literary pursuits as the principal and permanent source of future enjoyment. As with these views I have deliberately taken up this project, and my progress, since I have begun to break ground, entirely satisfies me of the feasibility of the undertaking, you will not wonder that I should be extremely solicitous to bring within my control an ample quantity of original materials, such as will enable me to achieve my design, and such as will encourage me to pursue it with steady diligence, without fear of competition from any quarter”.

But his courage and patience were put to a new and severe trial, before he could even place his foot upon the threshold of the great undertaking whose difficulties he estimated so justly. A dozen years later, in May, 1838, when the Ferdinand and Isabella was already published, he made a memorandum in pencil on the letter just cited: “This very letter occasioned the injury to the nerve from which I have never since recovered”. Precisely what this injury may have been, I do not know. He calls it at first “a stiffness of the right eye”, as if it were a recurrence there of the rheumatism which was always more or less in some part of his person; but a few months afterwards he speaks of it as “a new disorder”. It was, I apprehended, only the result of an effort too great for the enfeebled organ, and, whenever any considerable similar exertion during the rest of his life was required from it, he used to describe the sensation he experienced as “a strain of the nerve”. It was, no doubt, something of the sort on this occasion, and he felt for a time much discouraged by it.

The letter which it had cost him so much to write, because he thought it necessary to do it with un­common care, was left in his portfolio to wait the result of this fresh and unexpected attack on the poor resources of his sight. It was a painful interval. Severe remedies were used. The cuppings then made on his temples left marks that he carried to his grave. But in his darkened room, where I constantly saw him, and sometimes read to him, his spirits never failed. He bated “no jot of heart or hope”.

At last, after above four weary months, which he passed almost always in a dark room, and during which he made no record, I find an entry among his memoranda dated “June 4, 1826. A melancholy gap”, he says, “occasioned by this new disorder in the eye. It has, however, so much abated this summer, that I have sent my orders to Madrid. I trust I may yet be permitted to go on with my original plan. What I can't read may be read to me. I will secure what I can of the foreign tongues, and leave the English to my secretary. When I can't get six, get four hours per day. I must not waste time in going too deeply or widely into my subject; or, rather, I must confine myself to what exclusively and directly concerns it. I must abjure manuscript and fine print. I must make memoranda accurate and brief of every book I read for this object. Travelling at this lame gait, I may yet hope in five or six years to reach the goal”. In this, however, he was mistaken. It proved to be twice as much.

As soon as the order for books was despatched, he made his plan of work. It was as ample and bold as if nothing had occurred to check his hopes.

“My general course of study”, he says, “must be as fol­lows. 1. General Laws, &c., of Nations. 2. History and Constitution of England. 3. History and Government or other European Nations,—France, Italy to 1550, Germany, Portugal. Under, the last two divisions, I am particularly to attend to the period intervening between 1400 and 1550. 4. General History of Spain,—its Geography, its Civil, Eccle­siastical, Statistical Concerns; particularly from 1400 to 1550. 5. Ferdinand’s Reign en gros. 6. Whatever concerns such portions of my subject as I am immediately to treat of. The general division of it I will arrange when I have gone through the first five departments.

“This order of study I shall pursue, as far as my eyes will allow. When they are too feeble to be used, I must have English writers read to me, and then I will select such works as have the nearest relation to the department of study which I may be investigating”.

Immediately after this general statement of his plan follows a list of several hundred volumes to be read or consulted, which would have been enough, one would think, to alarm the stoutest heart, and severely tax the best eyes. This, indeed, he sometimes felt to be the case. Circumstances seemed occasionally to be stronger than his strong will. He tried, for instance, soon after making the last record, to read a little, and, went at the most moderate rate, through half a volume of Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois, which was to be one of the first stepping-stones to his great fabric. But the trouble in his sight was so seriously aggravated by even this experiment, very cautiously made, that he recorded it as !a warning to desist from all further use of his eye for the present, if not for ever! In fact, for over three months he did not venture to open a book.

At the end of that time he began to doubt whether, during the period in which it now seemed all but certain that he could have no use of his eye, and must often be shut up in a darkened room, he had not better, without giving up his main purpose, undertake some other work more manageable than one that involved the use of books in several foreign languages. On October 1st, therefore, he records, evidently with great regret:—

“As it may probably be some years before I shall be able to use my own eyes in study, or even find a suitable person to read foreign languages to me, I have determined to postpone my Spanish subject, and to occupy myself with an Historical Survey of English Literature. The subject has never been discussed as a whole, and therefore would be somewhat new, and, if well conducted, popular. But the great argument with me is, that, while it is a subject with which my previous studies have made me tolerably acquainted and have furnished me with abundance of analogies in foreign literatures, it is one which I may investigate nearly as well with my ears as with my eyes, and it will not be difficult to find good readers in the English, though extremely difficult in any foreign language. Faustum sit”.

A month, however, was sufficient to satisfy him that this was a mistake, and that the time which, with his ultimate purpose of writing a large work on Spanish history, he could afford to give to this intercalary project, could do little with a subject so broad as English literature. After looking through Warton’s fragment and Turner’s Anglo-Saxons, he therefore writes, November 5th, 1826:—

“I have again, and I trust finally, determined to prosecute my former subject, the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. In taking a more accurate survey of my projected English Literary History, I am convinced it will take at least five years to do anything at all satisfactory to myself, and I cannot be content to be so long detained from a favorite subject, and one for which I shall have such rare and valuable materials in my own possession. But what chiefly influences me is the prospect of obtaining someone, in the space of a year, who, by a competent knowledge of foreign languages, will enable me to pursue my original design with nearly as great facility as I should possess for the investigation of English literature. And I am now fully resolved, that nothing but a disappointment in my expected supplies from Spain shall prevent me from prosecuting my original scheme; where, at any rate, success is more certain, if not more easy”.

The difficulty that resulted from the want of a competent reader was certainly a great one, and he felt it severely. He talked with me much about it, but for a time there seemed no remedy. He went, therefore, courageously through several vol­umes of Spanish with a person who understood not a word of what he was reading. It was awkward, tedious work,—more disagreeable to the reader, probably, than it was to the listener. But neither of them shrunk from the task, which sometimes, notwithstanding its gravity and importance, seemed ridiculous to both.

At last he was satisfied that his undertaking to write history was certainly practicable, and that he could substantially make his ears do the work of his eyes. It was an important conclusion, and its date is, therefore, one of the turning points of his life. He came to it about the time he prepared the letter to Mr. Everett, and in consequence provided himself for a few months with a young reader of more accomplishments, who subsequently became known in the world of letters, and was among those who paid a tribute of graceful verse to the historian’s memory.

This, however, was only a temporary expedient, and he was desirous to have something which should be permanent. It cost not a little time and labor to fit anybody for duties so peculiar, and he had not time and labor to spare, especially if the embarrassment should recur as often as it had heretofore. Thinking, from my connection with Harvard College, where I was then at the head of the department of Modern Literature, that I might be acquainted with some young man who, on completing his academic career, would be willing to become his secretary for a considerable period, he addressed himself to me. I advised with the instructors in the four modern languages, who knew the especial qualifications of their pupils better than I did, and a fortunate result was soon reached. Mr. James L. English, who was then a member of the College, accepted a proposition to study his profession in the office of Mr. Prescott, senior, and of his son-in-law, Mr. Dexter, who was then associated with the elder Mr. Prescott as a counsellor, and at the same time to read and write for the son five or six hours every day. This arrangement did not, however, take effect until after Mr. English was graduated, in 1827; and it continued, much to the satisfaction of both parties, for four years. It was the happy beginning of a new order of things for the studies of the historian, and one which, with different secretaries or readers, he was able to keep up to the last.

During the interval of almost a year, which im­mediately preceded the commencement of Mr. English’s services, nothing is more striking than the amount and thoroughness of Mr. Prescott’s studies. It in fact was a broad basis that he now began to lay, in defiance of all the difficulties that beset him, for a superstructure which yet, as he clearly foresaw, could be erected only after a very long interval, if, indeed, he should ever be permitted to erect it. It was, too, a basis laid in the most deliberate manner, slowly and surely; for, as he could not now read at all himself, every page, as it was listened to, had to be carefully considered, and its contents carefully appropriated. Among the books thus read to him were Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws, Enfield’s History of Philosophy, Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Hallam’s Middle Ages, Blackstone's Commentaries, Vol. I., Millar’s English Government, the four concluding volumes of Gibbon, parts of Turner’s History of England, parts of Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History and of John Muller’s Universal History, Mills’s History of Chivalry, the Memoirs of Commines, Robertson’s Charles the Fifth, and his America, and Watson’s Philip the Second. Besides all this, he listened to translations of Plato’s Phaedo, of Epictetus, of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and of Cicero’s Tusculan Questions and Letters; and, finally, he went in the same way through portions of Sismondi’s Republiques Italiennes in the original, as an experiment, and became persuaded, from the facility with which he under­stood it when read at the rate of twenty-four pages an hour, that he should meet with no absolutely insurmountable obstacle in the prosecution of any of his historical plans. Everything, therefore, went according to his wish, and seemed propitious; but his eyes remained in a very bad state. He was often in a dark room, and never able to use them for any of the practical purposes of study

Still, as always, his spirits rose with the occasion, and his courage proved equal to his spirits. He had a large part of the Spanish grammar read over to him, that he might feel quite sure-footed in the language, and then, confirming anew his determination to write the History of Ferdinand and Isabella, he pushed vigorously forward with his investigations in that direction.

