IRLF 
 
 B 3 125 7MS 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
American a$en of ficttcrg 
 
 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
american a?en of 
 
 WILLIAM HICKLING 
 PRESCOTT 
 
 BY 
 
 ROLLO OGDEN 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 (Cbc fitoerjjibe priW, ambriD0e 
 1904 
 
COPYRIGHT 1904 BY ROLLO OGDEN 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published April 1004 
 

 To S. M. O. 
 " Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also." 
 
 213369 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THIS volume makes no pretense of supplanting 
 Ticknor s " Life of Prescott." It aims simply 
 to supplement it. Ticknor wrote the biogra 
 phy of his lifelong friend, possessed of ample 
 materials ; but he was already an old man ; 
 his view of society and literature, always se 
 vere, had deepened into something like auster 
 ity ; and to bring out vividly the playful and 
 engagingly human aspects of Prescott s charac 
 ter would doubtless have seemed to him like 
 taking liberties with the Muse of History. To 
 complete and correct the picture of Prescott s 
 personality, while giving a condensed but con 
 nected account of his life and work, has been 
 the sole task undertaken by the present writer. 
 Use has been made of significant matter re 
 jected by Ticknor, or unknown to him, though 
 his work has also been drawn upon occasion- 
 
viii ^PREFACE 
 
 ally. The author, could have had no hope of 
 success but for the kindness with which the 
 Prescott papers were put at his disposal by 
 Mrs. Roger Wolcott and Linzee Prescott, 
 Esq., the historian s grandchildren. To them 
 his warmest acknowledgments are due. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE CROSSED SWORDS 1 
 
 II. SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 16 
 
 HI. " LE TRAVAIL D AVEUGLE " . . . .23 
 
 IV. THE INWARD EYE 38 
 
 V. PREPARATION 48 
 
 VI. BEGINNINGS 59 
 
 VII. THE QUEST OF A THEME .... 73 
 VIII. FERDINAND AND ISABELLA .... 84 
 
 IX. AWAKING FAMOUS 99 
 
 X. THE MAN OF LETTERS .... 114 
 
 XI. THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO . . . .130 
 
 XII. THE CONQUEST OF PERU .... 152 
 
 XIII. THE ENGLISH VISIT 160 
 
 XIV. PERSONAL TRAITS 172 
 
 XV. POLITICAL SYMPATHIES 197 
 
 XVI. PHILIP II 208 
 
 XVII. THE UNFINISHED WINDOW . . . .229 
 INDEX . 235 
 
WILLIAM HICKLING 
 PKESCOTT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE CROSSED SWORDS 
 
 THACKERAY brought the Prescott pedigree 
 into the high relief of a work of imagina 
 tion. His allusion in " The Virginians " to 
 the " crossed swords on the library wall of one 
 of the most famous writers of America" pleased 
 the historian. Mrs. Ritchie has printed his 
 note of acknowledgment : " It was very pret 
 tily done, and I take it very kind of you." 
 This was in 1857. When Prescott was in Eng 
 land in 1850, it appears from his letters home 
 that he, like many another man, had been " not 
 much impressed by Thackeray" in general 
 society. But in this country they were drawn to 
 each other. Even had they not been, Prescott 
 
2 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 could not have failed to be touched by the 
 "compliment to my two swords of Bunker s 
 Hill memory, and their unworthy proprietor," 
 since he always felt, as he wrote to Griswold in 
 1845, that he had a " right to take an honest 
 pride, or at least satisfaction, in my descent." 
 The official genealogist of the family is Wil 
 liam Prescott, of Concord, K H., who pub 
 lished the "Prescott Memorial" in 1870. 
 There were " two separate and distinct emi 
 grants by the name of Prescott." John Pres 
 cott reached Boston and Water town in 1640, 
 and James Prescott was "first heard of at 
 Hampton, N. H., in 1665." Both these Pres- 
 cotts are traced back to " James Prescott of 
 Standish, in Lancashire, England, who was re 
 quired by an order of Queen Elizabeth, dated 
 August, 1564, to keep in readiness horse 
 men and armor." It must be said, however, 
 that this English connection is not made out 
 by evidence satisfactory to the severe methods 
 of later genealogists. Reviewing the " Prescott 
 Memorial" in the "American Genealogist," 
 the late Mr. W. H. Whitmore wrote : " Our 
 objection is to the English part of the pedi- 
 
THE CROSSED SWORDS 3 
 
 gree. . . . Not a single proof is given." In 
 deed, the " Memorial " abounds in simplici 
 ties like the following : " Although we are not 
 able to trace the direct lineage of the Pres- 
 cotts that came to America farther back than 
 the time of Queen Elizabeth, yet it is well 
 known that Prescott was known as an ancient 
 family in the town of Prescott in the county 
 of Lancaster." Nobility in the ancestry is 
 even hinted at, and a coat of arms is given. 
 But on all this, two youthful letters of the 
 historian s throw a somewhat amusing light. 
 Writing to his parents from St. Michael s, 
 March 15, 1816, he said: 
 
 " I intend to have the family arms engraven 
 in London. I wish you would send me a fac 
 simile of them, which may be easily obtained 
 from Dr. P., for I am acquainted only with 
 the crest ; and as people of the same name of 
 ten have the same crest, but different bearings, 
 I might confound my genealogical tree with 
 some other, which would be a great pity, as I 
 should wish to ascertain 
 
 1 if our blood, 
 Has crept through scoundrels, ever since the flood, 
 
4 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 or if it has not flowed through some more illus 
 trious channels. There is something extremely 
 ominous in the crest, which you know is the 
 bird of night." 
 
 On June 7 of the same year, however, Pres- 
 cott wrote from London : 
 
 " I have been to the Herald s Office, and, to 
 my utter consternation, they tell me there is no 
 such crest as an owl in their books, although 
 there is a Sir John or Sir Alex, or some other 
 baroneted Prescott now extant in London. I 
 begin to be seriously afraid we have not the 
 least blood royal in us." 
 
 Though thus left hanging, the English deri 
 vation is undoubted. It was tacitly assumed 
 by Captain Henry Prescott, R. N., Governor 
 of Newfoundland, who on February 25, 1840, 
 wrote to Prescott to say that he congratulated 
 himself upon seeing his family name raised to 
 literary distinction by the historian, and sur 
 mised that he might trace his own ancestry to 
 a common stock with Prescott s " in no very 
 distant past." 
 
 Even once safely in New England, a mythic 
 element seems to attach to the Prescott an- 
 
THE CROSSED SWORDS 5 
 
 nals. Wondrous tales are told of the emigrant 
 John. Established on the frontier in Lancas 
 ter, he fought the Indians in a full coat of 
 mail-armor, helmet, cuirass, and gorget, 
 and " struck terror to the savage foe by an ap 
 pearance more frightful than their own." Pi 
 quant tradition of his extraordinary personal 
 prowess has been handed down in the Prescott 
 family. He was one of those " soldier ances 
 tors " to whom Governor Roger Wolcott re 
 ferred in his privately printed " Brief Sketch " 
 of Prescott, as helping to determine the histo 
 rian s character and possibly his themes. Cer 
 tainly it is no abrupt transition from the ad 
 venturous Cromwellian Indian fighter, John 
 Prescott of Lancaster, to Hernan Cortes and 
 his Aztec antagonists. 
 
 The line of descent is through Jonas Pres 
 cott, son of the first emigrant, 1648-1723. 
 He lived in Groton. From him sprang Ben 
 jamin, who rose to be colonel of militia for his 
 county, as also for the adjoining county of 
 Worcester, and who, as a member of the Gen 
 eral Court of the Colony, appeared before a 
 royal commission in behalf of the territorial 
 
6 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 rights of Massachusetts as against New Hamp 
 shire in 1737. He died the next year at the age 
 of forty-one, prematurely, for a long-li ved 
 stock. Second of his sons, and grandfather of the 
 historian, was that William Prescott Pres- 
 cott the Brave, Washington called him whose 
 name blazed up in glory at Bunker Hill. Born 
 in 1726, he pushed out before he was of age 
 into what was then the wilds of upper Middle 
 sex, and acquired lands in the township of 
 Pepperell, as it came later to be named, after 
 the captor of Louisburg. Hence the estate so 
 loved of the historian, still held in the family 
 under the original Indian title. Colonel Prescott 
 lived, like too many soldiers, in a more lavish 
 style than his means admitted, so that his only 
 child William, born August 19, 1762, had 
 early to set about making his own way in the 
 world. After three years at Dummer Acad 
 emy he entered Harvard, where he gradu 
 ated in 1783, and then supported himself by 
 teaching at Beverly while studying law under 
 Nathan Dane, who afterwards founded the law 
 professorship at Cambridge. Admitted to the 
 bar in 1787, he practiced his profession for 
 
THE CROSSED SWORDS 7 
 
 two years in Beverly, but removed to Salem 
 in 1789, where he lived tiU 1808. In that 
 year he made his home in Boston. Industri 
 ous and able, he rose steadily until it could be 
 said of him, as Webster did at the time of his 
 death, that " at the moment of his retirement 
 from the bar of Massachusetts he stood at its 
 head for legal learning and attainments." 
 
 Political honors were his for the taking, but 
 nearly all of them he put aside. He sat in 
 the Legislature as representative of Salem, 
 and also as senator from the county of Essex ; 
 was a delegate to the famous Hartford Con 
 vention in 1814, and a useful member of the 
 Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts in 
 1820-21 ; for a year (1818-19) served as 
 Judge of the Common Pleas in Boston, though 
 twice he refused an offered appointment to the 
 bench of the Supreme Court of the State. 
 Highly successful as a lawyer, he early paid 
 off his father s debts and cleared the family 
 property from all encumbrances, supporting his 
 widowed mother (Abigail Hale) at Pepperell 
 until her death at a great age in 1821. The 
 fortune which Judge Prescott accumulated was 
 
8 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 freely put at his son s disposal, and without 
 it the historian s work would have been im 
 possible. Between the two there was always a 
 peculiarly close intimacy. Shortly after his 
 father died, December 8, 1844, Prescott wrote 
 to a friend a long letter in which he gave a 
 sketch of Judge Prescott s life and a penetrat 
 ing while tender appreciation of his character. 
 A part of this is worth quoting for its inherent 
 interest, as well as for its significance hi point 
 of heredity. 
 
 " The great characteristic of his moral na 
 ture was integrity. The least departure from 
 truth was a thing he would have shrunk from, 
 as tainting the soul. He had all the moral 
 courage which is demanded for seeking out the 
 right and steadily pursuing it. Yet he did not 
 do this so as to make virtue unamiable. For 
 he pursued his measures in a gentle concilia 
 tory way that sought to spare the feelings of 
 others, and to make the most liberal allowances 
 for the infirmities of human nature. He was, 
 indeed, severe to no one but himself in his 
 judgments. 
 
 " His tastes were intellectual to a most ex- 
 
THE CROSSED SWORDS 9 
 
 traordinary degree. Books were the friends 
 that furnished him with an inexhaustible fund 
 of contentment. After his retirement from 
 business, a business which had occupied as 
 many hours of every day, probably, for more 
 than forty years, as ever engaged any practi 
 tioner at our bar, he found abundant re 
 sources in his own library. This is rare. He 
 would pursue systematic courses of reading 
 and study, taking copious notes on such great 
 questions in politics or morals as most inter 
 ested him. And in these studies, that of theo 
 logy had a conspicuous place, theology in its 
 most extended sense. He was particularly fond 
 of history, and regularly provided himself with 
 all the best publications, historical and bio 
 graphical, from the English press, as well as 
 our own. It was a sufficient relief to him to 
 pass from the study of one subject to another. 
 In lighter reading, as works of fiction, particu 
 larly in those directed to the analysis of char 
 acter, he took great delight. But especially 
 when that pleasure could be shared with the 
 domestic circle. How constant a companion 
 for many years was the evening novel, the 
 
10 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 novels of Scott, Miss Edgeworth, and the like, 
 if there are the like. 
 
 " The great charm of his character consisted 
 in his sympathy for all around him, his fam 
 ily, his friends. Their joys and their sorrows 
 were part of his. For the young he kept up 
 this sympathy in his latest years, and especially 
 for those who manifested anything excellent, 
 or promising to become so, in their moral or 
 mental character. As he had great sagacity, 
 extensive learning, high principle, chivalrous 
 honor, love of truth, reverence for the Deity 
 most unaffected and remarkable, he had the 
 qualities which command reverence without 
 forfeiting love. There are some whom we ven 
 erate for high talents or principles, who have 
 not the attractions that secure our affections. 
 But none approached him however inti 
 mately without mingled feelings of rever 
 ence and love. How much and tenderly he 
 was beloved can be known only to those who 
 have seen him round his own hearth. If the 
 world were made of such noble natures, what 
 a world would it be ! " 
 
 In Pierce s " Life of Sumner " there is re- 
 
THE CROSSED SWORDS 11 
 
 cord of a conversation at dinner where were 
 present, among others, Webster, Sumner, 
 Ticknor, and Prescott. The subject of dis 
 cussion was the question what most powerfully 
 shaped men s characters and activities. Some 
 said one thing, some another. " Mr. Prescott 
 declared that a mother s influence was the 
 most potent, and paid an eloquent tribute to 
 the female sex in this relation." It was, doubt 
 less, personal experience that spoke, for he had 
 a remarkable mother. It was directly to her, 
 Governor Wolcott thought, that he owed his 
 " unfailing spirits." On the day she died, he 
 spoke of her to Ticknor as an influence that 
 had been " a guiding impulse " to him. Born 
 Catherine Greene Hickling, she married the 
 young lawyer of Salem, William Prescott, in 
 1793. The union was unbroken for fifty-one 
 years, and she survived her husband eight 
 years, dying at eighty-four in 1852. Her life 
 was uneventful, though for many years she 
 took an active part in the public charities of 
 Boston ; but, as her son wrote, it was her 
 character that excited interest. Again we have 
 the advantage of a picture of her beautiful 
 
12 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 nature by his own pen. A few days after her 
 death, which as Ticknor says was mourned in 
 Boston as a " public loss," Prescott gave to a 
 friend an estimate of his mother. It reads, in 
 part, as follows : 
 
 " My mother had a warm and sympathetic 
 nature, a heart full of love, a hand open to 
 charity. And her charity was not limited 
 to the purse. It showed itself in a great in 
 dulgence to the frailties of others, as well as in 
 sorrow for their distresses. She had, indeed, 
 a generous nature, wishing ever to do good 
 and to make those around her better. 
 
 " Her predominant trait was disinterested 
 ness, as you well know, to an extent that, I 
 think, you have rarely seen in any one. It was 
 a perpetual spirit of self-sacrifice, yet so sweetly 
 made that it seemed no sacrifice, but a plea 
 sure to herself. Her talk, her actions, and her 
 thoughts, evidently, were all occupied with the 
 good, or hi some way the happiness of others. 
 Her physical strength was great, and she used 
 it indefatigably in works of benevolence and 
 mercy, visiting the sick, comforting the dy 
 ing, and with all this possessing a fund of 
 
THE CROSSED SWORDS 13 
 
 good sense and good humor which made her 
 enter cordially into the innocent gayeties of 
 life. Her Christianity was not of the morose 
 kind, and though she wept with those that 
 weep, she entered as warmly into the joys of 
 her fellow creatures. 
 
 " Though her reading in early life had been 
 left much to her own direction, she had read 
 a great deal more than was usual at her day ; 
 and the Shakespeare which she had when a girl, 
 still in the bookcase at Pepperell, bears testi 
 mony on every page to her accurate perusal. 
 It is the same with others of the old English 
 writers, and through life, and to the last day 
 of it, the love of reading and writing has been 
 a chief solace of her hours when alone. One 
 book was her study by day and by night, 
 the Scriptures. This was visible to those ad 
 mitted to her privacy, for her piety was not 
 of that ostentatious kind which commends 
 itself to the notice of the world. 
 
 " She had great energy ; and in the man 
 agement of affairs she was very efficient. She 
 showed this particularly in the straitened cir 
 cumstances of early life. She was, however, 
 
14 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 exempt from the obstinacy and the conceit 
 which sometimes attaches to that class of char 
 acters whose success in action leads them to 
 an overestimate of their own abilities. She 
 was as free from vanity as from envy. Indeed, 
 such feelings could not harbor in a heart so 
 disinterested. 
 