He read, or rather listened to, Koch’s Revolu­tions de l'Europe; Voltaire’s Essai sur les Moeurs; Gibbon, so far as the Visigoths in Spain are concerned; and Conde’s Spanish Arabs. As he approached his main subject more nearly, he went through the reigns of several of the preceding and following Spanish sovereigns in Ferreras’s General History of Spain, as well as in Rabbé, Morales, and Bigland; adding the whole of Gaillard’s Rivalité de la France et de l'Espagne, and of the Abbé Mignot’s Histoire de Ferdinand et Isabelle. The geography of the country he had earlier studied on minute maps, when his eyes had for a short time permitted such use of them, and he now endeavored to make himself familiar with the Spanish people and their national character, by listening to such travellers as Bourgoing and Townsend. Finally, he finished this part of his preparation by going afresh over the concluding portions of Mariana’s eloquent History; thus obtaining from so many different sources, not only a sufficient and more than sufficient mere basis for his own work, but from Mariana the best general outline for it that existing materials could furnish. It is not easy to see how he could have been more thorough and care­ful, even if he had enjoyed the full use of his sight, nor how, with such an infirmity, he could deliberately have undertaken and carried out a course of merely preparatory studies so ample and minute.

But he perceived the peculiar embarrassments, as well as the great resources, of his subject, and endeavored to provide against them by long con­sideration and reflection beforehand. In his Memoranda he says:—

“I must not be too fastidious, nor too anxious to amass every authority that can bear upon the subject. The materials that will naturally offer themselves to me are abundant enough, in all conscience. Whatever I write will have the merit at least of novelty to an English reader. In such parts of the subject, therefore, as have been well treated by French writers, I had better take them pretty closely for my guides, without troubling myself to hunt more deeply, except only for corroborative authorities, which can be easily done. It is fortunate that this subject is little known to English readers, while many parts of it have been ably discussed by accessible foreign writers, —such as Marina and Sempere for the Constitution; Llorente for the Inquisition; the sixth volume of the Historical Transactions of the Spanish Academy for the influence and many details of Isabella’s reign, &c.; Flechier for the life of Ximenes; Varillas for the foreign policy of Ferdinand; Sismondi for the Italian wars and for the general state of Italian and European politics in that age, while the reflections of this historian passim may furnish me with many good hints in an investigation of the Spanish history and politics”.

This was the view he took of his subject, as he fully confronted it for the first time, and consid­ered how, with such use of his eyes as he then had, he could best address himself to the necessary examination of his authorities. But he now, and for some time subsequent, contemplated a shorter work than the one he finally wrote, and a work of much less learned pretensions. As, however, he advanced, he found that the most minute investigations, such as he had above considered beyond his reach, would be both necessary and agreeable. He began, therefore, very soon, to examine all the original sources with painstaking perseverance, and to compare them, not only with each other, but with the interpretations that had subsequently been put upon them. He struck much more widely and boldly than he had intended or thought important. In short, he learned—and he learned it soon —that it is necessary for a conscientious author to read everything upon the subject he means to discuss; the poor and bad books, as well as those upon which his reliance will ultimately be placed. He cannot otherwise feel strong or safe.

ROOM DESCRIBED BY MR. ENGLISH

Mr. Prescott had just reached this point in his studies, when, in the autumn of 1827, Mr. English became his reader and secretary. The first collection of books and manuscripts from Madrid had been received a little earlier. But they had not yet been used. They had come at a most unlucky moment, when his eye was in a more than commonly suffering state, and they presented anything but a cheerful prospect to him, as they lay unpacked and spread out on the floor of his study. As he said long afterwards, “In my disabled condition, with my Transatlantic treasures lying around me, I was like one pining from hunger in the midst of abundance”.

But he went to work in earnest with his new secretary. The room in which they sat was an upper one in the back part of the fine old house in Bedford Street, retired and quiet, and every way well fitted for its purpose. Mr. English, in an interesting letter to me, thus truly describes it.

“Two sides of the room”, he says, “were lined with books from floor to ceiling. On the easterly side was a green screen, which darkened that part of the room towards which he turned his face as he sat at his writing-table. On the westerly side was one window covered by several curtains of light-blue muslin, so arranged that any one of them could be wholly or partially raised, and thus temper the light exactly to the ability of his eye to bear it, as the sky might happen to be bright or cloudy, or his eye more or less sensitive. In the centre of the room stood his writing-table, at which he sat in a rocking-chair with his back towards the curtained window, and sometimes with a green shade over his eyes. When he had a fire, he used only coke in the grate, as giving out no flame, and he frequently placed a screen between himself and the grate to keep off the glare of the embers. At the northwesterly corner of the room was the only window not partly or wholly darkened. It was set high up in the wall, and under it was my chair. I was thus brought a short distance from his left side, and rather behind him,— as a sailor would say, on his quarter. In this position I read aloud to him regularly every day, from ten o'clock in the fore­noon to two in the afternoon, and from about six in the evening to eight”.

They began by reading portions of Llorente’s Histoire de l'Inquisition; but their first serious attack was on the chronicles of Andres Bernaldez, not then printed, but obtained by him in manu­script from Madrid,—a gossiping, amusing book, whose accounts extended from 1488 to 1513, and are particularly important for the Moorish wars and the life of Columbus. But the young secre­tary found it very hard reading.

“A huge parchment-covered manuscript”, he calls Bernaldez, “my old enemy; from whose pages I read and reread so many hours that I shall never forget him. Mr. Prescott considered the book a great acquisition, and would sit for hours hearing me read it in the Spanish, at first with great difficulty and until I got familiar with the chirography. How he could understand me at first, as I blundered along, I could not conceive. If he was annoyed,—as he well might be,— he never betrayed his feelings to me.

“He seemed fully conscious of the difficulty of the task before him, but resolutely determined to accomplish it, if human patience and perseverance could do so. As I read any passages which he wished to impress on his memory, he would say, ‘Mark that’,—that is, draw parallel lines in the margin with a pencil against it. He used also to take a note or memorandum of anything he wished particularly to remember, with a reference to it. His writing apparatus always lay open before him on the table, and he usually sat with his ivory style in hand, ready to make his notes of reference.

These notes I afterwards copied out in a very large round hand for his future use, and, when he began actually to write the history, would read them over and verify the reference by the original authority, if he required it. I think, however, he did not very often find it necessary to refer to the book, as he seemed to have cultivated his memory to a very high degree, and had, besides, a habit of reflecting upon and arranging in his mind, or ‘digesting’, as he phrased it, the morning’s reading while sitting alone afterwards in his study. A graphic phrase it was, too, considering that he took in through his ears I don’t know how many pages at a four hours’ session of steady reading. The wonder was, how he could find time to ‘digest’ such a load between the sessions. But thus he fixed the substance of what had been read to him in his mind, and impressed the results of the forenoon’s work on his memory.

“When I first began to read to Mr. Prescott, his eye was in a very sensitive state, and he did not attempt to use it at all. After some months, however, it got stronger, and he would sit at the curtained window, with a volume open upon a frame on a stand, and read it himself, marking passages as he went along. While so reading, he would frequently raise or lower, wholly or partially, one or more of the blue curtains. Each of them had its separate cord, which he knew as well as a sailor knows his ropes. Every little white cloud that passed across the sky required a change in the arrangement of these curtains, so sensitive was his eye to a variation of light imperceptible to me. But it was only a portion of the time that he could do this. His eye would give way or he would feel symptoms of returning trouble, and then, for weeks together, he would be compelled to take his old seat in the rocking-chair, and return to the slow process of listening and marking passages, and having his notes and memoranda read over to him as at first”.

How sound and practical his general views were can be seen from his plan of work at this moment, when he had determined what he would do, but did not think himself nearly ready even to begin the actual composition of the History itself. In October, 1828, when they had been at work for a year in this preparatory reading, but during which his private memoranda, owing to the state of his eye, had been very meagre, he says:—

“By the intermixture of reading for a given chapter and then writing for it, I shall be able, with the relief which this alternate occupation will give my eyes, to accomplish a good deal with them, I trust. After I have finished Bernaldez’s manuscript and the few remaining pages of Ferreras, and looked through the ‘Modern Universal History’ from the accession of the house of Trastamara to the end of the reigns of the Catholic kings, and looked into Marina’s Theory of the Cortes, which will scarcely require more than a fortnight, I shall be prepared to begin to read for my first chapter”.

He added to this a syllabus of what, from the point of view at which he then stood, he thought might be the arrangement of his materials for the first two chapters of his work; noting the length of time he might need to prepare himself to begin to write, and afterwards the time necessary to complete them. That he was willing to be patient is clear from the fact that he allowed two hundred and fifty-six days, or eight months and a half, to this preparatory reading, although he had already been two years, more or less, on the work; and that he was not to be discouraged by slowness of actual progress is equally clear, for, although it was above fourteen months before he finished this part of his task, yet at the end of that time his courage and hopes were as high as ever.

 

CHAPTER VII

1829-1837

 

THE long delay referred to in the last chapter was in part owing to a severe sorrow which fell on him in the winter of 1828-9, and stopped him in mid-career. On the 1st of February, the eldest of his two children died. It was a daughter, born on the 23d of September, 1824, and therefore four years and four or five months old,—a charming, gentle child of much promise, who had been named after her grandmother, Catharine Hickling. He had doted on her. His mother said most truly, writing to Mrs. Ticknor in 1825: “It is a very nice little girl, and William is one of the happiest fathers you ever saw. All the time he can spare from Italian and Spanish studies is devoted to this little pet.” Mr. English remembers well how she used to be permitted to come into the study, and interrupt whatever work was going on there, much to his own satisfaction as well as to the father’s, for her engaging ways had won the secretary’s love too. The shock of her death was very great, and was, besides, somewhat sudden. I have seldom seen sorrow more deep; and, what was remarkable, the grandfather and grand­mother were so much overcome by it as to need the consolation they would otherwise have gladly given. It was, indeed, a much distressed house.

But the father wrought out consolation for him­self in his own way. A fortnight after the death of his child he records:—

“February 15th, 1829—The death of my dearest daughter on the first day of this month having made it impossible for me at present to resume the task of composition, I have been naturally led to more serious reflection than usual, and have occupied myself with reviewing the grounds of the decision which I made in 1819 in favor of the evidences of the Christian revelation. I have endeavored and shall endeavor to prosecute this examination with perfect impartiality, and to guard against the present state of my feelings influencing my mind any further than by leading it to give to the subject a more serious attention. And, so far, such influence must be salutary and reasonable, and far more desirable than any counter influence which might be exerted by any engrossing occupation with the cares and dissipation of the world. So far, I believe, I have conducted the matter with sober impartiality”.

TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY

What he did on this subject, as on all others, he did thoroughly and carefully. His secretary read to him the principal books which it was then considered important to go through when making a fair examination of the supernatural claims of Christianity. Among them, on the one side, were Hume’s Essays, and especially the one on Miracles; Gibbon’s fifteenth chapter, and parts of the sixteenth; Middleton’s Free Inquiry, which whatever were its author’s real opinions, leans towards unbelief; and Soame Jenyns’s somewhat easy discussion of the Evidences, which is yet not wanting in hidden skill and acuteness. On the other hand, he took Watson’s Apology; Brown’s Lectures, so far as they are an amplification of his admirably condensed Essay on Cause and Effect; several of Waterland’s treatises; Butler’s Analogy and Paley’s Evidences, with the portions of Lardner needful to explain and illustrate them. The last three works he valued more than all the others. But I think he relied mainly upon a careful reading of the Four Gospels, and an especial inquiry into each one of the Saviour’s miracles, as related by each of the Evangelists. This investigation he made with his father’s assistance; and, when it was over, he said that he considered such an examination, made with an old and learned lawyer, was a sufficient pledge for the severity of his scrutiny. He might have added, that it was the safer, because the person who helped him in making it was not only a man of uncommon fairness of mind, perspicacity, and wisdom, but one who was very cautious, and, on all matters of evidence, had a tendency to scepticism rather than credulity.

The conclusions at which he arrived were, that the narratives of the Gospels were authentic; that, after so careful an examination of them, he ought not to permit his mind to be disturbed on the same question again, unless he should be able to make an equally faithful revision of the whole subject; and that, even if Christianity were not a divine revelation, no system of morals was so likely to fit him for happiness here and hereafter. But he did not find in the Gospels, or in any part of the New Testament, the doctrines commonly accounted orthodox, and he deliberately recorded his rejection of them. On one minor point, too, he was very explicit. He declared his purpose to avoid all habits of levity on religious topics. And to this purpose, I believe, he adhered rigorously through life. At least, I am satisfied that I never heard him use light expressions or allusions of any kind when speaking of Christianity, or when referring to the Scriptures. His mind, in fact, was reveren­tial in its very nature, and so was his father’s.

After a few weeks devoted to these inquiries, he resumed his accustomed studies. At the moment when they had been broken off, he was not em­ployed regularly on his History. He had already stepped aside to write an article for the North American Review. During eight years he had been in the habit occasionally of contributing what he sometimes called “his peppercorn” to that well-established and respectable periodical; regarding his contributions as an exercise in writing which could not fail to be useful to him. His first experiments of this sort, saving always the youthful failure already recorded, were, I suppose, two short articles, in 1821, on Sprague’s beautiful prize Ode to Shakespeare, and on Byron’s Letter upon Pope. These had been followed, with the regularity that marked almost everything he did, by a single article on some literary subject every succeeding year. It was an excellent discipline for him as a beginner, and although, from the slowness with which he necessarily worked, it took much time, he never, I think, seriously regretted the sacrifice it implied.

But now, being engrossed with his inquiries into early Spanish history, he preferred to take a sub­ject immediately connected with them. He wrote, therefore, an article on Conde’s History of the Arabs in Spain, comprising a general view of the Arabian character and civilization. It was prepared with great care. He gave much time to previous reading and study on the subject,—I do not know exactly how much, but certainly three months, probably four,—and it was not till nearly seven months after he first began to collect materials for the article that it was completed; from which, however, should be deducted the sorrowful period of several weeks that preceded and followed his little daughter’s death. But, after all, he did not send it to the periodical publication for which it had been written. He found, perhaps, that it was too important for his own ulterior purposes; certainly, that it was not fitted for the more popular tone of such a work as the North American. Substituting for it, therefore, a pleasant article on Irving’s Conquest of Granada, which had cost him much less labor, but which was quite as interesting, he laid the one on Conde quietly aside, and finally, with some modifications, used it as the eighth chapter in the First Part of his Ferdinand and Isabella, where it stands now, an admirable foreground to the brilliant picture of the siege and fall of Granada.

STUDY OF HIS SUBJECT

It was June, 1829, before he returned to his regular readings preparatory to the actual compo­sition of Ferdinand and Isabella. In his more leisure hours, generally in the evening, he went over several works, half biography, half history,— such as Miss Aikin’s Queen Elizabeth, Voltaire’s Charles XII, and Roscoe’s Lorenzo de' Medici and his Leo X,—to see if he could glean from them any ideas for the general management of his subject; while, for easy, finished narrative, he listened to large portions of Barante’s Ducs de Bourgogne, and studied with some care Thierry, —the marvellous, blind Thierry,— for whom he always felt a strong sympathy in consequence of their common misfortune, and to whose manner of treating history with a free citation of the old ballads and chronicles he was much inclined. From all this, perhaps, he gained little, except warnings what to avoid. At the same time, however, that he was doing it, he gave his forenoons to the direct, severe study of his subject. He advanced slowly, to be sure; for his eyes were in a very bad state, and he was obliged to depend entirely on his reader when going through even such important works as those of Marina and Sempere on the Cortes, and Palencia’s Chronicle of the time of Henry IV. Still he got on, and, in the course of the summer, prepared an elaborate synopsis of the chief events to be discussed in his contemplated history; all chronologically arranged from 1454, when John II, Isabella’s father, died, to 1516, the date of Ferdinand’s death, which, of course, would close the work.

From this synopsis, and especially from the estimate it involved of the proportions of its different divisions, he, indeed, sometimes varied, as his ample materials were unrolled before him. But the whole plan, as he then digested it, shows that he had mastered the outline of his subject, and com­prehended justly the relations and combinations of its various parts. He thought, however, that he could bring it all into two moderate volumes in octavo. In this he was mistaken. The work, from his thorough and faithful treatment of it, grew under his hands, and the world is not sorry that at last it was extended to three.