 " She had the good fortune to be connected 
 with a partner in life of a character admirably 
 suited to her own, though little resembling it. 
 They had some great points of resemblance, 
 in their excellent understandings, soundness 
 of principle, mild spirit of toleration, and gen 
 erous regard for the welfare of others. How 
 could such a union be otherwise than happy. 
 After being thus united for more than half a 
 century, she was left to go on her pilgrimage 
 alone. Yet not alone, for she was surrounded 
 by troops of friends, the poor as well as the 
 rich, whom her virtues and her deeds of kind 
 ness had made for her. She had children, too, 
 who cherished her, and who strove, while they 
 could, to keep one parent from the sky. All 
 this is past ; and the beautiful remembrance 
 of her good deeds alone remains to us. She 
 
THE CROSSED SWORDS 15 
 
 had errors, no doubt, though I have not 
 been long enough with her to find them out. 
 If they are recorded above, sure I am they 
 were not so numerous but that the recording 
 angel will blot them out with a single tear ! " 
 
 Seven children were born to Judge and 
 Mrs. Prescott, but four of them died in in 
 fancy. Two sons and a daughter attained 
 maturity. Of these the eldest was William 
 Hickling Prescott, who was born at Salem, 
 May 4, 1796. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 
 
 " I AM the only classmate of Mr. Prescott now 
 present," said President Walker of Harvard, 
 at the memorial meeting in honor of Prescott 
 held by the Massachusetts Historical Society 
 on February 1, 1859. "My recollections of 
 him go back to our college days, when he 
 stood among us one of the most joyous and 
 light-hearted, in classic learning one of the 
 most accomplished, without any enemies, with 
 nothing but friends." This characterization 
 is borne out by all the contemporary testi 
 mony now accessible. Ticknor got various 
 accounts from intimates of the Prescott home 
 in Salem, and all agree that the boy William 
 had all of his mother s bright vivacity and 
 his father s amiability. He was first taught at 
 his mother s knee. Next we find him under, 
 not a schoolmistress, but a school-mother, as 
 she preferred to call herself, that New Eng- 
 
SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 17 
 
 land gentlewoman, Miss Mehitable Higginson, 
 whose school for the very young was patron 
 ized by the best families of Salem. At seven 
 he was placed in " Master Knapp s " school, 
 where he remained till his father s removal to 
 Boston in 1808. All the traditions of his boy 
 hood, which Ticknor piously gathered, make 
 him out a merry lad, fonder of play than study, 
 though with an inquisitive mind and ready 
 memory which made it easy for him to learn. 
 Prescott himself said that he could recall no 
 period of his childhood when he did not love 
 books ; his reading being mainly of stories and 
 romances which used to quicken his imagina 
 tion so powerfully that he would cling to his 
 mother and follow her about the house rather 
 than be left alone with the creatures of his 
 fancy. A sermon of Dr. Channing s to chil 
 dren spared the rod. " Mother, if I am ever 
 a bad boy again, won t you set me to reading 
 that sermon ? " 
 
 In Boston, Prescott was in the half-school, 
 half -home, of the Eev. Dr. Gardiner, rector of 
 Trinity Church. In the library of that excel 
 lent scholar, a dozen boys got a thorough 
 
18 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 grounding in the classics. There, too, began 
 the lifelong friendship between Ticknor and 
 Prescott, as also that intimacy between the 
 historian and a son of his teacher, which was 
 remarkably close and never broken. Prescott 
 was fitting for Harvard, and confined himself 
 to the purely required studies. A boy to-day 
 coaching for his finals could not more definitely 
 regard that time wasted which was spent upon 
 unnecessary text-books. Yet there is evidence 
 of some outside reading. The Boston Athe 
 naeum was then in its beginnings, and, in that 
 day of book famine in New England, furnished 
 stores inaccessible otherwise. John Quincy 
 Adams, off for Eussia, deposited his library of 
 several thousand volumes in the Athenaeum ; 
 and it was particularly among them that Pres 
 cott, through the favor of one of the proprie 
 tors, spent many hours of aimless reading. 
 From it he carried away little except, as he ac 
 knowledged forty years later, a firm conviction 
 that there were such things as books, with 
 some faint dawnings of literary taste. But 
 there are no records of precocity no vision 
 splendid. The boy was but such as his fellows, 
 
SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 19 
 
 a trifle gayer by nature, perhaps, but mainly 
 just the playful, prankish, " apple-eating ani 
 mal " that we expect the normal male of 
 twelve or fourteen to be. He entered Sopho 
 more at Harvard in August, 1811. "It is j 
 certain," wrote Hillard in 1864, that Prescott 
 " in later life did not look back upon his 
 college career with unmingled satisfaction." 
 There was nothing discreditable about it. It 
 was simply not distinguished. The bright and 
 sociable boy of sixteen did not at once be 
 come a mighty student. He himself, in those 
 autobiographical notes which he sent to 
 K. W. Griswoldin 1845, and which the latter 
 printed with some amusing variations in the 
 " Prose Writers of America," said that at 
 Harvard he " gave little attention to the math 
 ematics and the sister sciences." However, " I 
 employed my leisure in the study of my favor 
 ite authors. It was a matter of taste with me, 
 but considering my subsequent occupations I 
 have not found reason to regret it." On this 
 college reading a ray of light is shed by the 
 records of the Harvard Library. Prescott 
 would appear to have drawn books only in his 
 
 c. r ~ H E 
 
20 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 Junior year. A list of the volumes charged to 
 " Prescott 2nd " there was an Aaron Pres- 
 cott in his class between February 26 and 
 August 14, 1813, extends to but nine entries. 
 He may have had books elsewhere, but these 
 were all from the library. They cover " Con- 
 dillac, Tom. 8, CEuvres de Voltaire, Tom. 5, 
 Eollin s Ancient History, vol. 1 &2, Wollaston 
 Eel. Nat. andMitford s Greece, vol. 1." In ad 
 dition, and most notable by way of unconscious 
 prophecy, was Watson s " Philip II," of which 
 all three volumes were taken out on June 4, 
 while on July 9, vols. 1 and 2 of the same writ 
 er s Philip III were charged. Fourteen years 
 later, when pursuing his elaborate historical 
 studies, Prescott again took up Watson, and, 
 without a hint that he had ever turned the 
 pages of that author before, set down in his 
 private notes the critical opinion, " a meagre, 
 unphilosophical chronicler of the richest period 
 of Spanish history." This was sufficiently in 
 accord with Richard Ford s judgment, who, in 
 1842, urged Prescott to write the life of Philip 
 II, saying that it was " an almost virgin sub 
 ject," since " the poor performance of Watson 
 
SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 21 
 
 is beneath notice ; " and in 1855 wrote, " You 
 have given us so much new and real history. 
 Verily you are the most good-natured of men 
 to praise that poor creature Watson whose 
 nonsense you have extinguished." 
 
 Prescott s rank in college may fairly be 
 inferred from his having been elected a 
 member of the Phi Beta Kappa an honor 
 much valued by him and assigned to re 
 cite an original Latin poem, " Ad Spem," at 
 Commencement. Bancroft s memory made it, 
 in his address on Prescott before the New 
 York Historical Society in 1859, " a Latin 
 ode that he had written to Spring ; " at any 
 rate, he accurately recalled first seeing Pres 
 cott in Cambridge at the latter s graduation 
 in 1814. Commencement was a high day in 
 those years, and the old meeting-house was 
 crowded with well-known people from Boston. 
 After the literary exercises, the graduates en 
 tertained their friends. The Prescotts spread 
 a dinner for five hundred in a tent. No 
 plainer proof of family pride in the son could 
 be given. When the son s son graduated a 
 generation later, Prescott wrote in his journal : 
 
22 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 September 1, 1844. " Attended Commence 
 ment last Wednesday when Will took his 
 degree. ... It is just 30 years since I 
 quitted Alma Mater. ... It is worth remem 
 bering that Will occupied the same room in 
 old Hollis which I occupied 30 years ago, 
 and which his grandfather occupied about 
 30 years before me ; three William Prescotts 
 in three generations, and all alive to meet 
 together in the same scene of boyish recollec 
 tions." This family room at Harvard has been 
 identified for me as " Hollis 11." 
 
CHAPTER in 
 
 LE TRAVAIL D AVEUGLE" 
 
 THE " leading and controlling event " of Pres- 
 cott s life was justly said by Hillard to be the 
 accident which deprived him of sight in one 
 eye, and which was soon followed by such an 
 impairment of the vision of the other as to 
 make his popular title, "the blind historian," 
 no wide misnomer. 
 
 It was a student prank that destroyed his 
 left eye. Leaving the table at commons one 
 day in his Junior year, Prescott turned sharply 
 to see what particular piece of skylarking the 
 noise behind him indicated, and was caught 
 full in the open eye by a crust of bread thrown 
 after him with none but rollicking intent. The 
 blow was a fearful one in its nervous effects, 
 striking Prescott down as by a rifle bullet. 
 No external mark, then or later, was left on 
 the eye, but it was made instantly and incura 
 bly sightless. The oculists of the day called it 
 
24 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 a paralysis of the retina. The patient soon 
 recovered tone and spirits, and went back to 
 enter into the kingdom of the learned with one 
 eye, and did it gayly and triumphantly, as has 
 been seen. Immediately after graduation, he 
 began reading law in his father s office, and 
 looked forward confidently to a career at the 
 bar. But early in 1815 the shadow deepened 
 upon him. He was seized with an obscure in 
 flammation in the right eye. Its diagnosis long 
 baffled the physicians, who only later deter 
 mined it to be a case of acute rheumatism. For 
 months he was entirely blind, and never again 
 was he able to use the eye except with extreme 
 caution, and for but short periods at a time. 
 Intervals of complete blindness fell upon him 
 with the frequent recurrence of his disease, 
 which often attacked him painfully in other 
 parts of the body also, and the fear of los 
 ing even the feeble and precarious sight re 
 maining to him never left him as long as he 
 lived. 
 
 The tradition of Prescott s total blindness 
 was strengthened by the "Edinburgh Beview." 
 In its notice of the " Conquest of Mexico " it 
 
"LE TRAVAIL D AVEUGLE" 25 
 
 spoke of the writer as having " been blind sev 
 eral years." " The next thing," wrote Prescott 
 in his journal, " I shall hear of a subscription 
 set on foot for the blind Yankee author. But 
 I have written to the editor, Napier, to set it 
 right, if he thinks it worth while." " I can t say 
 I like to be called blind," he wrote to Colonel 
 Aspinwall, at about the same date (May, 1845). 
 " I have, it is true, but one eye ; but that has 
 done me some service, and, with fair usage, 
 will, I trust, do me some more. I have been 
 so troubled with inflammations that I have not 
 been able to use it for months, and twice for 
 several years together." The " Edinburgh " duly 
 inserted a correction, but many went on be 
 lieving that Prescott was, as he humorously 
 protested that he was not, " high-gravel blind." 
 Edward Everett wrote him from London, June 
 2, 1845 : - 
 
 " I noticed the note in the Edinburgh Ke- 
 view > about your blindness, and I continually 
 hear and as often contradict the same state 
 ment in conversation, but I do not always com 
 mand belief. Sir John Hobhouse lasl Saturday 
 evening insisted upon it you were as blind as a 
 
26 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 mole, and, being a quiet man, I was obliged to 
 let him have his own way." 
 
 Maria Edgeworth sighed over the " poor 
 man," on the supposition that he was blind. 
 
 Oculists assured him that his eye would be 
 adequate to all the ordinary purposes of life, if 
 he would give up his literary labors. But Pres- 
 cott quietly refused to pay the price. Holding 
 himself to the strictest regimen, using every 
 precaution that his own experience or the skill 
 of physicians might suggest, he yet preferred 
 the joys of his intellectual pursuits to the cer 
 tainty of eyesight. Again and again we find 
 him in his journals calmly contemplating the 
 possibility of absolute blindness. Even then 
 there was no regret or slackened resolution ; 
 only a weighing of the possibility of his being 
 able to press on with his work when wholly 
 dependent upon the eyes of others. So long 
 as hearing remained to him he would not lose 
 heart. " The obstacles," he wrote in his jour 
 nal for October 4, 1830, " I do not believe to 
 be insuperable, unless I become deaf as well as 
 blind. ... I can always (by hearing even) 
 prepare and write twenty-five printed pages in 
 
L TRAVAIL D AVEUGLE" 27 
 
 a month." This was constantly a last resort in 
 his mind, and when, in his later years, his hear 
 ing did grow somewhat dull, his fear that he 
 might be left both blind and deaf was some 
 times haunting. As to the actual extent and 
 effect of his disablement, a few of his own re 
 cords are worth pages of description : 
 
 January 16, 1831. " I can dispense entirely 
 with my own eyes." 
 
 June 26, 1836. "The discouragements 
 under which I have labored have nearly deter 
 mined me, more than once, to abandon the en 
 terprise. I met with a remark of Dr. Johnson 
 on Milton at an early period, stating that the 
 poet gave up his history of Britain, on becom 
 ing blind, since no one could pursue such investi 
 gations under such disadvantages. This remark 
 of the great doctor confirmed me in the resolu 
 tion to attempt the contrary. ... I may per 
 haps, therefore, without vanity take some credit 
 to myself for perseverance. I must not over 
 state the case, however, for certainly my eyes 
 have not been high-gravel blind all the while." 
 
 March 24, 1846. "The last fortnight I 
 have not read or written, in all, five minutes. 
 
28 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 "My notes have been written by ear-work : 
 snail-like progress." 
 
 November 1, 1846. " I reckon time by eye 
 sight, as distances are now reckoned by rail 
 roads. There is about the same relative value 
 of the two, in regard to speed." 
 
 In a letter to Augustin Thierry, who was 
 entirely blind, dated July 10, 1847, Prescott 
 says : " My own eyes have become very dim, so 
 that I get not more than an hour or, at most, 
 an hour and a half s use of them each day, 
 and I fear for the future. But your example 
 and your writings have taught me, I hope, 
 philosophy." 
 
 March 1, 1848. " The deplorable state of 
 my eyes." 
 
 July 2, 1848. " If I could only have some 
 use of eyes ! " 
 
 July 9, 1848. " I use my eyes ten minutes 
 at a time, for an hour a day. So I snail it 
 along." 
 
 February 15, 1849. " How can I feel en 
 thusiasm when limping like a blind beggar 
 on foot ? I must make my brains somehow 
 or other save my eyes." 
 
LE TRAVAIL D AVEUGLE " 29 
 
 July 15, 1849. " Worked about three hours 
 per diem, of which with my own eyes (grown 
 very dim, alas !) about 30 minutes a day." 
 
 October 3, 1853. " Have been quacking 
 again for my eyes." 
 
 It was not actually quacking, though Pres- 
 cott suffered many things of many physicians. 
 The real quack for him would have been 
 Hermes in Zadig, with his solemn assurance : 
 "If it had been the right eye I could have 
 cured it, but the wounds of the left are incur 
 able." 
 
 June 16, 1857. "I fight as metaphori 
 cally speaking Cervantes fought at Lepanto 
 with one hand crippled." 
 
 Yet there were compensations, even from 
 the point of view of a literary man. For ex 
 ample : 
 
 " My inability to read handwriting has saved 
 me from many unprofitable hours which I used 
 to spend in verbal hyper-criticism." 
 
 Another thing which Prescott s disability 
 spared him was a part of the primary work of 
 historical research. Delving in the archives 
 was not for him. He transported them, in- 
 
30 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 stead, to his own library. Able to employ 
 competent European scholars, he had copies 
 made of all the manuscripts that bore upon 
 his subject, so that at his ease in Boston he 
 could study the treasures of Simancas and 
 the Vatican, Paris, Berlin, The Hague, and 
 the British State Paper Office. Nearly all 
 of the manuscript library which Prescott ac 
 cumulated in this way went up in smoke, un 
 fortunately, at the time of the Boston fire of 
 1872. How nicely he measured his strength 
 against the obstacles, how coolly and compre 
 hensively he planned his campaign, may be 
 seen in an early letter of his to the American 
 minister in Madrid, Hon. A. H. Everett : 
 
 BOSTON, January 1, 1827. 
 