On the 6th of October, 1829,—three years and a half from the time when he had selected his sub­ject, and begun to work upon it,—he finally broke ground with its actual composition. He had then been three months reading and taking notes exclusively for the first chapter. It was a month before that chapter was finished, and afterwards it was all rewritten. Two months more brought him to the end of the third chapter; and, although the space filled by the three so greatly overran the estimate in his synopsis as to alarm him, he still felt that he had made good progress, and took courage. He was, in fact, going on at a rate which would make his History fill five volumes, and yet it was long before he gave up the struggle to keep it down to two. Similar trouble he encountered all the way through his work. He was constantly overrunning his own calculations, and unreasonably dissatisfied with himself for his mistakes and bad reckoning.

Two things are noteworthy at this stage of his progress, because one of them influenced the whole of his subsequent life as an historian, and the other did much towards giving a direction and tone to his discussion of the characters and reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.

USE OF MABLY

The first is his increased regard for Mably as a counsellor and guide. In January, 1830, after looking afresh through some of Mably’s works, there occurs the following notice of him, chiefly with reference to his treatise Sur l’Étude de l'Histoire, which, as we have already noticed, had engaged his careful attention five years earlier: “He takes wide views, and his politics are characterized by directness and good faith. I have marked occasionally passages in the portions I have looked over which will be worth recurring to. I like particularly his notion of the necessity of giving an interest as well as utility to history, by letting events tend to some obvious point or moral; in short, by paying such attention to the development of events tending to this leading result, as one would in the construction of a romance or a drama”. A few days afterwards he records the way in which he proposes to apply this principle to the History of Ferdinand and Isabella. With what success he subsequently carried it out in his Conquest of Mexico need not be told. In each instance he was aware of the direction his work was taking, and cites Mably as the authority for it. The same purpose is plain in the Conquest of Peru, although the conditions of the case did not permit it to be equally applicable.

The other circumstance to which I referred, as worthy of notice at this time, is Mr. Prescott’s increased and increasing sense of the importance of what Don Diego Clemencin had done in his Elogio de la Reina Dona Isabel, for the life of that great sovereign. This remarkable work, which, in an imperfect outline, its author had read to the Spanish Academy of History in 1807, he afterwards enlarged and enriched, until, when it was published in 1821, it filled the whole of the sixth ample volume of the Memoirs of that learned body. Mr. Prescott, above a year earlier, had con­sulted it, and placed it among the books to be carefully studied, but now he used it constantly. Later, he said it was “a most rich repository of unpublished facts, to be diligently studied by me at every pausing point in my history”. And in a note at the end of his sixth chapter he pronounces it to be a work of inestimable service to the historian. These tributes to the modest, faithful learning of the Secretary of the Spanish Academy of History, who was afterwards its Director, are alike creditable to him who offered them, and to Don Diego de Clemencin, who was then no longer among the living, and to whom they could not, therefore, be offered in flattery.

PROGRESS OF HIS WORK

But while the historian of Ferdinand and Isabella valued Mably and Clemencin as trustworthy guides, he read everything, and judged and decided for himself concerning everything, as he went on. His progress, indeed, was on these and on all accounts slow. His eye at this period was not in a condition to enable him to use it except with the greatest caution. He sometimes felt obliged to consider the contingency of losing the use of it altogether, and had the courage to determine, even in that event, to go on with his history. How patient he must have been, we may judge from the fact, that, in sixteen months, he was not able to accomplish more than three hundred pages. But neither then, nor at any time afterwards, was he disheartened by the difficulties he encountered. On the contrary, although progress —perceptible progress— was very important to his happiness, he was content to have it very slow. Sometimes, however, he went on more easily, and then he was much encouraged. In the summer of 1832, when he had been very industrious for two months, he wrote to me, “I have disposed of three chapters of my work, which is pretty good hammering for a Cyclops”. Such intervals of freer labor gave him a great impulse. He enjoyed his own industry and success, and his original good spirits did the rest.

As he advanced, his subject cleared up before him, and he arranged it at last in two nearly equal divisions; the first illustrating more particularly the domestic policy of the sovereigns, and bringing Isabella into the foreground; and the second making their foreign policy and the influence and management of Ferdinand more prominent. In each he felt more and more the importance of giving interest to his work by preserving for it a character of unity, and keeping in view some per­vading moral purpose. One thing, however, disappointed him. He perceived certainly that it must be extended to three volumes. This he regretted. But he resolved that in no event would he exceed this estimate, and he was happily able to keep his resolution, although it cost him much self-denial to do it. He was constantly exceeding his allowance of space, and as constantly condensing and abridging his work afterwards, so as to come within it. To this part of his labor he gave full two years. It was a long time; but, as he advanced with a step assured by experience, his progress became at least more even and easy, if not faster.

The early part of the summer of 1835, which he passed at Pepperell, was peculiarly agreeable and happy. He felt that his work was at last com­pletely within his control, and was approaching its termination. He even began to be impatient, which he had never been before.

In a pleasant letter to his friend Mr. Bancroft, dated Pepperell, June 17th, 1835, he says:—

“I find the country, as usual, favorable to the historic muse. I am so near the term of my labors, that, if I were to remain here six months longer, I should be ready to launch my cock-boat, or rather gondola,—for it is a heavy three- volume affair,—into the world. A winter’s campaigning in the metropolis, however, will throw me back, I suppose, six months further. I have little more to do than bury and write the epitaphs of the Great Captain, Ximenes, and Ferdinand. Columbus and Isabella are already sent to their account. So my present occupation seems to be that of a sexton, and I begin to weary of it”.

A month later he went, as usual, to the sea-shore for the hot season. But, before he left the spot always so dear to him, he recorded the following characteristic reflections and resolutions:—

“July 12th, 1835.—In three days, the 15th, we leave Pepperell, having been here nearly ten weeks. We found the country in its barren spring, and leave it in the prime dress of summer. I have enjoyed the time, and may look back on it with some satisfaction, for I have not misspent it, as the record will show.

“On the whole, there is no happiness so great as that of a permanent and lively interest in some intellectual labor. I, at least, could never be tolerably contented without it. When, therefore, I get so absorbed by pleasures —particularly exciting pleasures— as to feel apathy, in any degree, in my literary pursuits, just in that degree I am less happy. No other enjoyment can compensate, or approach to, the steady satisfaction and constantly increasing interest of active literary labor, the subject of meditation when I am out of my study, of diligent stimulating activity within, to say nothing of the comfortable consciousness of directing my powers in some channel worthy of them, and of contributing something to the stock of useful knowledge in the world. As this must be my principal material for happiness, I should cultivate those habits and amusements most congenial with it, and these will be the quiet domestic duties —which will also be my greatest pleasures— and temperate social enjoyments, not too frequent and without excess; for the excess of today will be a draft on health and spirits tomorrow. Above all, observe if my interest be weakened in any degree in my pursuits. If so, be sure I am pursuing a wrong course somewhere, wrong even in an Epicurean sense for my happiness, and reform it at once.

“With these occupations and temperate amusements, seek to do some good to society by an interest in obviously useful and benevolent objects. Preserve a calm, philosophical, elevated way of thinking on all subjects connected with the action of life. Think more seriously of the consequences of conduct. Cherish devotional feelings of reliance on the Deity. Discard a habit of sneering or scepticism. Do not attempt impossibilities, or, in other words, to arrive at certainty [as if] on questions of historic evidence; but be content that there is evidence enough to influence a wise man in the course of his conduct, enough to produce an assent, if not a mathematical demonstration to his mind, and that the great laws for our moral government are laid down with undeniable, unimpeachable truth”.

A week after the date of these last reflections, he was quietly established at Nahant, having re­mained, as usual, two or three days in Boston to look after affairs that could not be attended to in the country. But he always disliked these periodical changes and removals. They broke up his habits, and made a return to his regular occupations more or less difficult and unsatisfactory. On this occasion, coming from the tranquillizing influences of Pepperell, where he had been more than commonly industrious and happy, he makes an amusing record of a fit of low spirits and impatience, which is worth notice, because it is the only one to be found in all his memoranda:—

“July 19th.—Moved to Nahant yesterday. A most con­sumed fit of vapors. The place looks dreary enough after the green fields of Pepperell. Don’t like the air as well either,—too chilly,—find I bear and like hot weather better than I used to. Begin to study, that is the best way of restoring equanimity. Be careful of my eyes at first, till accommodated to the glare. Hope I shall find this good working-ground,—have generally found it so. This ink is too pale to write further. Everything goes wrong here”.

FINISHES FERDINAND AND ISABELLA

But he had a good season for work at Nahant, after all. He wrote there, not only the troublesome account of the Conquest of Navarre, but the brilliant chapters on the deaths of Gonsalvo de Cordova and Ferdinand, leaving only the admin­istration and fall of Cardinal Ximenes for a dignified close to the whole narrative part of the history, and thus giving a sort of tragical dénouement to it, such as he desired. This he completed in Boston, about the middle of November.

A chapter to review the whole of his subject, and point it with its appropriate moral, was, however, still wanted. It was a difficult task, and he knew it; for, among other things, it involved a general and careful examination of the entire legislation of a period in which great changes had taken place, and permanent reforms had been introduced. He allowed five months for it. It took above seven, but it is an admirable part of his work, and worth all the time and labor it cost him.

At last, on the 25th of June, 1836, he finished the concluding note of the concluding chapter to the History of Ferdinand and Isabella. Reckon­ing from the time when he wrote the first page, or from a period a little earlier, when he prepared a review of Conde on the Spanish Arabs, which he subsequently made a chapter in his work, the whole had been on his hands a little more than seven years and a half; and, deducting nine months for illness and literary occupations not connected with his History, he made out that he had written, during that time, at the rate of two hundred and thirty-four printed pages a year. But he had read and labored on the subject much in the two or three years that preceded the beginning of its abso­lute composition, and another year of corrections in the proof-sheets followed before it was fairly delivered to the world at Christmas, 1837. He was, therefore, exact, even after making all the deductions that can belong to the case, when, in his general estimate, he said that he had given to the work ten of the best years of his life.

 

 

CHAPTER VIII

1837-1838

 

STRANGE as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that after these ten years of labor on the Ferdinand and Isabella, and with the full happiness he felt on completing that work, Mr. Prescott yet hesitated at last whether he should publish it or not. As early as 1833, and from that time forward, while the composition was going on, he had caused four copies of it to be printed in large type on one side only of the leaf. For this he had two reasons. If he should determine to publish the work in London, he could send a fair, plain copy to be printed from;—and, at any rate, from such a copy he might himself, whenever his eye could endure the task, revise the whole personally, making on the blank pages such corrections and alterations as he might find desirable. This task was already accomplished. He had gone over the whole, a little at a time, with care. Some portions he had rewritten. The first chapter he wrote out three times, and printed it twice, before it was finally put in stereotype, and adjusted to its place as it now stands.

Still he hesitated. He consulted with his father, as he always did when he doubted in relation to matters of consequence. His father not only advised the publication, but told him that “the man who writes a book which he is afraid to publish is a coward”. This stirred the blood of his grandfather in his veins, and decided him.

He had, however, the concurrent testimony of judicious and faithful friends. Mr. Sparks, the historian, in a note dated February 24th, 1837, says: “I have read several chapters, and am read­ing more. The book will be successful,—bought, read, and praised”. And Mr. Pickering, the mod­est, learned, philosophical philologist, to whom he submitted it a little later, sent him more decisive encouragement under date of May 1st.

 

My dear Sir,

Being uninterrupted last evening, I had an opportunity to finish the few pages that remained of your work, and I now return the volumes with many thanks. I cannot, however, take leave of them without again expressing the high satisfaction I feel that our country should have produced such a work,—a work which, unless I am much mistaken, will live as long as any one produced by your contemporaries either here or in England.

I am, my dear sir, with the warmest regard, Very truly yours,

John Pickering.

 

His friend Mr. Gardiner had already gone over the whole of the three volumes with his accustomed faithfulness, and with a critical judgment which few possess. He had suggested an important alteration in the arrangement of some of the early chapters, which was gladly adopted, and had offered minor corrections and verbal criticism of all sorts, with the freedom which their old friendship demanded, but a considerable part of which were, with the same freedom, rejected; the author maintaining, as he always did, a perfect independence of judgment in all such matters.

How he himself looked upon his ten years’ labor may be seen by the following extracts from his memoranda, before he passed the final, fatal bourn of the press. After giving some account of his slow progress and its causes, he says, under date of June 26th, 1836, when he had recorded the absolute completion of the History:—

“Pursuing the work in this quiet, leisurely way, without over-exertion or fatigue, or any sense of obligation to complete it in a given time, I have found it a continual source of pleasure. It has furnished food for my meditations, has given a direction and object to my scattered reading, and supplied me with regular occupation for hours that would otherwise have filled me with ennui. I have found infinite variety in the study, moreover, which might at first sight seem monotonous. No historical labors, rightly conducted, can be monotonous, since they afford all the variety of pursuing a chain of facts to unforeseen consequences, of comparing doubtful and contradictory testimony, of picturesque delineations of incident, and of analysis and dramatic exhibition of character. The plain narrative may be sometimes relieved by general views or critical discussions, and the story and the actors, as they grow under the hands, acquire constantly additional interest. It may seem dreary work to plod through barbarous old manuscript chronicles of monks and pedants, but this takes up but a small portion of the time, and even here, read aloud to, as I have been, required such close attention as always made the time pass glibly. In short, although I have sometimes been obliged to whip myself up to the work, I have never fairly got into it without deriving pleasure from it, and I have most generally gone to it with pleasure, and left it with regret.

“What do I expect from it, now it is done? And may it not be all in vain and labor lost, after all? My expectations are not such, if I know myself, as to expose me to any serious disappointment. I do not flatter myself with the idea that I have achieved anything very profound, or, on the other hand, that will be very popular. I know myself too well to suppose the former for a moment. I know the public too well, and the subject I have chosen, to expect the latter. But I have made a book illustrating an unexpected and important period, from authentic materials, obtained with much difficulty, and probably in the possession of no one library, public or private, in Europe. As a plain, veracious record of facts, the work, therefore, till someone else shall be found to make a better one, will fill up a gap in literature which, I should hope, would give it a permanent value,—a value founded on its utility, though bringing no great fame or gain to its author.

  “Come to the worst, and suppose the thing a dead failure, and the book born only to be damned. Still it will not be all in vain, since it has encouraged me in forming systematic habits of intellectual occupation, and proved to me that my greatest happiness is to be the result of such. It is no little matter to be possessed of this conviction from experience”.

And again, in the following October, when he had entirely prepared his work for the press, he writes:—

“Thus ends the labor of ten years, for I have been occu­pied more or less with it, in general or particular readings, since the summer of 1826, when, indeed, from the disabled state of my eyes, I studied with little spirit and very little ex­pectation of reaching this result. But what result? Three solid octavos of facts, important in themselves, new in an English dress, and which, therefore, however poor may be the execution of the work, must have some value in an historic view. With the confidence in its having such a value, however humble it may be, I must rest contented. And I now part with the companion of so many years with the cheering conviction, that, however great or little good it may render the public, it has done much to me, by the hours it has helped to lighten, and the habits of application it has helped to form”.

He caused the whole to be stereotyped without delay. This mode he preferred, because it was one which left him a more complete control of his own work than he could obtain in any other way, and because, if it rendered corrections and alterations more difficult, it yet insured greater typographical accuracy at the outset. Mr. Charles Folsom, a member of the pleasant club that had been formed many years before, superintended its publication with an absolute fidelity, good taste, and kindness that left nothing to desire; although, as the author, when referring to his friend’s criticisms and suggestions, says, they made his own final revision anything but a sinecure. It was, I suppose, as carefully carried through the press as any work ever was in this country. The pains that had been taken with its preparation from the first were continued to the last.

That it was worth the many years of patient, conscientious labor bestowed upon it, the world was not slow to acknowledge. It was published in Boston by the American Stationers’ Company,— a corporate body that had a short time before been organized under favorable auspices, but which troubles in the financial condition of the country and other causes did not permit long to continue its operations. The contract with them was a very modest one. It was dated April 10th, 1837, and stipulated on their part, for the use of the stereo­type plates and of the engravings, already prepared at the author’s charge. From these, twelve hundred and fifty copies might be struck off at the expense of the Company, who were to have five years to dispose of them. The bargain, however, was not, in one point of view, unfavorable. It insured the zealous and interested co-operation of a large and somewhat influential body in the sale and distribution of the work,—a matter of much more importance at that time than it would be now, when book-selling as a business and profession in the United States is so much more advanced. Otherwise, as a contract, it was certainly not bril­liant in its promise. But the author thought well of it; and, since profit had not been his object, he was entirely satisfied.