 MY -DEAR SIR, I had just written my 
 preceding letter to you when I received yours 
 of the 16th of September last, which, from 
 some impediment or other, has been more than 
 three months on its passage to me. I cannot 
 express my sense of your kindness in thus read 
 ily promoting my undertaking. Amid so many 
 important public as well as personal concerns 
 
LE TRAVAIL D AVEUGLE" 31 
 
 which necessarily engage you I had no right 
 to claim this, though I confess I did expect it. 
 I entirely agree with you 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 continue 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 val 
 uable apparatus, precludes the possibility of 
 it. During the last year this has been sadly 
 plagued with what the physicians are pleased 
 to call a rheumatic inflammation, for which I 
 am now under treatment from Dr. Jackson, 
 under the general direction of Mr. Travers, an 
 eminent oculist in England. I have always 
 found traveling, 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 ? 
 
32 WILLIAM HICKLING PKESCOTT 
 
 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. 
 
 The foregoing letter is but an earnest of the 
 cooperation which Prescott had all his life 
 from American ministers and consuls in Eu 
 rope. In addition, experts like Gayangos and 
 Eich and Lembke ransacked the libraries and 
 explored the archives for him, in such a way 
 as to place him on an equality with the histor 
 ical searchers who went in person down among 
 the dead men. A compliment which Motley 
 paid him, apropos of his " Philip II," puts 
 this in clear light : 
 
 " I am astonished at your omniscience. No 
 thing seems to escape you. Many a little trait 
 of character, scrap of intelligence, or dab of 
 scene-painting which I had kept in my most 
 private pocket, thinking I had fished it out of 
 unsunned depths, I find already in your pos- 
 
LE TRAVAIL D AVEUGLE" 33 
 
 session, and now of course spread all over the 
 globe." 
 
 To aid him at home, Prescott had private 
 secretaries to read to him, make notes for him, 
 and to decipher and copy his noctographs. 
 In this latter form, nearly all his writing was 
 done. He first got an inkling of the contriv 
 ance when a youth in England. Thus we find 
 him writing to his father and mother : 
 
 LONDON, July 28, 1816. 
 
 . . . Last evening at Mrs. Delafield s, one 
 of the charming families whom I visit on the 
 most intimate footing, I heard of a new in 
 vented machine by which blind people were 
 enabled to write. I have been before indebted 
 to Mrs. D. for an ingenious candle screen. If 
 this machine can be procured, you may depend 
 upon it you will feel the effects of it. 
 
 And later : 
 
 PARIS, August 24, 1816. 
 
 . . . You must excuse this writing dear 
 Parents it is my coup d essai with my ma 
 chine for writing without looking, is doubt 
 less almost illegible and filled with blunders, 
 
34 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 as I have not seen a word of it ; the inven 
 tion however is certainly a very fortunate one 
 for me, but the process is so tedious. . . . 
 
 In a letter to the publisher of " Homes of 
 American Authors," Prescott himself gave a 
 sufficiently clear account of his writing appa 
 ratus. His noctograph, he wrote, consisted of 
 " a frame of the size of a common sheet of 
 letter-paper, with brass wires inserted in it to 
 correspond with the number of lines wanted. 
 On one side of this frame is pasted a leaf of 
 thin carbonated paper, such as is used to ob 
 tain duplicates. Instead of a pen, the writer 
 makes use of a stylus, of ivory or agate, the 
 latter better or harder. The great difficulties 
 in the way of a blind man s writing in the 
 usual manner arise from his not knowing 
 when the ink is exhausted in his pen, and 
 when his lines run into one another. Both 
 these difficulties are obviated by this simple 
 writing-case, which enables one to do his work 
 as well in the dark as in the light." One of 
 his noctograph frames is preserved at the Mas 
 sachusetts Historical Society. 
 
"LE TRAVAIL D AVEUGLE" 35 
 
 Yet one difficulty remained. Prescott some 
 times forgot to insert the sheet of paper, and 
 then, as he once wrote, he would proceed for a 
 page " in all the glow of composition " before 
 he found that it was in vain. He alluded to 
 this contretemps as one of the " whimsical dis 
 tresses " of his method. The resulting manu 
 script, however, was very hard to make out. 
 One of his secretaries, Mr. Eobert Carter, who 
 was engaged by Prescott in 1847, found as 
 signed him as his first duty the making him 
 self familiar with the noctograph writing. " I 
 was appalled," he wrote afterwards, "by its 
 appearance. It was nearly as illegible as so 
 much shorthand. I could not make out the 
 first line, or even the first word." This is fully 
 confirmed by what Prescott wrote to R. W. 
 Griswold in 1845. He said that the char 
 acters of his noctograph " might indeed pass 
 for hieroglyphics, but they were deciphered by 
 my secretaries. Yet my hair sometimes stood 
 on end at the woeful blunders and misconcep 
 tions of the original which every now and then, 
 escaping detection, found their way into the 
 first proof of the printer." The noctograph 
 
36 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 original of this very letter to Griswold, it may 
 be added, is preserved among the Prescott 
 papers, and itself is a fine example of his 
 hieroglyphs. It contained a modest autobio 
 graphical sketch, of which Prescott said at the 
 end, " I have talked freely to you at your own 
 suggestion, and your own discrimination will 
 lead you to select whatever you are willing to 
 publish as coming from yourself of this long- 
 winded argument concerning one who never 
 before wrote a line about himself." Griswold 
 had sought material for the condensed bio 
 graphy of Prescott, which he published in his 
 " Prose Writers of America." It also appeared 
 in Bentley s " Miscellany," and followed Pres 
 cott s notes very closely. Such a sentence as 
 this was, of course, Griswold s own: "The 
 chaste richness of his style could have resulted 
 only from the happiest union of learning with 
 genius." And in the editor s conscientious 
 effort to make the story appear to " come from 
 himself," one finds such a use of the original 
 as this : " / have heard him say that his hair 
 sometimes stood on end," etc. Perhaps it did 
 again when this was read to him. 
 
LE TRAVAIL D AVEUGLE " 37 
 
 To compose by dictation was abhorrent to 
 Prescott. Mr. Carter recorded the fact that 
 the historian dictated his memoir of Pickering, 
 but " did not like the method, and never again 
 resorted to it when writing for the public." 
 Prescott s own account of the matter was as 
 follows : " Thierry, who is totally blind, urged 
 me by all means to cultivate the habit of dic 
 tation, to which he had resorted ; and James, 
 the eminent novelist, who has adopted this 
 habit, finds it favorable to facility in composi 
 tion. But I am too long accustomed to my 
 own way to change. And, to say truth, I never 
 dictated a sentence in my life for publication 
 without its falling so flat on my ear that I 
 felt almost ashamed to send it to the press. I 
 suppose it is habit." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE INWARD EYE 
 
 PRESCOTT S partial blindness had not merely 
 the outward effects before noted : it determined 
 the whole course of his life, and had a power 
 ful influence in shaping and beautifying his 
 character. No one can read the remarkable 
 record in his journals of the way in which he 
 turned from a dim world without to a radiant 
 world within, took himself in hand, and forged 
 laboriously in the dark the tempered weapon 
 of his mind and heart, without becoming per 
 suaded that his strength was plucked from his 
 very disabling. It was his resolute distilling 
 out the soul of goodness in the things evil of 
 his life which justified the Rev. N. L. Froth- 
 ingham in saying of him, after his death, that 
 the mischance which robbed him of eyesight 
 could " hardly be called a calamity, so man 
 fully, so sweetly, so wondrously did he not 
 only endure it, but convert it to the highest 
 
THE INWARD EYE 39 
 
 purposes of a faithful, scholarly, serviceable 
 life." On Prescott s tomb, as on that of an 
 other gentle scholar and intrepid invalid of New 
 England, might have been written, " Meine 
 Triibsal war niein Gliick." 
 
 In September of 1815, partly in pursuance 
 of plans of travel, and partly in the hope of 
 benefiting his health, Prescott sailed from 
 Boston for the Azores. His maternal grand 
 father, Thomas Hickling, was then, and until 
 his death at ninety-one, consul of the United 
 States in the island of St. Michael s, and cor 
 dially welcomed the young American into his 
 charming country house at Eosto de Cao. The 
 large family of children by a second wife, a 
 lady native to the islands, gave Prescott most 
 agreeable companions, and for six weeks he 
 greatly enjoyed life in the tropics under the 
 most favorable circumstances. But, on Novem 
 ber 1, he was seized with a violent inflamma 
 tion in the eye, and for three months was 
 confined to a dark room, on a reducing diet. 
 His single penciled entry in the diary which he 
 was then beginning was, for the whole period 
 extending from November 1 to February 1, 
 
40 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 the one pathetic word " darkness." For a 
 large part of the time it was absolute dark 
 ness. Yet his spirits were throughout unflag 
 ging. He was not merely cheerful: he was 
 hilarious. He sang, and spouted poetry, and 
 mouthed Latin, and walked scores of miles 
 within the four walls of his large chamber, 
 from corner to corner, thrusting out his elbows 
 to keep himself from running against the sharp 
 angles. Indeed, as he wrote to his parents, 
 he " emerged " from his " dungeon, not with 
 the emaciated figure of a prisoner, but in the 
 florid bloom of a bon vivant." A little later, 
 when in London, he was told by the leading 
 oculist whom he consulted that there was no 
 hope of a permanent cure, and that, as he wrote 
 home, "I must abandon my profession for 
 ever." But even that could not daunt him, 
 and he added, " Do not think that I feel any 
 despondency. . . . My spirits are full as high 
 as my pulse ; fifteen degrees above the proper 
 temperament." In connection with this indom 
 itable temper of Prescott s, with light-hearted- 
 ness that never failed, may here be cited what 
 his mother said, years after, to her pastor: 
 
THE INWARD EYE 41 
 
 "This is the very room where William was 
 shut up for so many months in utter darkness. 
 In all that trying season, when so much had to 
 be endured, and our hearts were ready to fail 
 us for fear, 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 
 hearty expression of good cheer, as if we 
 were the patients, and it was his place to com 
 fort us." 
 
 The letters and journals which cover the 
 residence at St. Michael s and the subsequent 
 travels in Europe, 1815-1817, are meagre, but 
 revealing. They show us the beginnings of the 
 man that was to be. His extraordinarily warm 
 family affection is there. His amiable, engag 
 ing, and eminently social nature appears, 
 sometimes with a characteristically whimsical 
 turn, as in this entry in his St. Michael s diary 
 for October 20, 1815: "Walk with Donna 
 Maria, made love and learned Portuguese." 
 There is a touch of the customary pedantry 
 of the recent graduate in his frequent over 
 flow of classic citations and allusions. But 
 most striking of all is the evidence of a curious 
 
42 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 and observant mind. His delight in the society 
 of his aunt and cousins did not prevent him 
 from inquiring into the agriculture and gov 
 ernment of the Azores. Still more in detail, 
 and with an eye keen beyond the wont of 
 youth at twenty-one, did he scrutinize the pro 
 ductions of the soil and the civil institutions 
 of those parts of England, France, and Italy 
 through which he journeyed. One is almost 
 reminded of Arthur Young and his beloved 
 turnips. In the close and shrewd observations 
 of these years do we get the clearest prophecy 
 of the coming historian. 
 
 It is the making of the man, however, which 
 is the immediate concern. The process lies 
 open to us in Prescott s journals. Never was 
 there a sharper reminder of the physical basis 
 of life. It was his bodily crippling that gave 
 Prescott an introspective habit. He watched 
 himself like an experimenter. Every symptom 
 he noted down. His diet he scrupulously re 
 corded. His partition of the day his hours of 
 sleep ; the time given to reading ; the amount 
 of exercise and recreation, with the effects of 
 each ; social amusements and the tax paid to 
 
THE INWARD EYE 43 
 
 friendship, all was written out and studied 
 and commented upon for three rigorous years. 
 It was not done selfishly, least of all morbidly. 
 Prescott had a problem to solve. How could 
 he do the work of a man without a man s eye 
 sight? What regimen would maintain his 
 necessarily limited activity at its highest and 
 most continuous flow? What husbanding of 
 the hours would make up for the handicap 
 under which he must always labor ? It was to 
 answer those questions satisfactorily to himself 
 that Prescott undertook his prolonged self- 
 scrutiny and self-testing. He did it almost 
 with scientific objectivity. He was as cool and 
 unbiased as if writing of another. Not one 
 hint of a diseased consciousness appears hi the 
 whole record. In this respect, I think, the lit 
 erature of diaries may be searched in vain for 
 a parallel. To put one s nature, physical and 
 mental, under the microscope daily, yet to be 
 tray, not simply no morbid feeling, but almost 
 no sense of self at all ; to be calm, even jocose, 
 while recording ill-health and noting limita 
 tions ; to preserve a sunny temper while wres 
 tling with the problem how to make a life bear 
 
44 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 fruit in darkness ; and to do all this in a series 
 of records meant only for his own eye and his 
 own guidance, such was the high and unique 
 achievement of Prescott. 
 
 While still in Europe he began mortifying 
 the flesh. A Paris physician bade him never 
 exceed two glasses of wine per diem. The 
 story of a traveling companion was that Pres 
 cott at once seized upon the largest wine-glass 
 on the table, to measure by. However that 
 may be, we have in his own handwriting a 
 register of his daily wine-drinking, covering 
 a period of two years and nine months. It was 
 no calendar of a sybarite. The effect on his 
 eye was the one standard to which everything 
 was referred. Thus when we find him writing, 
 July 22, 1820, "Went to Nahant drank 
 too much wine in Boston," we know that he 
 simply meant too much for his eye. Wine was 
 prescribed for him ; he found it useful ; the 
 only thing required was to work out a rule as 
 to kind and quantity, and this he did with an 
 amazing sort of impersonal zeal. And every 
 other part or act of his daily life was inter 
 rogated in the same spirit and to the same 
 
THE INWARD EYE 45 
 
 end. After months of minute inspection and 
 full experiment, aiming at the correct regimen, 
 he recorded the following : 
 
 " Eat meat ; light breakfasts ; temperate 
 dinners ; light teas ; no suppers ; simple food ; 
 no great variety at dinner ; exercise = 4 miles 
 pr. day at 3 or 4 different times ; light not 
 intense, but full, clear ; no spirits ; no wine 
 except excellent and old ; not exceed 4 glasses 
 of that, nor of tener than once in 5 days ; read 
 moderately large print, when eye is well ; not 
 walk in the cold or wind ; no wine when I 
 have a cold ; no goggles ? not sit up late" 
 
 A few disconnected extracts may further 
 show the character of the entries : 
 
 March 4, 1818. "Accursed cold God s 
 will be done ! " 
 
 February 4,1819. "A cold engagement. 
 
 October 16, 1819. "Cold heightened by 
 imprudence." 
 
 March 1, 1820. " Much hurt by injudicious 
 reading." 
 
 January , 1820. N. B. Theatre, late 
 Balls, smoking, supper parties, always perni 
 cious ergo, not go or not stay late." 
 
46 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 "Kule about balls. Not more than one a 
 week, and not stay after 11, or more than 
 2J h." 
 
 " Club, not stay after 12." 
 
 From the physical, Prescott s self -discipline 
 passed on as rigorously to the mental and the 
 moral. His athletic training of brain and pen 
 for the peculiar work he gave them is reserved 
 for a later page ; but he read his soul as atten 
 tively as he did his mind or body. His habit 
 was to keep by him a complete inventory of 
 his moral qualities, chiefly a list of the faults 
 against which he set himself to strive. Slips 
 written by his own hand, and seen by his eye 
 alone, he kept in a large envelope, each one 
 bearing a record of what he thought amiss in 
 himself. Over this card-catalogue of defects he 
 would periodically go, usually on a Sunday 
 morning after church, and conscientiously 
 check up his moral account. One besetting sin 
 mastered, its record would be blotted out ; a 
 new one detected, it would have its scrupulous 
 entry. To the last he kept up these recurring 
 self -examinations, and after his death the en 
 velope was found, marked, " To be burnt." To 
 
THE INWARD EYE 47 
 
 ashes the whole was indeed reduced. Not 
 enough to make a moment s blaze, the faults 
 of one so universally loved ! " The only man," 
 wrote Hillard, " whom we never heard any one 
 speak against." 
 