SUCCESS OF FERDINAND AND ISABELLA

I was then in Italy, having been away from home with my family nearly two years, during which I had constantly received letters from him concerning the progress of his work. On this occasion he wrote to me, April 11th, 1837, the very day after the date of his contract, as follows:—

“If your eyes are ever greeted with the aspect of the old North [American Review] in your pilgrimage, you may see announced the History of Ferdinand and Isabella, 3 vols. 8vo,'as in press, which means, will be out in October. The American Stationers’ Company —a company got up with a considerable capital for the publication of expensive works— have contracted for an edition of twelve hundred and fifty copies. I find the stereotype plates, which cost not a great deal more than the ordinary mode of composition, and they the paper and all other materials, and pay me a thousand dollars. The offer was a liberal one, and entirely answers my purpose of introducing the work into the channels of circulation, which I could not have effected by so small an inducement as a commission to a publisher. The Company, as proprietors of the edition, have every motive to disseminate it, and they have their agencies diffused through every part of the United States. What has given me most satisfaction is the very handsome terms in which the book has been recommended by Messrs. Pickering and Sparks, two of the committee for determining on the publication by the Company, and the former of whom before perusal, expressed himself, as I know, unfavorably to the work as a marketable concern, from the nature of the subject. My ambition will be fully satisfied, if the judgments of the few whose good opinion I covet are but half so favorable as those publicly expressed by these gentlemen. . . .

“I must confess I feel some disquietude at the prospect of coming in full bodily presence, as it were, before the public. I have always shrunk from such an exhibition, and, during the ten years I have been occupied with the work, few of my friends have heard me say as many words about it. When I saw my name—harmonious Hickling and all—blazoned in the North American, it gave me, as S—would say, ‘quite a turn’, —anything but agreeable. But I am in for it. Of one thing I feel confident,—that the book has been compiled from materials, and with a fidelity, which must make it fill a hiatus deflendus in Spanish history. For the same reasons, I cannot think that I have much to fear from criticism; not to add, that the rarity of my materials is such, that I doubt if any but a Spaniard possesses the previous knowledge of the whole ground for a fair and competent judgment of my historical accuracy. But enough and too much of this egotism; though I know you and Anna love me too well to call it egotism, and will feel it to be only the unreserved communication made around one's own fire­side”.

A great surprise to all the parties concerned fol­lowed the publication. Five hundred copies only were struck off at first; that number being thought quite sufficient for an experiment so doubtful as this was believed to be. No urgency was used to have the whole even of this inconsiderable edition ready for early distribution and sale. But during several days the demand was so great, that copies could not be prepared by the book­binder as fast as they were called for. Three-fifths of the whole number were disposed of in Boston before any could be spared to go elsewhere, and all disappeared in five weeks. In a few months, more copies were sold than by the contract it had been assumed could be disposed of in five years; and from the beginning of May, 1838,— that is, in the course of four months from its first publication,—the History itself stood before the public in the position it has maintained ever since. A success so brilliant had never before been reached in so short a time by any work of equal size and gravity on this side of the Atlantic. Indeed, nothing of the sort had approached it.

“But”, as his friend Mr. Gardiner has truly said, “this wonderfully rapid sale of a work so grave, beginning in his own town, was due in the first instance largely to its author's great personal popularity in society, and may be taken as a signal proof of it. For Mr. Prescott had acquired earlier no marked reputation as an author. As a mere man of letters, his substantial merits were known only by a few intimate friends; perhaps not fully appreciated by them. To the public he was little known in any way. But he was a prodigious favorite with whatever was most cultivated in the society of Boston. Few men ever had so many warmly at­tached personal friends. Still fewer—without more or less previous distinction or fame—had ever been sought as companions by young and old of both sexes as he had been. When, therefore, it came to be known that the same person who had so attracted them by an extraordinary combination of charming personal qualities was about to publish a book, —and it was known only a very short time before the book itself appeared,—the fact excited the greatest surprise, curiosity, and interest.

“The day of its appearance was looked forward to and talked of. It came, and there was a perfect rush to get copies. A convivial friend, for instance, who was far from being a man of letters,—indeed, a person who rarely read a book,—got up early in the morning, and went to wait for the opening of the publisher's shop, so as to secure the first copy. It came out at Christmas, and was at once adopted as the fashionable Christmas and New Year’s present of the season. Those who knew the author read it from interest in him. No one read it without surprise and delight. Mr. Daniel Webster, the statesman, who knew Prescott well in society, was as much surprised as the rest, and spoke of him as a comet which had suddenly blazed out upon the world in full splendor.

“Such is the history of this remarkable sale at its outbreak. Love of the author gave the first impetus. That given, the extraordinary merits of the work did all the rest”.

Meantime negotiations had been going on for its publication in London. My friend had written to me repeatedly about them, and so unreasonably moderate were his hopes, that, at one time, he had thought either not to publish it at all in the United States, or to give away the work here, and make his chief venture in England. As early as the 29th of December, 1835, he had written to me in Dresden, where I then was:—

“Before closing my letter, I shall detain you a little about my own affairs. I have nearly closed my magnum opus,— that is, I shall close it, and have a copy of it printed, I trust, early next autumn. I print, you know, only four copies, designing, whether I publish it here or not, to have it printed in England. . . .

“Although the subject has nothing in it to touch the times and present topics of interest and excitement particularly, yet, as filling up a blank of importance in modern history, I cannot but think, if decently executed, that it will not be difficult to find some publisher in London who would be in­terested in it. You know that lucre is not my object. I wish, if possible, to give the work a fair chance under fair auspices. As to the merits of the work, it will be easy to form a judgment, since the bookseller will have the advantage of a fair printed copy. Now I wish your advice, how I had best proceed? If you should be in London next winter, my course would be clear. I would send the book to you, and doubt not you would put it in a train for getting it into the world, if any respectable accoucheur could be found to take charge of it. If you should not be there, as is most probable, can you advise me what to do next? . . .

“I think it possible I may print the book here simultaneously. I offered the other day to take the concern off my hands, if I would give him the first impression of a certain number of copies. As I have no illusory hopes of a second, I don’t know that I can do better. But I am persuaded the work, if worth anything, is suited to a European market,—at least, enough to indemnify the publisher. Else ten years nearly of my life have been thrown away indeed. I hope you will not lose your patience with this long-winded prosing, and will excuse this egotism, from the importance of the subject to myself. As to the trouble I occasion you, I know you too well to think you will require an apology”.

To this I replied from Dresden, February 8th, 1836:—

“You speak more fully about your opus magnum, and therefore I answer more fully than I did before. It must be a proud thought to you that you are so near the end of it; and yet I think you will leave it with the same feeling of regret with which Gibbon left his Decline and Fall. What, then, will you do to fill up the first void? Is it out of the question that you should fetch out your copy yourself, and get the peace of conscience that would follow making the arrangements for its publication in person? I hope not. For we could easily manage to meet you in England two years hence, and I assure you, my own experience leads me to think it no very grave matter to travel with wife and children. But let us suppose you do not. What then? I remain by the suggestion in my last letter, that Colonel Aspinwall is the man to take charge of it, provided neither you nor I should be in London, although, if both of us were on the spot, he would be the man with whom I think we should earliest advise in all publishing arrangements. His place as our Consul-General in London is something in talking to publishers. His character, prompt, business-like, firm, and honorable, is still more. And then, if I mistake not, he has a good deal of practice with these people; for he certainly makes Irving’s bargains, and, I believe, has managed for -- and others. This practice, too, is a matter of moment”.

Very fortunately for the author of Ferdinand and Isabella, Colonel Aspinwall was soon afterwards in Boston, which is his proper home, and in whose neighborhood he was born. He at once undertook in the pleasantest manner the pleasant commission which was offered him, and a mutual regard was the consequence of the connection then formed, which was never afterwards broken or impaired; so much was there in common between the characters of the two high-minded and cultivated men.

In the autumn of 1836, one of the four printed copies, carefully corrected, was therefore, sent to Colonel Aspinwall, accompanied by a letter dated October 28th, in which the author says:—

“With regard to the arrangements for publication, which you have been kind enough to allow me to trust to you, I can only say that I shall abide entirely by your judgment. I certainly should not disdain any profits which might flow from it, though I believe you will do me the justice to think that I have been influenced by higher motives in the com­position of the work. If I have succeeded, I have supplied an important desideratum in history, but one which, I fear, has too little in it of a temporary or local interest to win its way into public favor very speedily. But if the book­seller can wait, I am sure I can”.

The first attempts with the trade in London were not encouraging. Murray, the elder, to whom the book was at once offered, declined promptly to become its publisher; probably without an examination of its merits, and certainly without a thorough one. Longman took more time, but came to the same conclusion. The author, as might have been expected, was chagrined, and, with the openness of his nature, said so, in his letters both to Colonel Aspinwall and to me.