 In the early journals there are some traces of 
 the struggle of Prescott s spirit to find itself. 
 A few of these may be properly transcribed : 
 
 " Since the age of 23, the most wretched 
 period of my life was when my passions and 
 temper controlled me, the most happy, when I 
 controlled them." 
 
 " Without answering for others, I may say 
 that these qualities of mind are sufficient for 
 my happiness : 
 
 I. Good Nature. II. Manliness. III. Inde 
 pendence. IY. Industry. V. Honesty. VI. 
 Cheerful Views. VII. Keligious Confidence." 
 
 Finally, as if bursting into a " let us hear 
 the conclusion of the whole matter," 
 
 " Voila. 
 
 P. S. I have been perfectly contented, light- 
 hearted & happy, ye last 2 weeks with my 
 BOOKS 7 hrs. & DOMESTIC SOCIETY & Benev* 
 Feels (Not thinking of it) Not VANITY " 
 
CHAPTER V 
 PREPARATION 
 
 To Prescott, as to "gentle Sir Philip Sid 
 ney," it might have been said, " thou knewest 
 what belonged to a scholar ; thou knewest what 
 pains, what toil, what travail, conduct to per 
 fection." The records of his rigid discipline 
 from his twenty-sixth to his fortieth year remain 
 as proof of what would otherwise seem, consid 
 ering his handicap, the incredible amount of 
 work he got through. With the sure prospect 
 of indifferent health and dependence upon the 
 eyes of another, he attacked light-heartedly a 
 mass of reading which would have taxed the 
 rudest physique. His toils, moreover, were 
 undertaken through no necessity, except the 
 spur of a noble mind, since his father s 
 ample means assured him comfort and even 
 luxury. But we find him, soon after his return 
 from Europe in 1817, resolutely sitting down 
 to perfect his Latin, and to make himself 
 
PREPARATION 49 
 
 master of three modern literatures. "I am 
 now," lie wrote in his journal early in 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, 31-32, I may hope to learn 
 German, and to have read the classical Ger 
 man writers ; and the translations, if my eye 
 continues weak, of the Greek. And this is 
 enough for general discipline." For German, 
 he had to offer Spanish as a substitute. To 
 his great regret and temporary deep depres 
 sion, his feeble eyesight compelled him to give 
 up the Gothic script. A secretary could make 
 French or Spanish intelligible to him ; but he 
 found that, without a dangerous strain of his 
 weak eye, he could not thoroughly acquire 
 the language of the learned, which would have 
 been so useful to him in his historical pur 
 suits. Accordingly, after much deliberation 
 
50 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 and long balancing of his strength against the 
 obstacles, he decided that it was out of his 
 reach. The remainder of his programme, how 
 ever, he adhered to religiously and carried out 
 triumphantly. Aided at first by his friend 
 Gardiner and a devoted sister, who read to 
 him hours every day, and later on by private 
 secretaries, whom he began regularly to employ 
 in 1824, he put an immense amount of mate 
 rial behind him. During several of those years 
 of preparation, furthermore, Prescott had the 
 good fortune to be able to use his eye without 
 harm. Thus on January 24, 1829, we find the 
 record : 
 
 "By the blessing of Heaven I have been 
 enabled to have the free use of my eyes in 
 the day time during the preceding weeks with 
 out the exception of a single day, although de 
 prived for nearly a fortnight of my habitual 
 exercise. I trust I have not abused this great 
 privilege." 
 
 In English, Prescott s reading was wide- 
 ranging. The niceties of philology were not 
 for him, though one of the heads of the " course 
 of studies " which he marked out for himself 
 
PREPARATION 51 
 
 in October, 1821, was "Principles of gram 
 mar, correct writing, etc." His main strength 
 he expended upon another section of his plan, 
 namely, " Fine prose-writers of English from" 1 
 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." His note 
 books survive to tell the tale of his faithful 
 performance of the task. Ascham, Sidney, 
 Bacon, Browne, Raleigh, Milton; the great 
 preachers ; the old English drama ; romances 
 and ballads ; historians and critics down to 
 his contemporaries Jeffrey and Gifford, all 
 passed in review before him. Nor did the 
 names and volumes stand to him as a mere 
 catalogue. He read, marked, and inwardly 
 digested. Not extracts, but critiques, fill his 
 commonplace books. " This criticism and anal 
 ysis," he wrote in June, 1823, " shall be made 
 weekly, at each time reviewing it as a whole. 
 . . . The reflections shall be made carefully, 
 for it is obvious that superficial considerations 
 are not worth recording, as the recollection of 
 them can in no way add to the solid stores 
 
62 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 of knowledge." Ticknor gave two specimens 
 of Prescott s condensed characterizations, As- 
 cham and Milton. I will add the one of 
 Burke, remarkably near the white for so young 
 a critic : 
 
 " Splendid, fervent, very declamatory ; a 
 fiery imagination, following up his game with 
 argument and illustration and emphasis, with 
 a vehemence and rapidity that cannot be re 
 sisted. As declamatory as Bolingbroke, but 
 more force, more of the vivida vis animi, 
 rather glowing with the force of his own im 
 petuosity than with the studied embellishment 
 of fancy. Borrowing his images, examples 
 from the meanest sources, no matter where so 
 long as they enforce his purpose, yet too re 
 dundant, even tedious." 
 
 French and Italian studies came next, and 
 were equally generous. Into French literature 
 he went, as he expressed it, "deeper and 
 wider " than into Latin, since his object was 
 not simply to strengthen his memory of old 
 favorites, but to acquire a familiarity with an 
 entire body of writers. From Froissart to 
 Chateaubriand he covered the ground with 
 
PREPARATION 53 
 
 singular thoroughness. He collected material 
 for the life of Moliere which he at one time 
 intended to write. Italian he pursued with 
 more delight than French. His favorite quota 
 tions, in letters and in his journals, were from 
 Italian poets. In company with Ticknor, and 
 aided by an Italian scholar living an exile in 
 Boston, he pushed his reading far beyond the 
 beaten track, and at one time thought seri 
 ously of writing a history of Italian literature. 
 The solidity of his attainments in this field 
 may be measured by his two elaborate articles 
 on Italian Poetry in the " North American 
 Review "of October, 1824, and July, 1831. 
 Spanish, Prescott took up through a happy 
 accident of friendship. In his journal for Feb 
 ruary 13, 1825, he wrote : " I began the 
 study of Spanish, December 1, 1824, since 
 which period I have written daily exercises, 
 studied grammar, read, etc." The prompting 
 came through his fondness for Ticknor, who 
 was then delivering in Harvard those lectures 
 which afterwards grew into his monumental 
 " History of Spanish Literature." Thus at 
 more than twenty-eight Prescott began the 
 
64 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 study of the language that was to bulk largest 
 in his life s work. His knowledge of its litera 
 ture early became extensive, and his collection 
 of Spanish books ranked second after Tick- 
 nor s. He came to think and write in Spanish 
 with great freedom, though his command of 
 the language was not perfect : in the letters 
 and entries in his journal which he wrote in 
 Spanish there are occasional minor lapses. 
 And, singularly enough, he did not at first 
 find Spanish simpdtico. He wrote to his 
 friend Bancroft at Christmas, 1824, " I am 
 battling with the Spaniards this winter, but I 
 have not the heart for it that I had for the 
 Italians." He added, with an amusing uncon 
 sciousness of what his fate was to be, " I 
 doubt whether there are many valuable things 
 that the key of knowledge will unlock in that 
 language ! " 
 
 Prescott seems early to have felt a bent to 
 wards historical composition. About 1822 he 
 wrote in his private memoranda, " History has 
 always been a favorite study with me ; and I 
 have long looked forward to it as a subject on 
 which I was, one day, to exercise my pen. . . . 
 
PREPARATION 55 
 
 But it requires time, and a long time, before 
 the mind can be prepared for this department 
 of writing. I think thirty-five years of age 
 [he was then twenty-six] full soon enough to 
 put pen to paper." The story of his quest of 
 a congenial theme comes later ; but here may 
 be noted a few details of the methods he pur 
 sued in preparing for the work that awaited 
 him. Discipline in industry and concentra 
 tion of mind were among the ends which he 
 earliest set before himself. Thus, on Decem 
 ber 1, 1824, he wrote in his journal : " I have 
 read with no method and very little diligence 
 or spirit for three months [it was about the 
 time of his dejection at having to give up Ger 
 man]. . . . To the end of my life I trust I 
 shall be more avaricious of time [this phrase 
 frequently dropped off Prescott s pen] and 
 never put up with a smaller average than 7 
 hours intellectual occupation per diem." Six 
 years later, May 13, 1830, he exhorted him 
 self to " imitate the perseverance and literary 
 ardor of the Germans. I must be avaricious 
 of time as regards domestic pleasures." He 
 was able to record progress in fixity of at- 
 
56 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 tention. " I can think," he wrote on June 1, 
 1829, " in one place as well as another, and in 
 company as well as alone. I can work rapidly 
 in proportion to the concentration of my 
 thoughts ; I ought to be able to confine these 
 to any given subject for eight or ten hours a 
 day." 
 
 " Maxims in Composition " were given a 
 place in the first of his journals, and were 
 often recurred to. Some of these were of the 
 mnemonic order. 
 
 In October, 1824, he elaborated twenty 
 " Rules for Composition." In these a note of 
 independence is firmly struck. " State with 
 confidence what I know to be true." " Rely 
 on myself for estimation and criticism of my 
 composition." " Write what I think without 
 affectation upon subjects I have examined." 
 Withal, Fresco tt had a strong grasp on real 
 ity. He longed to saturate himself in matter. 
 Thus on July 3, 1828, he said to himself, 
 " Facts, facts, whether in the shape of inci 
 dents or opinions, are what I must rely upon." 
 Yet later on he added, what shows that he 
 
PREPARATION 57 
 
 was neither a logician of the " all-case " order, 
 nor an artist who knew not what to leave out, 
 " Mem. Never introduce what is irrelevant 
 or superfluous or unconnected for the sake of 
 crowding in more facts." 
 
 Prescott s style, the care with which he 
 built it up, and the conscientious attention 
 he gave to every defect which his own critical 
 eye or the acuteness of friend or reviewer 
 could detect in it, may best be considered in 
 connection with the writings themselves. But 
 so much as has been given was necessary to 
 show the temper in which he wrought during 
 all those years preceding the time when, as 
 Webster said of him, he "burst upon the 
 world like a comet." Not the least important 
 element in his preparation was his happy mar 
 riage. This took place on his twenty-fourth 
 birthday, May 4, 1820. He married Susan, 
 daughter of Thomas C. Amory and Hannah 
 Linzee, his wife. It was a felicitous union, 
 singularly helpful to Prescott. Long after 
 wards he wrote to a friend, " Contrary to the 
 assertion of La Bruyere, who somewhere says 
 
58 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 that the most fortunate husband finds reason 
 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." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 BEGINNINGS 
 
 PRESCOTT S first appearance in print was some 
 thing of a frolic affair. " The Club-Room," of 
 which he was editor, and which ran its course 
 in four numbers, had its origin in a literary 
 and social club, formed in 1818. Beginning 
 with a small number of intimates, it rose to a 
 membership of twenty-four, and for more than 
 forty years was a pleasure and solace to Pres- 
 cott. He was from the first its leading spirit. 
 When the proposal came to print some of the 
 papers read at the meetings, it was Prescott 
 who suggested a periodical form of publica 
 tion, and it was he who was appointed its 
 editor. He undertook the function seriously 
 enough, making a note in his journal of the 
 names of those who agreed to furnish him 
 " 6 printed pages at a week s notice once in 
 three weeks for the year 1820." But the dews 
 of mortality as well as of youth were upon the 
 
60 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 venture from the start, and its birth and burial 
 were not too far apart to be recorded on a 
 single page of Prescott s note-book. Here 
 it is : 
 
 "February 5, 1820. <Club Room, No. I. published 
 containing : 
 
 Club-Room, Happiness, Recollections, Castle-building, 
 Warren. Parsons. Dexter. Ware. 
 
 500 copies. 
 
 March 10th, 1820. Club Room, No. II. published 
 containing 44 pages Club-room Lake George, 
 Ennui Village Grave-yard Calais. 
 
 " April 26th, 1820. Club Room, No. III. published 
 containing 56 pages Sea of y e Poets. Sequel to Re 
 collections, Travels. Memorial. Vale of Alleriat. 
 Julietta Promeoni price 45. 
 
 "July 19, 1820. Club Room, No. IV. published 
 containing 39 pages Voyage of Discovery. Ruins of 
 Rome price 37^ cts. 
 
 " And here ended this precious publication." 
 
 Prescott s own contributions are three in 
 number. One was the " Vale of Alleriat," a 
 sentimental tale ; another was " Calais," a trifle 
 of a cleared-up ghost story, which the author 
 states that he gives " as it was told to us," and 
 which Ticknor informs us that Washington 
 
BEGINNINGS 61 
 
 Allston "used to tell with striking effect." 
 This would imply that Allston had an extraor 
 dinary power of making the tame vivid. In the 
 second number Prescott wrote the introductory 
 article giving a whimsical account of the nam 
 ing and purposes of the Club-Room. Referring 
 to the search of the hero of La Mancha for 
 " curious names " [this was four years before 
 Prescott began Spanish] , he says : 
 
 " We had actually no less than seven meet 
 ings extraordinary to adjust a title for our 
 paper. The Epicureans would have christened 
 it Hotch-pot (the old English for pudding) 
 containing, as Lord Lyttleton informs us, 4 not 
 one thing only, but one thing with many others 
 together, which by the variety of its ingredi 
 ents would show forth the very nature of our 
 work. But to this the Dyspeptics (a modern 
 party who have gradually grown out of the 
 former, and like many other colonies, now 
 quarrel with the parent state) objected, from 
 the persuasion that so gross a name must 
 necessarily exclude it from all persons of deli 
 cate tastes and digestion. 
 
 "The Cynics recommended Tales of the 
 
62 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 Tub, and the Peripatetics proposed * Veloci 
 pede/ In this crisis, being, as usual, unani 
 mously divided in our opinions, we determined 
 to follow the example of the ancient Greeks, 
 who when each man had voted himself the best 
 general at the siege of Troy, wisely balloted 
 for the second-best ; and in precisely the same 
 manner did we at length resolve upon the very 
 ingenious name of the Club-Room. 
 
 "As this is the proper place we cannot re 
 frain from felicitating both ourselves and the 
 public upon the selection of so significant a 
 title, which, we do assure them, is a careful 
 translation from the ^V/ATTWCTIOV of Xenophon, 
 and was done into English by a learned Pro 
 fessor of the University, solely with a view to 
 this publication "... 
 
 " Our book has been favored with the usual 
 introductory compliments paid to works of 
 merit upon their entrance into life ; and has 
 been denounced as both flat and stale, and 
 some promising little critics have even discov 
 ered that we are downright imitators of Sal 
 magundi and the Sketch Book. But all such 
 reflections we put down to the account of sheer 
 
BEGINNINGS 63 
 
 ignorance and bad taste, to say no worse, and 
 we recommend their authors to read deeper 
 and grow wiser. 
 
 " We would caution any ignorant or mali 
 cious people against imagining this work to be 
 the cream of our wits, for, in truth, it is nothing 
 but the froth and overflowings of them, which, 
 if they choose, they may scoop up, and if not, 
 it may run to waste ; we care not a groat." 
 