“Murray’s decision”, he wrote to the former, “was too prompt to be final with me; but Longman has examined the matter so deliberately, that I am convinced there is little reason to suppose the book can be regarded as a profitable concern for a London publisher. It will undoubtedly preju­dice the work to go a-begging for a patron, and my ill-success will thus acquire a disagreeable notoriety not only there, but here, where nothing is known of my foreign negotiations. I think it best, therefore, to take Uncle Toby's advice on the occasion, and say nothing about it to any one. For the copy in your possession, you had best put it out of sight. It will soon be replaced by one of the Boston edition in a more comely garb. If you should have proposed the work before receiving this to any other person, I shall not care to hear of its refusal from you, as it will disgust me with the book before it is fairly born”.

Similar feelings he expressed even more strongly two days later. But this state of things was not destined to last long. Before the letter which was intended to discourage any further proposition in London had reached Colonel Aspinwall, Mr. Richard Bentley had accepted an offer of the book. A few days after learning this, the author wrote to me in a very different state of mind from that in which he had written his last letters.

 

FAVORABLE REVIEWS 

Boston, May 16, 1837.

My dearest Friend,

“I told you in my last that no arrangement for the publica­tion had been made in England. I was mistaken, however, as I soon afterwards received a letter from Colonel Aspinwall, informing me of one with Bentley, by which he becomes proprietor of one-half of the copyright, and engages to publish forthwith an edition at his own cost and risk, and divide with me the profits. He says, “It will be an object for him to get out the work in elegant style, with engravings, vignettes, &c.” This is certainly much better, considering the obscurity of the author and the absence of all temporary allusion or interest in the subject, than I had a right to expect. My object is now attained. I shall bring out the book in the form I desired, and under the most respectable auspices on both sides of the water, and in a way which must interest the publisher so deeply as to secure his exertions to circulate the work. My bark will be fairly launched, and if it should be doomed to encounter a spiteful puff or two of criticism, I trust it may weather it”.

But he encountered no such adverse blasts. Immediately after the appearance of the book at Christmas, 1837, but with the imprint of 1838, a very long and able article on it by his friend Mr. Gardiner, who, as we have seen, had just assisted in preparing it for the press, was published in the North American Review. A little later, another friend, the Rev. Mr. Greenwood,—whose name it is not possible to mention without remembering what sorrow followed the early loss of one whose genius was at once so brilliant and so tender,—wrote a review for the Christian Examiner, no less favorable than that of Mr. Gardiner.

Others followed. An excellent notice by Mr. John Pickering appeared in the New York Review, true, careful, and discriminating. And the series of the more elaborate American discussions was closed in the Democratic Review of the next month by Mr. Bancroft, himself an his­torian already of no mean note, and destined to yet more distinction on both sides of the Atlantic. Of course there were many other notices in periodical publications of less grave pretensions, and still more in the newspapers; for the work excited an interest which had not been at all foreseen. It was read by great numbers who seldom looked into anything so solid and serious. It was talked of by all who ever talked of books. Whatever was written or said about it was in one tone and temper; so that, as far as the United States were concerned, it may be regarded as successful from the moment of its appearance.

Nor did the notices which at the same time came from England show anything but good-will towards the unknown and unheralded claimant for the higher class of literary honors. They were written, of course, by persons who had never before heard of him, but their spirit was almost as kindly as if they had been dictated by personal friendship. The Athenaeum led off with a short laudatory article, which I believe, was from the pen of Dr. Dunham, who wrote the summary History of Spain and Portugal in Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia.

REVIEW BY DON PASCUAL DE GAYANGOS

An article, however, in the Edinburgh Review, a little later, was much more satisfactory. It was the first examination that the work obtained in England from one whose previous special knowledge of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella enabled him to do it thoroughly. Its author was Don Pascual de Gayangos, a learned and accomplished Spanish gentleman, then resident in London, who wrote the Castilian and the English with equal purity and elegance, and of whose kindly connection with Mr. Prescott it will be necessary for me to speak often hereafter. He made in his article on the Ferdinand and Isabella a faithful and real review of the work, going over its several divisions with care, and giving a distinct opinion on each. It was more truly an examination of the work, and less a dissertation on the subject, than is common in such articles, and on this account it will always have its value.

To this succeeded in June an article in the Quarterly Review, by an English gentleman familiar with everything Spanish; I mean Mr. Richard Ford, who wrote the Handbook of Spain,—a brilliant work, not without marks of prejudice, but full of a singularly minute and curious local knowledge of Spain, and of Spanish history and manners. His article on Ferdinand and Isabella is marked with the same characteristics and similar prejudices. He is obviously a little unwilling to think that a book written with learning, judgment, and good taste can come from such a Nazareth as the United States; but he admits it at last. Perhaps his reluctant testimony was hardly less gratifying to the author than one more cordial would have been.

REVIEW BY COUNT CIRCOURT

A series of articles, however, which appeared in the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève between July, 1838, and January, 1840, five in number, and making together above a hundred and eighty pages, gave Mr. Prescott more satis­faction than any other review of his work. And well they might, for no other review of the Ferdinand and Isabella can be compared to it in amplitude or elaborateness. It was written by Count Adolphe de Circourt, a person whom Lamartine has called “a living chart of human knowledge”. It goes in the most thorough manner over the whole subject, and examines the difficult and doubtful points in the history of the period with a remarkable knowledge of the original sources and authorities. Sometimes the reviewer differs from the author; maintaining, for instance, that the union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon was not a benefit to Spain, and that the war against Granada is not to be justified by the code of a Christian civilization. And sometimes he makes additions to the History itself, as in the case of the conquest of Navarre. But whatever he says is said in a philosophical spirit, and with a generous purpose; and, coming in a foreign language from one who knew the author only in his book, it sounds more like the voice of pos­terity than either the American or the English reviews that were contemporary with it.

 

CHAPTER IX

1838

 

PASSING over the multitude of notices that appeared concerning the History of Ferdinand and Isabella, it will be pleasant to see how the author himself felt in the first flush of his unex­pected honors. I was then in Paris, and ten days after the book was published in Boston he wrote to me as follows:—

 

Boston, Jan. 6, 1838.

My dear Friend,

It is long since I have seen your handwriting; though only a few weeks since I received a most kind and welcome epistle from Anna. Your friends here say you are not going to hold out your four years, and I could not help thinking that the complexion of Anna's sentiments looked rather homeish. I wish it may prove so. You will, at least, be spared, by your return, sundry long communications from me, with a plentiful dash of egotism in them.

There is some excuse for this, however, just now, which is a sort of epoch in my life,—my literary life at least. Their Catholic Highnesses have just been ushered into the world in three royal octavos. The bantling appeared on a Christmas morning, and certainly has not fallen still-born, but is alive and kicking merrily. How long its life may last is another question. With the first ten days half the first edition of five hundred copies (for the publishers were afraid to risk a larger one for our market) has been disposed of, and they are now making preparations for a second edition, having bought of me twelve hundred and fifty copies. The sale, indeed, seems quite ridiculous, and I fancy many a poor soul thinks so by this time. Not a single copy has been sent South,—the publishers not choosing to strip the market while they can find such demand here.

In the mean time the book has got summer-puffs in plenty, and a gale to the tune of ninety pages from the old article should be called the fourth volume of the History. It was written by Gardiner, after several months’ industrious application,—though eventually concocted in the very short space of ten days, which has given occasion to some over­sights. It is an able, learned, and most partial review; and I doubt if more knowledge of the particular subject can easily be supplied by the craft on the other side of the water, —at least without the aid of a library as germane to the matter as mine, which, I think, will not readily be met with. I feel half inclined to send you a beautiful critique from the pen of your friend Hillard, as much to my taste as any­thing that has appeared. But pudor vetat.

In the mean time the small journals have opened quite a cry in my favor, and while one of yesterday claims me as a Bostonian, a Salem paper asserts that distinguished honor for the witch-town. So you see I am experiencing the fate of the Great Obscure, even in my own lifetime. And a clergyman told me yesterday, he intended to make my case—the obstacles I have encountered and overcome— the subject of a sermon. I told him it would help to sell the book, at all events.

‘Poor fellow!—I hear you exclaim by this time,—his wits are actually turned by this flurry in his native village,— the Yankee Athens!’ Not a whit, I assure you. Am I not writing to two dear friends, to whom I can talk as freely and foolishly as to one of my own household, and who, I am sure, will not misunderstand me? The effect of all this —which a boy at Dr. Gardiner’s school, I remember, called fungurn popularitatem— has been rather to depress me, and S-- was saying yesterday, that she had never known me so out of spirits as since the book has come out. The truth is, I appreciate, more than my critics can do, the difficulty of doing justice to my subject, and the immeasurable distance between me and the models with which they have been pleased to compare me. . . .