 More serious work followed. In 1821 Pres- 
 cott began to contribute to the " North Ameri 
 can Keview," and for more than thirty years 
 thereafter he rarely failed to produce what he 
 called "my annual peppercorn for the Old 
 North." From a memorandum of uncertain 
 date, but probably written in 1820, is taken 
 this account of his plans in regard to this form 
 of literary activity, and his conception of the 
 way in which it would fit into his general 
 scheme. " I will write a review no oftener than 
 once in three numbers of the c No. American 
 Review no oftener, and print only what I 
 think will add to my reputation ... In the 
 interim I will follow a course of reading and 
 make the subjects of my reviews, as far as I 
 
64 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 can, fall in with this course, or with what I 
 have before read. . . . Pursue this course till 
 I am thirty . . . Mem. I will never engage 
 to write for a number." For a time Prescott 
 thought of seeking print in the more noted 
 English reviews. Through Sparks he offered 
 an article to the " Quarterly," and a letter from 
 Lockhart, June 9, 1828, records the fact that 
 the editor had " perused Mr. Prescott s essay, 
 and prays that Mr. Sparks will tell him that 
 he has pleasure in accepting it for the Quar 
 terly Review. " Lockhart also requested that 
 Prescott would indicate subjects on which he 
 might be asked to write other reviews. The 
 article in question was that on the " Poetry 
 and Romance of the Italians." Its publication 
 was so long delayed, however, that Prescott 
 finally reclaimed his manuscript and gave it to 
 the " North American." It was there printed in 
 1831. Useful as Prescott s review-writing was 
 to him, both as pen-practice and means of re 
 pute, he came later, like many an enfranchised 
 hack, to have a poor opinion of it. In 1843 
 he wrote in his journal : " Criticism has got to 
 be an old story. It is impossible for any one 
 
BEGINNINGS 65 
 
 who has done that sort of work himself to have 
 any respect for it. How can one critic look 
 another in the face without laughing ? " After 
 the date last mentioned he did no reviewing 
 except at the behest of friendship. His charm 
 ing friend and correspondent for many years, 
 Madame Calderon de la Barca, had the ad 
 vantage of a notice by Prescott of her viva 
 cious " Travels in Mexico." In 1850 Ticknor s 
 " Spanish Literature " claimed a similar tri 
 bute. On this subject the diary yields two 
 extracts : 
 
 September 12, 1849. " Now for the review 
 my last and only in this line, though for the 
 author s sake I shall do it con amore." 
 
 October 25, 1849. "Have read for and 
 written an article in the * North American Re 
 view on my friend Ticknor s great work 
 my last effort in the critical line . . . Now, 
 Muse of History, never more will I desert thy 
 altar!" 
 
 He did, however, on a single occasion more, 
 to wit: 
 
 September 28, 1853. " Also written a no 
 tice of Hillard s Six Months in Italy thin 
 
66 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 porridge not the book, but my notice of it. 
 It will make 10 pp. of my History in quantity 
 a column and a half of the National Intel 
 ligencer, an they will print it." 
 
 Making out once in his journal a list of all 
 his review articles and fugitive contributions 
 to literary periodicals, Prescott affixed the too 
 contemptuous judgment, " This sort of ephem 
 eral trash had better be forgotten by me as 
 soon as possible." When, in 1845, his London 
 publisher, Bentley, proposed a volume of Pres- 
 cott s miscellaneous writings, it appeared as 
 " Critical and Historical Essays," the author 
 spoke of the matter as "trumpery" and a 
 " rechauffe of old bones." However, he assented 
 to their publication, muttering good-natured 
 protests to himself and his correspondents. A 
 few of his private entries will show his attitude 
 of mind. 
 
 March 8, 1845. " Finished doctoring my old 
 articles in the N. A. for Bentley. Have run 
 them over very superficially. If they prove as 
 hard reading to the public as to me, I pity 
 them. But to me they are an old tale." 
 
 September 15, 1845. "Rec d my vol. of 
 
BEGINNINGS 67 
 
 Mis from Bentley ... As to the portrait 
 of the author, it shows more imagination, I 
 suspect, than anything in the book." 
 
 The American edition had the Harper im 
 print. 
 
 June 24, 1845. "I have made an agree 
 ment with the Harpers. . . . My portrait is 
 to be prefixed thereto which they consider, 
 I suppose, putting a good face on the mat 
 ter." 
 
 What Prescott himself rated so low need not 
 long detain us. These early essays of his are 
 plentifully bedewed with learning; they show 
 us an author almost uniformly urbane and 
 gentle ; in them we can see his historical spirit 
 preening its wings, and his historical style in 
 the forming. Judged by the standards of the 
 day, they are elegant specimens of leisurely 
 reviewing. But for real criticism, deep insight 
 into literature or life, vigorous comment, biting 
 characterization, phrases that haunt the mem 
 ory, one would turn to them in vain. 
 
 A just idea of Prescott s critical faculty, as 
 compared with Carlyle s, may be had by set 
 ting over against each other the reviews of 
 
68 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 Lockhart s " Scott " which the two men wrote. 
 Both were published in the same year, 1838, 
 Prescott s in the " North American," Carlyle s 
 in the "London and Westminster Review." 
 The American is flowing and refined; the 
 Scotchman jerky and uncouth. Prescott de 
 bates whether Lockhart may be thought guilty 
 of " occasionally exposing what a nice tender 
 ness for the reputation of Scott should have led 
 him to conceal." Carlyle exults that the book 
 is no "vacuum biography," leaving its sub 
 ject in "the white beatified-ghost condition." 
 " How delicate decent is English biography, 
 bless its mealy mouth ! " Passing to personal 
 judgment, Prescott ranks Scott among the 
 greatest. " There is no man of historical celeb 
 rity that we now recall who combined, in so 
 eminent a degree, the highest qualities of the 
 moral, the intellectual, and the physical." As 
 if in protest against such easy conferring of 
 the laurel, the ruggeder Scot strives to mea 
 sure his countryman more accurately : " It is 
 good that there be a certain degree of pre 
 cision in our epithets. It is good to understand, 
 for one thing, that no popularity and open- 
 
BEGINNINGS 69 
 
 mouthed wonder of all the world, continued 
 even for a long series of years, can make a 
 man great," etc. 
 
 Even harder for Prescott to bear would be 
 a comparison of his essay on Cervantes with 
 Lowell s brief lecture on " Don Quixote." The 
 earlier writer abounds in information. He 
 gives an excellent biographical sketch of Cer 
 vantes. He enumerates all the editions of 
 "Don Quixote," drawing from the editor of 
 one of them, F. Sales, a letter expressing his 
 "ineffable pleasure " at reading so .masterly a 
 review. All is high-bred and scholarly, but of 
 criticism, strictly speaking, the essay is blame 
 less. Lowell was able, for his address to work- 
 ingmen, to draw from his scribblings on the 
 margin of his own " Don Quixote " shrewder 
 remarks and more illuminating comments than 
 were dreamed of in Prescott s philosophy. In 
 the later writer we see, what we do not in the 
 earlier, learning subordinated to interpreta 
 tion, and a creative work followed sympatheti 
 cally by a creative mind. Prescott was prima 
 rily an historian ; and luckily it could not be 
 said of him, as it has been of no less a man 
 
70 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 than Sainte-Beuve, that he was a writer sui 
 cide en critique. 
 
 Along with these minor writings of Prescott 
 may be conveniently grouped his " Life of 
 Charles Brockden Brown " and his " Memoir 
 of John Pickering." The former he undertook 
 for the collection of American biographies 
 edited by Jared Sparks. It was a slight but 
 graceful bit of writing, which much exagger 
 ates the merits of Brown, as Prescott himself, 
 later in life, was the first to acknowledge. His 
 private record shows the speed with which the 
 work was done, and the author s view of it at 
 the time. 
 
 July 14, 1833. " Began to write on Brown s 
 life at Nahant." 
 
 July 29, 1833. "Finished Brown s Life 
 and Writings. Written at the rate of between 
 3 and 4 noctographs per day. I am afraid 
 it will verify the proverb of easy writing, 
 etc. The subject proved not at all to my 
 taste. ... I could not have finished one of 
 his novels unless as a job." 
 
 However, his editor was satisfied, witness 
 the following letter : 
 
BEGINNINGS 71 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, August 9, 1833. 
 DEAR PRESCOTT, The Life has come to 
 hand, and I have read it with great pleasure 
 and perfect satisfaction on all accounts. It is 
 just the thing it should be, and you need not 
 fear to put your name to it. As a literary 
 criticism upon Brown s genius and writings, it 
 is beautiful, spirited, and graphic. There is 
 nothing wanting but more biographical inci 
 dents and personal traits. These are not to be 
 created, and if there were none to be found, 
 why, there was an end of the matter. I can 
 not think that Brown s friends will not be 
 pleased with your representation. If not, they 
 will be more unreasonable than is to be ex 
 pected. . . . All your dates are 1493> etc. 
 This shows that your mind was running on 
 the age of Ferdinand and Isabella. Go on 
 and prosper, and believe me, with kind remem 
 brances and regards to your family, 
 
 As ever your sincere friend, 
 
 JARED SPARKS. 
 
 The memoir of Pickering was undertaken 
 at the request of the Massachusetts Historical 
 
72 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 Society, in whose collections (Third Series, 
 Vol. X) it is to be found. It was a brief 
 sketch of a friend who deserved commemora 
 tion for scholarly attainments and a quietly 
 useful life. " It will not be long," wrote Pres- 
 cott of this undertaking, " but, long or short, 
 it will be a labor of love ; for there is no man 
 whom I honored more. . . . He was a true 
 and kind friend to me ; and, from the first 
 moment of my entering on my historic career 
 down to the close of his life, he watched over 
 my literary attempts with the deepest interest. 
 It will be a sad pleasure for me to pay an 
 honest tribute to the good man s worth." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE QUEST OF A THEME 
 
 PRESCOTT S bent towards historical writing 
 declared itself strongly very soon after his loss 
 of sight compelled him to abandon the law. 
 One letter of his notes a tendency to histori 
 cal studies perceptible in 1819. " A man," 
 he wrote, " must find something to do," and 
 to the writing of history he turned as by a 
 deep and sure instinct. In a letter to Dr. 
 Rufus Ellis, dated June 1, 1857, he said: "I 
 had early conceived a strong passion for his 
 torical writing, to which, perhaps, the reading 
 of Gibbon s Autobiography contributed 
 not a little. I proposed to make myself an his 
 torian in the best sense of the term." It was 
 long, however, before he found the subject truly 
 adapted to his ambition and his powers. His 
 search for it is minutely recorded in his jour 
 nal, during all his years of preparatory study. 
 
74 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 An early entry took a broad survey of pos 
 sible 
 
 "SUBJECTS FOR COMPOSITION." 
 
 " I. Autobiography, a la Alfieri [this was 
 later struck through with his pen] . 
 
 " II. Parallel between the Greek Demigods 
 and Heroes of Chivalry. 
 
 " III. Comparison between the literatures of 
 different nations. 
 
 " IV. Defense of any authors or species of 
 composition in the English tongue against 
 any foreign critics who may have impugned 
 them." 
 
 [A dozen others of the kind ending with] 
 
 "XVI. CuiBono?" 
 
 Soon his scope was narrowed, at the same 
 tune that the intensity of his researches was 
 heightened. All that is necessary is to trace 
 the trail as he has blazed it. About 1822 he 
 wrote : 
 
 "It is not rash, in the dearth of a well- 
 written American history, to entertain the 
 hope of throwing light upon this matter 
 especially with the rich materials which are 
 now buried in pedantic lumber and foreign 
 
THE QUEST OF A THEME 75 
 
 languages in the Ebeling collection. But it 
 requires time, and a long time, before the 
 mind can be prepared for this department of 
 writing." 
 
 There speaks Prescott s passion for thor 
 oughly documenting himself. It never left 
 him. And he took time. 
 
 October 16, 1825. "I have been so hesi 
 tating and reflecting upon what I shall do that 
 I have, in fact, done nothing. I have looked 
 into one or two pamphlets : into Schlegel s 
 < Histoire du XVIII Siecle. " 
 
 October 30, 1825. " I have passed the last 
 fortnight in examination of a suitable subject 
 for historical composition, looking over cata 
 logues, references, etc. It is well to determine 
 with caution and accurate inspection." 
 
 Soon he began to hear Spain calling. By 
 Christmas of the same year he was writ 
 ing :- 
 
 " I have been hesitating between two topics 
 for historical investigation Spanish history 
 from the invasion of the Arabs to the consoli 
 dation of the monarchy under Charles V, or 
 a history of the revolution of ancient Kome, 
 
76 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 which converted the republic into an empire. 
 A third subject which invites me is a bio 
 graphical sketch of eminent geniuses, with 
 criticisms on their productions and on the 
 character of their age. I shall probably select 
 the first, as less difficult of execution than the 
 second, and as more novel and entertaining than 
 the last." 
 
 But the full spell of the Peninsula was not 
 yet upon him. He wavered and deliberated 
 afresh. This he did not mind. "I care not 
 how long a time I take for it, provided I am 
 diligent all that time." Again he canvassed 
 the Eoman theme. But on January 1, 1826, 
 he wrote : 
 
 " The great and learned Niebuhr has been 
 employed these dozen years upon it. ... 
 Shall I beat the bushes after this? I have 
 not quite decided, but I think not." 
 
 January 8, 1826. " I have decided to aban 
 don the Roman subject." 
 
 Under the same date he recorded : 
 
 " A work on the revolutions of Italian lit 
 erature has invited my consideration this 
 week. ... It would not be new after the 
 
THE QUEST OF A THEME 77 
 
 production of Sismondi and the abundant 
 notices in modern Reviews. Literary history 
 is not so amusing as civil. Cannot I contrive 
 to embrace the gist of the Spanish subject 
 without involving myself in the unwieldy, bar 
 barous records of a thousand years ? What 
 new and interesting topics may be admitted 
 not forced into the reigns of Ferdinand 
 and Isabella? ... A Biography will make 
 me responsible for a limited space only ; will 
 require much less reading (a great considera 
 tion with me) ; will offer the deeper interest 
 which always attaches to minute developments 
 of character, and a continuous, closely con 
 nected narrative. . . . The age of Ferdinand 
 is most important as containing the germs of 
 the modern system of European politics. . . . 
 It is in every respect an interesting and mo 
 mentous period of history ; the materials am 
 ple, authentic, I will chew upon this matter, 
 and decide this week." 
 
 More than twenty years later, a penciled 
 note on the foregoing passage ran, " This was 
 the first germ of my conception of Ferdinand 
 and Isabella." He was now hot on the scent. 
 
78 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 Yet he made further faults. On January 15, 
 1826, lie was " still doubting." He thought 
 the Italian subject had " some advantages over 
 the Spanish." He had the matter better in 
 hand. He had fleshed his pen upon it already. 
 His " capacity for doing justice to the other 
 subject" he questioned. Still "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." He would 
 need a " preliminary year " of investigation to 
 make sure of his ground, but " on the whole, 
 the inconvenience of that was overbalanced by 
 the advantages of the Spanish topic." 
 
 Consequently, on January 19, 1826, Pres- 
 cott wrote, " I subscribe to the History of the 
 Keign of Ferdinand and Isabella. " Over 
 against this entry he set, in 1847, the note, 
 " A fortunate choice." 
 
 But it had many times to be renewed and 
 confirmed, after repeated vacillation. Almost 
 at the beginning of plans for amassing mate 
 rial and laying out his campaign, he was smit 
 ten with an access of inflammation in his eye, 
 
THE QUEST OF A THEME 79 
 
 and for four months had to pass all his time 
 in a dark room. But his resolution was not 
 shaken. He had himself read to from four to 
 six hours a day by his secretary. " Traveling 
 with this lame gait, I may yet hope in five 
 or six years to reach the goal." But a little 
 later hesitation reappears. On October 1, he 
 wrote : 
 
 " 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 post 
 pone my Spanish subject, and to occupy my 
 self with an Historical Survey of English 
 Literature. The subject has never been dis 
 cussed as a whole, and therefore would be 
 somewhat new, and, if well conducted, popu 
 lar. 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 analo 
 gies 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 
 
80 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 extremely difficult in any foreign language. 
 Faustum sit." 
 
 It required, however, only five weeks of re 
 connoitring the new fortress to convince him 
 that the old one was his true point of attack. 
 The record for November 5, 1826, is, " I have 
 again, and I trust finally, determined to prose 
 cute my former subject, the Reign of Ferdi 
 nand and Isabella." 
 
 But the last doubt was not yet vanquished. 
 As late as June 7, 1828, 1 find this record : 
 
 " Renewed studies in Italian literature make 
 me hesitate whether I should not prefer it as 
 a matter of history to the Spanish subject 
 which I had already chosen." 
 
 In two weeks the pendulum had swung back 
 again : 
 
 June 22. " I confirm my previous decision. 
 . . . Shame on my doubtings, delays, and 
 idleness ! " 
 
 At last, 
 
 July 3, 1828. " Finally, for the hundredth 
 time, after a full and accurate reflection on the 
 whole matter, I confirm my preference and 
 choice of the Spanish subject." 
 
THE QUEST OF A THEME 81 
 
 After that date, no trace of relaxed purpose 
 is to be found. To use one of Prescott s favor 
 ite quotations, 
 
 " Rapido ma rapido con leggi," 
 
 he thereafter pressed on with the ten years of 
 labor which went to the making of " Ferdinand 
 and Isabella." 
 
 At this point may be most conveniently 
 mentioned several literary projects which Pres- 
 cott, in later years, was urged to take up, but 
 all of which he declined. 
 
 Richard Ford, writing to Sumner, July 1, 
 1839, after telling him that he might " well 
 be proud of your countryman " for his " Ferdi 
 nand and Isabella," " this accession to Eng 
 lish literature, " added : 
 
 " I have ventured to suggest to him a new 
 subject, an inquiry into the condition of the 
 middle classes and people of Spain from the 
 fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. He is, 
 I conceive, admirably calculated to undertake 
 this interesting theme ; I know no modern au 
 thor of greater perseverance, research, and ac 
 curacy, nor one possessing his talent of placing 
 facts agreeably and truly before his reader." 
 
82 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 On June 20, 1844, Benjamin F. French, of 
 New Orleans, addressed a letter to Prescott, 
 urging him to write the history of Louisiana. 
 The attraction of the subject, and its relation 
 to Prescott s own field, were duly set forth, 
 together with an offer to put the writer s col 
 lection of material including some rare 
 works at the historian s disposal. 
 
 Professor Moses Stuart of Andover sent 
 Prescott a complimentary, yet discriminating, 
 letter, praising his history as having " all the 
 ease and grace and pleasant flow of Hume 
 without Jris shallowness ; and all the depth and 
 accuracy and thoroughness of Gibbon without 
 his periodical swell and buskined gait," and 
 earnestly advising him to take up some part 
 of the history of his own country, or even of 
 Massachusetts alone, for his next work. 
 
 Prescott s most tempting offer of the sort 
 came to him in 1848. It was a proposal that 
 he should write the history of the second Con 
 quest of Mexico, that by General Scott in 
 1847. In his journal for July 25, 1848, he 
 noted the receipt of a letter from Charles King 
 of New York making the suggestion on behalf 
 
THE QUEST OF A THEME 83 
 
 of General Scott, "offering me all his own 
 papers, etc." But he declined. " The theme 
 would be taking ; but I had rather not meddle 
 with heroes who have not been underground 
 two centuries at least." As he later wrote to 
 Ticknor, " I belong to the sixteenth century, 
 and am quite out of place when I sleep else 
 where." With rare fidelity to his resolution 
 once made, or possibly with a more accurate 
 measure of his own powers than his corre 
 spondents had, he refused to be drawn aside. 
 Invitations to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa 
 address at Harvard, or to read a paper before 
 the National Institute at Washington, were 
 declined. In self-imposed limitation the master 
 displayed himself. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 "FERDINAND AND ISABELLA" 
 
 THE task in hours of insight willed was ful 
 filled in years of unhasting, unresting toil. 
 " Completed the corrections and arrangement," 
 was the record in the diary of October 26, 
 1836. " Thus ends the labor of ten years, for 
 I have been occupied with it ... since the 
 summer of 1826." But publishing was still 
 deferred. " Ferdinand and Isabella " appeared 
 at Christmas, 1837, with the year 1838 on the 
 title-page. Indeed, Prescott was almost indif 
 ferent to publishing at all. He seems to have 
 been stung to it by a remark of his father s. 
 " The man," said Judge Prescott, " who writes 
 a book which he is afraid to publish is a cow 
 ard." That was a challenge to fighting blood. 
 Thereafter let the presses beware. The histo 
 rian had before set down for his own eye 
 another motive for publication. " It is a satis 
 factory evidence to my mind," was the entry 
 
FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 85 
 
 of June 26, 1836, "of my moderate anticipa 
 tions . . . that I feel not only no desire but a 
 reluctance to publish, and should probably keep 
 it by me for emendations and additions at 
 my leisure, were it not for the belief that the 
 ground would be more or less occupied in the 
 meantime by abler writers. I hear already of 
 Southey s preparation for a history of the 
 Spanish Arabs, and it warns me not to defer 
 my own publication." 
 
 Further citations from his reflections of the 
 same date show how he fared through his long 
 work, and how he profited by it. 
 
 " 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 medi 
 tations, 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, 
 
86 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 since they afford all the variety of pursuing a 
 chain of facts to unforeseen consequences, of 
 comparing doubtful and contradictory testi 
 mony, of picturesque delineations of incident, 
 and of analysis and dramatic exhibition of 
 character. The plain narrative may be some- 
 tunes relieved by general views or critical dis 
 cussions, and the story and the actors, as they 
 grow under the hands, acquire constantly addi 
 tional interest. It may seem dreary work to 
 plod through barbarous old manuscript chron 
 icles 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 
 
FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 87 
 
 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 sup 
 pose 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 unexplored and important pe 
 riod, 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 some one 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 pos 
 sessed of this conviction from experience," 
 
88 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 It had been no holiday task. At its end, 
 Prescott breathed like a spent swimmer reach 
 ing shore : 
 
 " The discouragements under which I have 
 labored have nearly determined me, more than 
 once, to abandon the enterprise. ... I be 
 gan with teaching a reader to pronounce the 
 Spanish so that I could comprehend him, and 
 in this way went through several quartos, of 
 which my reader himself understood no more 
 than he did of the Chaldaic. ... I have been 
 about seven years and a half. . . . Had I 
 possessed the industrious habits of a Southey 
 or Sparks ... I could have accomplished 
 the work in much less time. But I was neither 
 driven by necessity nor ambition to extra exer 
 tions, writing, as the old Fortiguerra says, 
 
 Per fuggir ozio, 4 non per cercar gloria. " 
 
 The three stout volumes were published by 
 the American Stationer s Company of Boston. 
 The contract was practically at author s risk. 
 A simultaneous London edition was desired by 
 Prescott. But for a time his efforts to secure 
 an English publisher were in vain. In that 
 
FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 89 
 
 respect, the fate of " Ferdinand and Isabella " 
 threatened to become another example for the 
 encouragement of the rejected. Murray per 
 emptorily declined the work. Longman took " 
 time to look at it, but likewise refused in the 
 end. Prescott was mortified and despairing. 
 But his indefatigable friend, Colonel Aspin- 
 wall, persisted, and finally made an arrangement 
 with Bentley. The history was to be elegantly 
 printed, " with engravings, vignettes, etc.," and 
 profits were to be divided. Prescott s chagrin 
 changed to joy, and he wrote to Ticknor : 
 
 " 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 exer 
 tions 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." 
 
 While on the material side of " Ferdinand 
 and Isabella," it will be of both personal and 
 historical interest to give Prescott s own ac 
 count of the technical and pecuniary aspects of 
 
90 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 his publishing venture. The minute analysis 
 which he made of the whole affair reveals a 
 practical talent which few would suspect in 
 him. Evidently, if he had not been a famous 
 historian, he could have been a successful busi 
 ness man. Here is the proof : 
 
 " REMARKS ON THE PRINTING AND PUBLICATION OF 
 FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. " 
 
 " I wiU now [April 30, 1838] give an ac 
 count of my arrangements for the publication 
 of my history. In the first place I had the 
 manuscript printed here by Dickinson, four 
 copies only, for myself. 
 
 First part 831 pages Cost $187.84 
 
 Second " 807 " & 16 pp. contents " 228.01 
 Notes of last chapter & reprint P. I. 
 
 Chap.l 40.25 
 
 $456.10 
 An expense I shall never incur again. 
 
 The cost of the whole stands thus : 
 
 Paid to Folsom, Wells and Thiirston for 
 
 plates, extra corrections included $2143.90 
 " Andrews for one engraving . . 400. 
 
 " Stone " two " . . . . 160. 
 
 " Sibley " making index . . . 100. 
 
 $2803.90 
 
FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 91 
 
 If to these I add : 
 
 Paid Flagg for portrait of Isabella for 
 
 Andrews 40. 
 
 " Dickinson for first printed copy . 456. 
 
 Finally for cost Spanish books and MS. 1200. 
 
 $4499.90 
 
 " Of this, $1000 for Spanish works was 
 defrayed by my father, so that I was out of 
 pocket, by the expenses of publication $ 3500. 
 
 " Remarks. I never regarded the cost of the 
 affair, for I should not have selected such a 
 topic with the idea of making money. But, as 
 I have gained some experience ... I shall 
 note a few hints for my future government." 
 There follow pages of minute analysis, worthy 
 a book publisher. " One cost I shall never 
 count i. e., reasonably speaking the cost 
 of original and authentic materials." " Such 
 sort of works as I shall be likely hereafter to 
 turn out not works of great and various re 
 search." Penciled . margin : " Perhaps I may. 
 In which case I have cramped too close." 
 
 " But, after all, although I note down these 
 estimates that, in my future calculations and 
 bargains I may have something to guide me 
 
92 WILLIAM H1CKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 with the slippery trade, yet I trust I shall 
 never make the profit the main object ; and 
 never put my name to a work which I have 
 not made as good as I can make it, coute que 
 coute. 
 
 " Well, now for the result in America and 
 England thus far. My work appeared here on 
 the 25 th of December, 1837. Its birth had 
 been prepared for by the favorable opinions, 
 en avance, of the few friends who in its pro 
 gress through the press had seen it. It was 
 corrected previously as to style, etc., 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 had previously suggested 
 throwing the introductory Section 2 on Ara- 
 gon into its present place, it first having occu 
 pied the place after Chapter III. The work 
 was indefatigably corrected, and the references 
 most elaborately and systematically prepared 
 by Folsom. . . . 
 
 " From the time of its appearance to the pre 
 sent date, it has been the subject of notices, 
 more or less elaborate, in the principal re- 
 
FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 93 
 
 views and periodicals of the country, and in the 
 mass of criticism I have not met with one un 
 kind, or sarcastic, or censorious sentence ; and 
 my critics have been of all sorts, from stiff 
 conservatives to leveling loco-focos. Much of 
 all this success is to be attributed to the influ 
 ence and exertions of personal friends, much 
 to the beautiful dress and mechanical execu 
 tion of the book, and much to the novelty, 
 in our country, of a work of research in vari 
 ous 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 auspi 
 cious aspect so far. The weekly periodicals 
 the lesser lights of criticism contain the 
 most ample commendations on the book ; sev 
 eral of the articles being written with spirit 
 
94 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 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 ssven 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, and I 
 may hope the book has got such headway in 
 the good opinion of the public that should an 
 ugly squall strike it from one of the John Bull 
 reviews of larger growth, it may be able to 
 weather it." 
 
 " Well, for several days the binder was un 
 able to do his work fast enough, and the vol 
 umes were taken off as fast as they were 
 delivered to the good-natured public. In short, 
 three fifths of the edition of 500 copies were 
 sold in Boston before a copy could be sent to 
 New York. The whole edition was exhausted 
 in five weeks. Since that another impression 
 
FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 95 
 
 of 200 has been so rapidly disposed of that 
 the market has been left bare, and has con 
 tinued bare till the last week, for now more 
 than a month, to the serious detriment of my 
 pocket. A new edition has appeared this 
 week. . . . The book . . . will now be dis 
 tributed more extensively." 
 
 May 23, 1838. " Before leaving Boston I 
 concluded a bargain with Little and Brown 
 I agreed to sell them 1700 copies of the His 
 tory at $1.75 a copy. They are to have five 
 years and a half to dispose of them ; there 
 being about 400 copies remaining on hand, 
 at the time of making the contract, of those 
 bought of the Stationer s Company. By this 
 bargain I receive $3000, in addition to the 
 $1000 before received, within six years from 
 the publication." 
 
 It is no part of the writer s plan to under 
 take epitomes or appreciations of Prescott s 
 books. That would be to fall into the one lit 
 erary fault which a modern reader might find 
 in " Ferdinand and Isabella " prolixity. Its 
 style partook of the leisurely spirit of the 
 author s day. Prescott was a " gentleman of 
 
96 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 letters," as Theodore Parker called him, " a 
 well-bred gentleman of letters," and rapidity 
 of movement was not then thought to go well 
 with the grand manner. Seldom does one en 
 counter an absolutely stilted passage in " Fer 
 dinand and Isabella," but elegance of diction 
 frequently becomes oppressive ; and elaborate 
 comparisons such as that of Isabella with 
 Queen Elizabeth are pushed with a dire 
 thoroughness upon which no writer would 
 to-day venture. Yet the narrative bears re-read 
 ing wonderfully well, of so sustained an inter 
 est is it, so high-bred is the spirit which ani 
 mates it, so sound and wide the scholarship. 
 Theodore Parker, with his habit of brandishing 
 " the whole tree of knowledge torn up by the 
 roots," had a searching review of " Ferdinand 
 and Isabella " in the " Massachusetts Quar 
 terly " (II, p. 215), yet he did not impugn Pres- 
 cott s learning. A later critic, Mr. Justin Win- 
 sor, made the somewhat ill-natured remark that 
 Prescott thought of " composing history to be 
 read as a pastime, rather than as of a study 
 of completed truth." But the only specifica 
 tions made are not happy. Look, said Mr. 
 
FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 97 
 
 Winsor, at Prescott s absurd contention that 
 it is difficult to find " a single blemish " in the 
 moral character of Columbus. This is harshly 
 characterized as " flagrant disregard of the 
 truth." Yet, as a matter of fact, no one has 
 more clearly pointed out Columbus s " blem 
 ishes " he uses the very word than Pres- 
 <jott. He was so explicit about them that he 
 felt compelled to put in the disclaimer, "I 
 trust these remarks will not be construed into 
 an insensibility to the merits and exalted ser 
 vices of Columbus " (II, p. 481). And as for 
 Mr. Winsor s charge that Prescott was ready 
 to " disguise the truth " in the interest of 
 " hero-worship," what better refutation could 
 there be than the historian s frankness con 
 cerning his real hero, Gronsalvo de Cordoba ? 
 It was in summing up the character of that 
 extraordinary man that Prescott wrote : " His 
 tory has no warrant to tamper with right and 
 wrong, or to brighten the character of its 
 favorites by diminishing one shade of the ab 
 horrence which attaches to their vices." Pres 
 cott s love of truth was a part of his thorough 
 ness. On his death it was said of him by one 
 
98 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 most competent to speak, Jared Sparks, " I 
 know of no historian, in any age or language, 
 whose researches into the materials with which 
 he was to work have been so extensive, thor 
 ough, and profound as those of Mr. Prescott." 
 This it was that won for " Ferdinand and Isa 
 bella " the instant recognition of scholars the 
 world over. Nor can that be taken as the fond 
 exaggeration of an outgrown erudition. Thirty- 
 six years later, the most scholarly review of 
 America, calling up Prescott for readjudica- 
 tion, apropos of a new edition of his works, 
 said that " notwithstanding the great advance 
 of historical science, his works well maintain 
 their high rank and reputation." Their author 
 " knew all that was to be known upon the sub 
 ject which he selected to write upon. . . . His 
 writings . . . may well count upon a perma 
 nent rank in historical literature. . . . He is 
 no Thucydides, or Gibbon, or Mommsen, or 
 Ranke ; but, giving all credit to the historians 
 who have done honor to our literature since 
 his day, it is not too much to say that he still 
 stands at the head." (" The Nation," XVIII, 
 pp. 252, 253.) 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 AWAKING FAMOUS 
 
 " LOVE of the author gave the first impetus. 
 The extraordinary merits of the work did all 
 the rest." So wrote Prescott s friend and con 
 fidant, Gardiner, in accounting for the bril 
 liant bookselling success won by " Ferdinand 
 and Isabella." No work of serious scholarship 
 had ever been in such demand in America. 
 No American historian had before attained 
 such acclaim from the judicious in Europe. 
 As Gardiner said, the fame of the author be 
 gan in Boston, where he had been chiefly 
 known as a social favorite. His personal pop 
 ularity was unbounded, though his literary 
 labors had been known to but a few of his 
 intimate friends. Ticknor believed that not 
 more than two persons outside the Prescott 
 family were aware that he was writing " Fer 
 dinand and Isabella " until it was nearly com 
 pleted. The journal early betrayed the secre- 
 
100 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 tive habit. " Nor shall any one else if I can 
 help it, know that I am writing." Hence it 
 could happen that even a near relative, whom 
 he was in the habit of meeting weekly, once 
 urged him to undertake some serious pursuit, 
 as a means both of happiness and social re 
 pute ! At the moment he had spent eight 
 years on his first great work. One is reminded 
 of the nurse who thought Darwin s health 
 would be better if he only had something to 
 occupy his mind. All the greater, however, 
 the stir in Prescott s circle when the book 
 finally came out. Its appearance was a society 
 "event." There was a rush to secure early 
 copies. " A convivial friend," writes Gardi 
 ner, " who was far from being a man of let 
 ters, 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." The 
 work became the fashionable Christmas pre 
 sent of the season. Such a thing it was, as 
 Prescott wrote, to have the advantage of the 
 " exertions of those whom I have thought and 
 now find to be friends." 
 