From two things I have derived unfeigned satisfaction; one, the delight of my good father, who seems disposed to swallow—without the requisite allowance of salt—all the good-natured things which are said of the book, and the other, the hearty and active kindness of the few whom I have thought and now find to be my friends. I feel little doubt that the work, owing to their exertions, when it gets to the Southern cities where I am not known, will find a fair reception,—though, of course, I cannot expect anything like the welcome it has met here. I feel relieved, however, as well as the publishers, from all apprehensions that the book will burn their fingers, whatever it may do to the author’s. . . .

I have sent a copy for you to Rich [London], who will forward it according to your directions. I suppose there will be no difficulty in sending it over to Paris, if you remain there. Only advise him thereof. ... A favorable notice in a Parisian journal of respectability would be worth a good deal. But, after all, my market and my reputation rest principally with England, and if your influence can secure me, not a friendly, but a fair notice there, in any of the three or four leading journals, it would be the best thing you ever did for me,—and that is no small thing to say. But I am asking what you will do without asking, if any foreigner could hope to have such influence. I know that the fiat of criticism now-a-days depends quite as much on the temper and character of the reviewer as the reviewed, and, in a work filled with facts dug out of barbarous and obsolete idioms, it will be easy to pick flaws and serve them up as a sample of the whole. But I will spare you further twaddle about their Catholic Highnesses.

 

RESULTS

A little later, April 30th, 1838, in his private Memoranda, after giving a detailed account of the circumstances attending, its publication, the contracts for printing, and the printing itself,— all which he thus laid up for future use,—he goes on:—

“Well, now for the result in America and England thus far. My work appeared here on the 25th of December, 1837. Its birth had been prepared for by the favorable opinions, en avarice, of the few friends who in its progress through the press had seen it. It was corrected previously, as to style, &c., by my friend Gardiner, who bestowed some weeks, and I may say months, on its careful revision, and who sug­gested many important alterations in the form. Simonds 4 had previously suggested throwing the introductory Section 2 on Aragon into its present place, it first having occupied the place after Chapter III. The work was indefatigably corrected, and the references most elaborately and systematically revised by Folsom. . . .

“From the time of its appearance to the present date, it has been the subject of notices, more or less elaborate, in the principal reviews and periodicals of the country, and in the mass of criticism I have not met with one unkind, or sarcastic, or censorious sentence; and my critics have been of all sorts, from stiff conservatives to levelling loco-focos. Much of all this success is to be attributed to the influence and exertions of personal friends,—much to the beautiful dress and mechanical execution of the book,—and much to the novelty, in our country, or a work of research in various foreign languages. The topics, too, though not connected with the times, have novelty and importance in them. What­ever is the cause, the book has found a degree of favor not dreamed of by me certainly, nor by its warmest friends. It will, I have reason to hope, secure me an honest fame, and— what never entered into my imagination in writing it—put, in the long run, some money in my pocket.

“In Europe things wear also a very auspicious aspect so far. The weekly periodicals—the lesser lights of criticism— contain the most ample commendations on the book; several of the articles being written with spirit and beauty. How extensively the trade winds may have helped me along, I cannot say. But so far the course has been smooth and rapid. Bentley speaks to my friends in extravagant terms of the book, and states that nearly half the edition, which was of seven hundred and fifty copies, had been sold by the end of March. In France, thanks to my friend Ticknor, it has been put into the hands of the principal savans in the Castilian. Copies have also been sent to some eminent scholars in Germany. Thus far, therefore, we run before the wind”.

I will not refuse myself the pleasure of inserting what I had already written to him from Paris, February 20th, when, the London copy he had sent me having failed to come to hand, I had read the first volume of Ferdinand and Isabella in an American copy which had reached a friend in that city:—

“I have got hold of the first volume, and may, perchance, have the luck to see the others. It has satisfied all my expectations; and when I tell you that I wrote to Colonel Aspinwall from Berlin, nearly two years ago, placing you quite at the side of Irving, you will understand how I feel about it. I spoke conscientiously when I wrote to Aspinwall, and I do the same now. You have written a book that will not be forgotten. The Dedication to your father was entirely anticipated by me, —its tone and its spirit,— everything except its beautiful words. He is happy to have received a tribute so true and so due,—so worthy of him and so rarely to be had of any”.

But in the midst of the happiness which his success naturally produced, trouble came upon him.

ILLNESS OF HIS MOTHER

The family had gone, as usual, to Pepperell early in the summer of 1838, when a severe illness of his mother brought them suddenly back to town, and kept them there above two months, at the end of which she was happily restored, or nearly so.

“Moved from Pepperell”, he says in his private Memoranda, “prematurely, June 26th, on account of the distressing illness of my mother, which still, July 16th, detains us in this pestilent place, amidst heats which would do credit to the tropics. The same cause has prevented me from giving nearly as many hours to my studies as I should otherwise have done, being in rather an industrious mood. My mother’s health, apparently improving, may permit me to do this”.

But the next notice, July 27th, is more comfortable :—

“Been a month now in Boston, which I find more tolerable than at first. The heat has much abated, and, indeed, a summer residence here has many alleviations. But I should never prefer it to a summer at Nahant. Have received an English copy of Ferdinand and Isabella. Better paper, blacker ink, more showy pages, but, on the whole, not so good type, and, as the printer did not receive the corrections in season for the last three chapters, there are many verbal inaccuracies. The plates are good,—the portrait of Columbus ex­quisite, and about as much like him, I suppose, as any other. On the whole, Bentley has done fairly by the work. My friend Ticknor brings me home a very favorable report of the opinions expressed of the work by French and English scholars. If this report is not colored by his own friendship, the book will take some rank on the other side of the water”.

As he intimates, I was just then returned from Europe after an absence of three years. He met me at the cars on my arrival from New York, where I had landed; but his countenance was sad and troubled with the dangerous illness of his mother, then at its height. I saw him, however, daily, and talked with him in the freest and fullest manner about his literary position and prospects; giving him, without exaggeration, an account of the opinions held in England and France concerning his work, which he could not choose but find very gratifying.

I had, in fact, received the book itself before I left Paris, and had given copies of it to M. Guizot, M. Mignet, Count Adolphe de Circourt, and M. Charles Fauriel. The last three, as well as some other friends, had expressed to me their high esti­mation of it, in terms very little measured, which were, in their substance, repeated to me later by M. Guizot, when he had had leisure to read it Four persons better qualified to judge the merits of such a work could not, I suppose, have then been found in France; and the opinion of Count Circourt, set forth in the learned and admirable review already alluded to, would, I think, subsequently have been accepted by any one of them as substantially his own.

OPINION IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE

In England, where I passed the spring and early summer, I found the same judgment was pronounced and pronouncing. At Holland House, then the highest tribunal in London on the subject of Spanish history and literature, Lord Holland and Mr. John Allen, who were both just finishing its perusal, did not conceal from me the high value they placed upon it; Mr. Allen telling me that he regarded the introductory sections on the constitutional history of Aragon and Castile —which, it will be remembered, were three times written over, and twice printed, before they were finally given to the press for publication—as possessing a very high merit as statesmanlike discussions, and as better than anything else extant on the same subject. Southey, whom I afterwards saw at Keswick, and from whose judgment on anything relating to Spanish history few would venture to appeal, volunteered to me an opinion no less decisive.

The more important Reviews had not yet spoken; but, remembering the wish expressed by my friend in a letter to me already cited,—though, as he intimated, not needing such an expression,— I made, through the ready kindness of Lord Holland, arrangements with Mr. McVey Napier, the editor of the Edinburgh Review, for the article in that journal by Don Pascual de Gayangos, of which an account has already been given. Mr. Lockhart, the Aristarch of the Quarterly Review, had not read the book when I spoke to him about it, but he told me he had heard from good authority that “it was one that would last”; and the result of his own examination of it was Mr. Ford’s review, Mr. Ford himself having been, I suppose, the authority referred to. Mr. Hallam, to whom I sent a copy in the author’s name, acknowledged its receipt in a manner the most gratifying, and so did Mr. Milman; both of these distinguished and admirable men becoming afterwards personally attached to Mr. Prescott, and corresponding with him, from time to time, until his death. These, and some others like them, were the suffrages that I bore to my friend on my return home early in July, and to which, in the passages I have cited from his Memoranda, he alludes. They were all of one temper and in one tone. I had heard of no others, and had, therefore, no others to give him. At home its success, I found, was already fully assured. As Dr. Channing had told him, “Your book has been received here with acclamation”.