AWAKING FAMOUS 101 
 
 By all this sudden blaze of popularity and 
 even fame the author s head was not turned. 
 Prescott was, in fact, always singularly well 
 poised in the matter of praise. He valued it ; 
 he was pleased by it ; but he never allowed it 
 to make him forget his own standards. His 
 letter to his friend Ticknor, ten days after 
 " Ferdinand and Isabella " was published, 
 shows how he took success, as he would un 
 doubtedly have taken failure, with a quiet 
 mind : 
 
 " Their Catholic Highnesses have just been 
 ushered into the world in three royal octavos. 
 The bantling appeared on a Christmas morn 
 ing, and certainly has not fallen still-born, but 
 is alive and kicking merrily. How long its 
 life may last is another question. Within the 
 first ten days half the first edition of five hun 
 dred copies (for the publishers were afraid to 
 risk a larger one for our market) has been dis 
 posed of, and they are now making prepara 
 tions 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. . . . 
 
102 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 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 6f 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 sub 
 ject 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 re 
 member, called fungum popularitatem has 
 been rather to depress me, and S was say 
 ing 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 
 
AWAKING FAMOUS 103 
 
 critics can do, the difficulty of doing justice to 
 my subject, and the immeasurable distance be 
 tween me and the models with which they have 
 been pleased to compare me. ... A favor 
 able notice in a Parisian journal of respecta 
 bility would be worth a good deal. But, after 
 all, my market and my reputation rest princi 
 pally 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 jour 
 nals, 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 criti 
 cism 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 High 
 nesses." 
 
 An entry in the journal of December 25, 
 1838, one year after the publication of 
 
104 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 "Ferdinand and Isabella," reveals the his 
 torian s sanity as well as could pages : 
 
 " Dr. Channing (the Dr. that preaches, not 
 he that practises) said last evening It [" Fer 
 dinand and Isabella"] has been received by 
 acclamation. Yet I am not such an ass as not 
 to know that fires which blaze up the quickest 
 are soonest out. But if I be an ass of an histo 
 rian, the public are greater asses to have en 
 dorsed me that s some comfort." 
 
 European recognition came swift and full. 
 This was naturally more gratifying to Prescott 
 than the acclamation of personal friends, or 
 acknowledgments possibly dictated by patri 
 otic prejudice. As the historian privately 
 noted at a later date : " These tributes from 
 another quarter of the world, without the bias 
 of national partiality, come like the voice of 
 posterity, not to be bribed or bought." Many 
 details are given by Ticknor of the immediate 
 admission of Prescott to the company of Euro 
 pean scholars. The English reviews gave their 
 prompt applause. Hallam, Milman, Ford were 
 enthusiastic. Nor were continental savants 
 backward in offering their suffrages. By 
 
AWAKING FAMOUS 105 
 
 printed review and private letters the latter 
 leading in some cases, to friendly correspond 
 ence long sustained they hailed Prescott as 
 an equal in learning. The Comte de Cir- 
 court, Sismondi, Tocqueville, Humboldt (later), 
 Thierry, pressed forward with their compli men ts. 
 Learned societies showered their membership 
 upon him. The total of these, American and 
 foreign, is, as I reckon from the somewhat 
 confused data accessible, thirty-three. In his 
 private note on two of them, the Royal 
 Society of Literature, London, and the Eng 
 lish Society of Antiquaries, Prescott wrote : 
 " The first I share with Bancroft the last 
 with no other Yankee." 
 
 To round out this account of Prescott s 
 European fame, may be conveniently grouped 
 here letters which came in the course of sev 
 eral years after "Ferdinand and Isabella." 
 They are additional to those printed by Tick- 
 nor. Let this from Hallam lead off : 
 
 WIMPOLE STREET, LONDON, 
 
 June 1, 1838. 
 
 DEAR SIR, I avail myself of the return 
 of our acquaintance, Mr. Ticknor, to America, 
 
106 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 a circumstance which in itself I regret, to 
 thank you for the very obliging present I re 
 ceived through his hands of your valuable 
 history of " Ferdinand and Isabella." It does 
 much honour to your research, taste, and judg 
 ment, and reflects credit on the literature of 
 your native country. The period of history is 
 so important and interesting that I expect 
 your work to acquire by degrees a classical 
 reputation. It is well spoken of by those who 
 have read it here, but a book published in a 
 foreign country, though there may be an Eng 
 lish edition of it, does not make its way very 
 rapidly. 
 
 I am glad to hear from Mr. Ticknor that 
 your eyesight is so much restored as to give 
 us hope of fresh labors in the vineyard of 
 letters. 
 
 Believe me, Dear Sir, 
 Your much obliged and faithful servant, 
 
 HENRY HALLAM. 
 
 "This," noted Prescott, "is gratifying 
 enough from one at the head of the craft, and 
 a writer whom Sir J. Mackintosh notices as 
 
AWAKING FAMOUS 107 
 
 singularly parsimonious of his commendation. 
 Gibbon says in his Memoirs, A letter from 
 Mr. Hume overpaid the labors of ten years. 
 Without such extravagance, I may truly say, 
 no letter that I ever received in reference to 
 my writings has given me more satisfaction. 
 It is one of the rewards of the scholar, and no 
 mean one." 
 
 Prescott s intimacy with Sumner will be 
 dwelt on in another connection. When abroad 
 in 1839, the latter acted as a kind of purveyor 
 of praise to his friend Prescott, by means of 
 letters to George S. Hillard. 
 
 For example : 
 
 December 25, 1838. 
 
 I believe I mentioned to you that Mr. 
 Elphinstone praised Prescott s work extrava 
 gantly. He is called the cleverest man in Eng 
 land, and has twice refused the Governor- 
 Generalship of India. He is a delightful 
 person. 
 
 January 6, 1839. 
 
 You will read the article on Prescott in the 
 " Edinburgh." It is written by somebody who 
 
108 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 understands the subject, and who praises with 
 great discrimination. Some of my friends sup 
 pose it was done by John Allen, the friend of 
 Lord Holland. Mr. Hallam, however, thought 
 it was not by him but by a Spaniard who is in 
 England. I shall undoubtedly be able to let 
 you know by my next letter. Mr. Ford, the 
 writer of the Spanish articles in the " Quar 
 terly," has undertaken to review Prescott s 
 book for that journal. Whether his article will 
 be ready for the next number I cannot tell. 
 Prescott ought to be happy in his honorable 
 fame. I do not go anywhere that I do not hear 
 him spoken of. His publisher, Bentley, is 
 about to publish a second edition in two vol 
 umes, and he told me that he regarded the 
 work as the most important he had ever pub 
 lished, and as one which would carry his 
 humble name to posterity. Think of Bentley 
 astride of the shoulders of Prescott on the 
 journey to posterity ! Milman told me that he 
 thought it the greatest work that had yet pro 
 ceeded from America. Mr. Wishaw, who is 
 now blind and who was the bosom friend of 
 Sir Samuel Romilly, has had it read to him, 
 
AWAKING FAMOUS 109 
 
 and says that Lord Holland calls it the most 
 important historical work since Gibbon. I 
 have heard Hallam speak of it repeatedly, and 
 Harness and Rogers and a great many others 
 I might mention if I had more time and I 
 thought you had more patience. 
 
 In a letter of Simmer s to Dr. Palfrey in 
 Cambridge, we read : 
 
 " Prescott has by one step taken his place 
 at the head of American literature. He has 
 had the best kind of success. His work has 
 been read by all the best educated people in 
 England. I have seen it in the halls of the 
 nobility and on the tables and shelves of liter 
 ary men. His name is already known as Rob 
 ertson s and Hallam s. I think no historical 
 work has ever so soon succeeded in England 
 before." 
 
 Prescott comments on the above in his jour 
 nal: 
 
 "With the most liberal allowance for the 
 obvious though, of course, unintentional 
 over-statement, there remains enough to show 
 that the work has been received with a degree 
 
 itf}" 
 
 or -H 
 
110 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 of favor by the British public which I cer 
 tainly neither did nor could have had any right 
 to anticipate." 
 
 Miss Edgeworth early conceived a great 
 admiration for Prescoto. She wrote to Mrs. 
 Ticknor : 
 
 August 23, 1844. 
 
 . . . Prescott s "History of Mexico" -I 
 am charmed with it; so much so that after 
 having read it to myself when I was recovering 
 from illness, I begged to hear it read over 
 again as soon as I had finished it, that I might 
 reenjoy the pleasure and the super-added of 
 the effect on all my family. 
 
 Under date of September 20, 1844, Mr. 
 W. B. Sprague sends to Prescott an extract 
 from a letter he had just received from Maria 
 Edgeworth : 
 
 " I have said nothing of the books we have 
 been reading I should have told you that we 
 have been reading Prescott s Conquest of 
 Mexico, the, most interesting book I have 
 seen this century." 
 
 A later letter came direct : 
 
AWAKING FAMOUS 111 
 
 EDGEWORTHS TOWN, August 25, 1845. 
 
 With feelings of the greatest respect and 
 admiration for Mr. Prescott s talents and char 
 acter I take the liberty of writing to him 
 though I am personally a stranger. 
 
 I inclose to him a catalogue and account of 
 a series of Spanish pictures, the subjects taken 
 from the Mexican Conquest. The pictures are 
 now in the possession of Mr. Chohnley, a 
 Yorkshire gentleman, who is proud of them as 
 curiosities, but knows nothing about them, and 
 having no literary taste, has made no inquiry 
 and does not care to make any: but would 
 have no objection, his friends think, to having 
 them shown, or to have copies or engravings 
 taken from them. The account inclosed was 
 partly quoted from Robertson, partly written 
 by a lady who, at the request of a friend of 
 ours, made inquiries about these pictures for 
 me. Though you must [be] better acquainted 
 than she or we are with all Robertson says, 
 yet I send the extracts she has made from 
 him, as they will bring all the subject to 
 gether before your eye. The extracts from 
 Robertson are marked with quotation the 
 
112 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 lady s own notes are not marked as quota 
 tions. 
 
 I inclose (to save myself the time of copy 
 ing, as I am much hurried at this moment) 
 some scraps of notes which contain all the 
 little information we have been able to col 
 lect about these pictures and the manner in 
 which they came into Mr. Cholmley s posses 
 sion. 
 
 I have a recollection of your mentioning in 
 your history of the " Conquest of Mexico " the 
 capture of a ship carrying over pictures among 
 other valuables of Europe either to Spain 
 or France but I have looked for the passage 
 in vain. 
 
 Dear Mr. Prescott, I am afraid that I am 
 taking up your most valuable time with what 
 may not be interesting or intelligible to you 
 from the imperfect information I send. But 
 you will, I am sure, from your amiable temper 
 (with which I am, from our dear friends the 
 Ticknors, perfectly acquainted) give me credit 
 for my motive and believe in my sincere 
 wish to do anything in my power to oblige you 
 or to give you the least pleasure in return for 
 
AWAKING FAMOUS 113 
 
 the great quantity of delightful pleasure and 
 information you have given me. 
 Believe me, dear Mr. Prescott, 
 
 Your obliged and grateful, 
 
 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 After this place, aux dames, and in order to 
 end the chapter with masculine learning 
 Teuton at that take this from Von Rau- 
 mer : 
 
 "You have, despite the trouble with your 
 eyes, finished three masterpieces. . . . 
 
 " Baron Humboldt, whose mind remains ever 
 fresh and youthful, sends you his greetings, as 
 do many other ladies and gentlemen unknown 
 to you." 
 
 This was the same man of whom Prescott 
 wrote in his journal, September 15, 1844 : - 
 
 " Dragged to town two days since to see 
 Von Raumer. Neither Von nor Don shall start 
 me again." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE MAN OF LETTERS 
 
 RICHARD FORD S review of "Ferdinand and 
 Isabella " in the " Quarterly " contained a little 
 playful sarcasm at the expense of Prescott s 
 style. This, wrote Sir William Stirling, in his 
 article in " Fraser " entitled " In Memoriam," 
 "Prescott confessed to us that he did not 
 much like." He had not forgotten to scruti 
 nize his own style, witness the entry in his 
 diary : 
 
 February 13, 1830. "Mem. Two or three 
 faults of style occur to me on looking over 
 some former compositions too many adjec 
 tives; too many couplets of substantives as 
 well as of adjectives and perhaps of verbs ; too 
 set sentences too much in the same mould ; 
 too many precise emphatic pronouns, as these, 
 those, which, etc., instead of the particles the, 
 a, etc. ; occasionally unnecessary expletives ; 
 moral or practical reflections introduced too 
 
THE MAN OF LETTERS 115 
 
 ceremoniously instead of incidentally ; no other 
 defects occur to me at present, and I cannot 
 charge myself with what I most fear timid- 
 
 ity." 
 
 Again, in his journal, the historian showed 
 how sweet may be the uses of criticism : 
 
 August 4, 1839. " Have been led by the 
 strictures in the Quarterly to review the style 
 of my History, as I shall always make it a 
 point to draw all the benefit I can from critiques 
 on my writings. ... I have devoted several 
 days to a careful scrutiny of my defects, and to 
 a comparison of my style with that of standard 
 English writers of the present time. Master 
 Ford complains, etc. . . . One more conclusion 
 is that I will not hereafter vex myself with 
 anxious thoughts about my style when compos 
 ing. It is formed." 
 
 Nothing could be more characteristic than 
 the foregoing extract. Prescott s anxious de 
 sire to perfect his work and to profit by every 
 honest criticism ; his thoroughness of self- 
 judgment by the highest standards, and, when 
 all was done, the poised serenity of his spirit 
 in putting away forever a care with which it 
 
116 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 was vain to vex himself longer these things 
 are of the very essence of the man. His lofty 
 ideals as a writer find frequent reflection in his 
 private records : 
 
 " On the whole, there is service, and know 
 ledge and improvement gained by pondering 
 deeply the masterpieces few, very few of 
 literature [he had been reading Shakespeare] 
 instead of diffusing one s self over the whole 
 surface of second and third rate productions. 
 Hereafter I will propose a few such to myself, 
 and endeavor to become more and more inti 
 mate with them." 
 
 " Of one thing I am persuaded. No motives 
 but those of an honest fame and of usefulness 
 will ever be of much weight with me in stimu 
 lating my labors. I never shall be satisfied to 
 do my work slovenly or superficially. It would 
 be impossible for me to do the job-work of a 
 literary hack. Fortunately, I am not driven to 
 write for bread ; and I never will write for 
 money." 
 
 On the fly-leaf of Volume X of his " Liter 
 ary Memoranda " stands this motto from Cicero 
 " Scribendi autem me non tarn fructus, et 
 
THE MAN OF LETTERS 117 
 
 gloria, quain studium ipsum, exercitatioque de- 
 lectat ; quod mihi nulla res eripiet." 
 
 No writer ever wrought more faithfully ii\ 
 that spirit. 
 
 Prescott gave himself secret warnings : 
 
 April 1, 1841. "Never shrink from telling 
 the truth. If I am retained by the Spaniards, 
 I shall lose my reputation with every other 
 people. I spoke fearlessly in Ferdinand and 
 Isabella/ Do so now." 
 
 At the head of the first page of the eleventh 
 volume of his journal, under date February 17, 
 1842, stands the following couplet : - 
 
 " For sluggard s brow the laurel never grows. 
 Renown is not the child of indolent repose." 
 
 Immediately after came this : - 
 
 February 17, 1842. " I consume too much 
 time on notes and on pettinesses every way. 
 Think more of general effect and impression. 
 Don t quiddle nor twaddle." 
 
 Once more : 
 
 July 28, 1849. " After all, regular composi 
 tion of a great historic work is the best recipe 
 for happiness for me." 
 
 But Prescott had others to think of. In his 
 
118 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 representative capacity he had a large corre 
 spondence with foreigners. " I can t write a 
 short letter, though it were on my deathbed." 
 This was his explanation of the entry of No 
 vember 15, 1842 : " I send eight long letters 
 to Europe to-morrow." Turning to his Kecord 
 of Correspondence, which he kept for years 
 with methodical exactness, we may find to whom 
 those eight letters were sent and what they 
 were about : 
 
 MR. EDWARD EVERETT Inclosing letters to 
 
 Italy. Asking about publisher. 
 DON NERI CORSINI Thanking him. Ask 
 ing leave for Mr. Green to ins. 
 MARQUIS CAPPONI Thanking for present 
 
 Kemarks on F. & I. trans. 
 MR. G. "W. GREEN Suggesting to call on 
 
 Corsini. 
 MR. TYTLER Thanking for his history. His 
 
 offer of MSS. 
 MR. GAYANGOS Philip II In Paris to 
 
 mem. Granville. 
 MR. DICKENS Thanking him for his book. 
 
 He to define terms for Mad? C. 
 
THE MAN OF LETTERS 119 
 
 SENOR CORDERERA Advising of remittance. 
 Ordering Phil, of EC. & Colum. 
 
 In his later life, Prescott hospitably enter 
 tained the literary stranger within our gates. 
 Many noted foreigners turned their steps to 
 his home on Beacon Street. It was there that 
 J. G. Kohl, the German geographer, saw 
 him. This was the impression recorded : " I 
 met but few Americans so distinguished by 
 elegance and politeness ; and when I first met 
 him, and before knowing his name, I took him 
 for a diplomatist. He had not the slightest 
 trace of the dust of books and learning. . . . 
 He was at that time past his 60th year and yet 
 his delicate, nobly chiseled face possessed such 
 a youthful charm that he could fascinate young 
 ladies." 
 
 One young lady, a kinswoman, was perhaps 
 the first to make Prescott pay that bitter-sweet 
 penalty of literary fame to become the in 
 voluntary confidant and adviser of aspiring 
 brothers or sisters of the craft. The letter 
 which he received from Captain Henry Pres 
 cott, of St. Johns, in 1840, was accompanied by 
 
120 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 a volume of poems from the pen of the writer s 
 daughter. That authoress later wrote him this 
 note : 
 
 MY DEAR SIB, I cannot resist giving 
 myself the pleasure of thanking you, in my 
 own person, for the gift of your valuable work, 
 which will indeed, as long as I live, have an 
 honored place in my library. As a woman, I 
 am bound to be grateful to you for the justice 
 you have done to the character of one of the 
 noblest of my sex ; and as a Prescott I am 
 truly proud of the fame, which I trust you will 
 long live to enjoy. . . . 
 
 HENRIETTA PRESCOTT. 
 
 ST. JOHNS, March 12, 1841. 
 
 But this was nothing to what was to come. 
 On March 27, 1841, the following letter was 
 addressed to him from Wakefield, England : 
 
 SIR, The perusal of your admirable " His 
 tory of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella 
 the Catholic," has suggested the composition 
 of the enclosed little drama entitled " The 
 Siege of Granada." As I have printed but a 
 very limited number of copies, a new edition 
 
THE MAN OF LETTERS 121 
 
 is not improbable ; would you allow me to 
 dedicate my next, and, I trust, more corrected 
 edition, to yourself ? 
 
 I am, sir, with all respect, 
 Your M. O. S., 
 
 WM. HENKY LEATHAM. 
 
 What answer Prescott gave the poet may 
 be inferred from this fragment of a letter two 
 years later : 
 
 February 11, 1843. 
 
 . . . As you kindly expressed yourself pleased 
 with my little poetical performance, I have 
 inclosed for your acceptance a complete set of 
 
 my poems. 
 
 WM. H. LEATHAM. 
 
 But the historian was far from through 
 with this insistent bard. Every history fatally 
 inspired a poem. The " Conquest of Mexico " 
 led Mr. Leatham to indite some verses on 
 Montezuma. Of these he wrote, on October 
 10, 1844, proposing to print this poem, to 
 gether with his drama, " The Siege of Gra 
 nada," in a little book to be dedicated to 
 Prescott, and asks, " Do you think it would 
 
122 WILLIAM HICKLING PB-ESCOTT 
 
 command any sale in America?" In his 
 poem he says, describing the ancient " unholy 
 rites," 
 
 " And human gore was seen to pour like water in the 
 sun." 
 
 The youth chosen for sacrifice had his fill 
 of color, and enjoyment, and sweet-smelling 
 flowers 
 
 " Till that day year the bloody bier will snatch him 
 from their bowers." 
 
 When Montezuma at last comes to die 
 
 " He speaks no more but bows his head, his eyeballs 
 
 cease to roll. 
 
 His race is run and with the sun has passed the mon 
 arch s soul. 
 Soon as the awe-struck Mexicans had heard their king 
 
 was dead, 
 A distant wail rose on the gale, and through the city 
 
 spread. 
 But short their grief ; each warrior-chief by Cuitla- 
 
 huac led, 
 
 In wrath arose to smite his foes, if not already fled 
 Their sullen tramp has reached the camp where 
 
 Cortez vainly strives. 
 The Spaniard from the wave-girt wall the gallant 
 
 Aztec drives ; 
 
THE MAN OF LETTERS 123 
 
 Till morning breaks o er reedy lakes throughout the 
 
 dismal night, 
 
 The swarthy sons of Mexico prolong the bloody fight, 
 And for his cursed stratagem the General dearly paid, 
 For vainly did he wield his lance and keen Toledo 
 
 blade ! " 
 
 Another persistent English correspondent 
 of Prescott s was Dr. S. A. Dunham. An ex 
 posure of this gentleman s ignorance in a foot 
 note of " Ferdinand and Isabella " seemed to 
 establish a lien upon Prescott s time and kind 
 ness. He promptly wrote to ask what were the 
 chances of his obtaining a livelihood in the 
 United States. Prescott apparently gave him 
 some Greeleyesque advice. At any rate, Dr. 
 Dunham quickly rejoined with a round dozen 
 of questions, one of which was, " To what por 
 tion of the far West do you allude?" The 
 farther west the better, one might think Pres 
 cott would have been tempted to reply to a 
 man who seemed to think that one considerate 
 word implied an undertaking to care for him 
 and his family forever after. What Prescott 
 did reply is of value not only as illustrating 
 his own admirable temper, but as throwing 
 
124 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 an instructive light upon the nature of the 
 struggle for existence of the American man 
 of letters at the time. 
 
 TO DR. DUNHAM 
 
 BOSTON, January 30, 1844. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, I am extremely con 
 cerned to learn that the cloud still hangs so 
 darkly over your prospects, now that you are 
 again on your native soil. I was in hopes that, 
 once more among your friends, and in a coun 
 try where men of letters are sufficiently nu 
 merous to make a distinct and important class, 
 your just claims would be recognized. It is 
 impossible for a foreigner, like myself, to judge 
 of the expediency of the plans you suggest for 
 the future maintenance of your family. And 
 I am grieved to be obliged to say that I think 
 it would be in vain to look for a contribution 
 towards it here. There are so many projects 
 that appeal so directly to those most liberally 
 disposed in our community that their resources 
 seem to be preoccupied. 
 
 With respect of contributions to the news 
 papers, I fear there will be as little chance of 
 
THE MAN OF LETTERS 125 
 
 success in that quarter. You might indeed 
 furnish articles on literary matters to a respec 
 table journal like our " North American." 
 But the compensation is too inconsiderable to 
 furnish an inducement ; since it is only a dol 
 lar a printed page. I have known this journal 
 to give two dollars a page to a popular writer 
 who would contract for a certain amount of 
 pages per annum. I know not whether this is 
 ever done by the present editor. Should you 
 send anything to me for that Journal I shall 
 have much pleasure in handing it to the Editor 
 and ascertaining whether he would be inclined 
 to make an engagement with you for the fu 
 ture. Our newspapers do not press often into 
 their service writers who have drunk deep of 
 the good wells of learning, and a penny-a-line 
 manufacturer of casualties will find more en 
 couragement with most of them than a man of 
 learning. I have suggested it to one of our 
 most respectable editors but he has given me 
 no encouragement. 
 
 W. H. PKESCOTT. 
 
 Miss L. I. Lincolne, " a perfect stranger " 
 
126 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 to him, and otherwise not too perfect to be 
 a sly young autograph hunter, wrote him 
 from Norwich, March 25, 1856, a rather gush 
 ing letter saying how very much she had en 
 joyed the two volumes of " Philip II " and 
 representing herself in a state of frantic impa 
 tience to hear the rest of the story what 
 was the fate of the Prince of Orange, etc., 
 and begging him to hurry up with the rest of 
 the work. Prescott answered her letter kindly ; 
 for she writes again (May 15, 1856) thank 
 ing him effusively and saying that his letter 
 is " carefully treasured," while not forgetting 
 to ask some questions as bait for a second 
 letter. 
 
 Even Prescott s patience broke down before 
 one appeal that came to him. In August of 
 1858 Senor Don Pedro Felix Vicuna of Val 
 paraiso sent him a long and flowery letter. 
 After a glowing tribute to the country of Wash 
 ington and Jefferson, he proceeded to request 
 that Prescott would write a public letter, 
 throwing his influence upon the right side, in 
 order to calm the political tumults of Chili. 
 Senor Vicuna adds that he has forwarded a 
 
THE MAN OF LETTERS 127 
 
 little " production of his own " which appar 
 ently he desired Prescott to aid him in pub 
 lishing. This letter bore the unexampled in 
 dorsement, " No answer." A letter to and 
 from George Bancroft may fitly close this 
 chapter. Bancroft had reviewed " Ferdinand 
 and Isabella " in the " Democratic Keview," 
 and Prescott wrote in acknowledgment : 
 
 Saturday, P. M. (indorsed May 5, 1838). 
 DEAR BANCROFT, I return the review 
 with my hearty thanks. I think it is one of 
 the most delightful tributes ever paid by friend 
 ship to authorship. And I think it is writ 
 ten in your very happiest manner. I do not 
 believe, in estimating it so, I am misled by 
 the subject, or the writer, for I have not been 
 very easy to please on the score of puffs, of 
 which I have had full measure, you know, from 
 my good-natured friends. But the style of the 
 piece is gorgeous, without being overloaded, 
 and the tone of sentiment most original, with 
 out the least approach to extravagance or 
 obscurity. Indeed, the originality of the 
 thoughts and the topics touched on constitute 
 
128 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 its great charm, and make the article even at 
 this eleventh hour, when so much has been 
 said on the subject, have all the freshness of 
 novelty. In this, I confess, considering how 
 long it had been kept on the shelf, I am most 
 agreeably disappointed. As to the length, it 
 is, taken in connection with the sort of cri 
 tique, just the thing. It will terrify none from 
 venturing on it, and I am sure a man must be 
 without relish for the beautiful, who can lay it 
 down without finishing. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 WM. H. PRESCOTT. 
 
 P. S. There is one thing which I had like 
 to have forgotten, but which I shall not for 
 give. You have the effrontery to speak of my 
 having passed the prime of life, some dozen 
 years ago. Why, my youthful friend, do you 
 know what the prime of life is ? Moliere shall 
 tell you : 
 
 " He bien ! qu est ce que cela, soixante ans ? 
 C est le fleur de 1 age cela." Prime of life, in 
 deed ! People will think the author is turned 
 of seventy. He was a more discreet critic that 
 called me " young and modest ! " 
 
THE MAN OF LETTERS 129 
 
 Five years later, when the " Conquest of 
 Mexico " was published, Bancroft wrote to the 
 author : 
 
 MY DEAR PRESCOTT, Thanks for your 
 beautiful volumes, which I have read with ad 
 miration and delight. You handle your subject 
 like one inspired with it. The fervor glows 
 everywhere. After finishing the second volume, 
 I took down Robertson : shall I confess with 
 some anxiety ? On comparing the thrilling 
 scenes, I think your account as correctly ex 
 pressed in point of style, more vivid, more 
 dramatic, and with a better development of 
 causes. Till I read, I had some uncertainty 
 about popularity ; I have no doubt now. Your 
 volumes will be among the most widely read in 
 the English language. 
 
 That you may see what the locofocos think, 
 I mean the sound ones, not such Tylerites as 
 we have in this city, I send you Bryant s 
 Criticism, only adding I made up my mind 
 last night and got Bryant s this morning. 
 Yours always, 
 
 G. BANCROFT. 
 
 December, 1843. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE "CONQUEST OF MEXICO" 
 
 PKESCOTT S second historical work at once 
 his most praised and most belittled was a 
 natural sequence of his first. Indeed, in " Fer 
 dinand and Isabella " itself there is a sort of 
 unconscious premonition of what was to fol 
 low, the reference, at the end of the second 
 volume, to that " young adventurer who was 
 destined, by the conquest of Mexico, to realize 
 all the magnificent visions, which had been 
 derided as only visions, in the lifetime of Co 
 lumbus." Yet it was long before the historian 
 found his subject. 
 
 " This [ Ferdinand and Isabella ] is prob 
 ably," he set down in his diary, under date of 
 March 10, 1833, "the only civil history I 
 shall ever attempt." He did not mean to ex 
 clude literary history, to which his thoughts at 
 first reverted after the completion and publica 
 tion of " Their Catholic Majesties," as he was 
 
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 131 
 
 fond of calling his book. It had been an old 
 bent of his. When halfway through " Ferdi 
 nand and Isabella " he recorded : " But, after 
 all, literary history is more consonant with my 
 taste, my turn of mind, and all my previous 
 studies. The sooner I complete my present 
 work, the sooner I shall be enabled to enter 
 upon it." 
 
 He now proposed to write a life of Moliere, 
 on whom he had, in 1828, done an article in 
 the " North American Review." As usual, he 
 set about drenching himself in material. He 
 ordered every attainable authority and aid from 
 Paris. But a wiser purpose slowly asserted it 
 self, and we find in the journal of May 27, 
 1838:- 
 
 " Before they [materials for projected Mo 
 liere] arrived, however, the favor shown to the 
 History of Ferdinand and Isabella encour 
 aged me to go on with another subject which 
 seemed to be a natural continuation of the 
 last, which had the superior advantage of re 
 lating to my own quarter of the globe, and for 
 which I now possessed eminent advantages 
 for procuring original unpublished materials 
 
132 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 from Spain. ... I have since the last week 
 in April forwarded letters to different savans 
 in Madrid, with a letter of credit on the Bar 
 ings for 300 pounds, ... in order to procure 
 such curious, original, and authentic documents 
 as may throw light on the discovery and con 
 quest of Mexico and Peru. . . . Should I suc 
 ceed in my present collection, who knows what 
 facilities I may find for making one relative to 
 Philip II dB reign? a fruitful theme." 
 
 Prescott made it his first business to secure 
 every printed work extant that bore on his 
 subject, and as many copies of manuscripts 
 as possible. " Your manuscripts," he noted, 
 " is the only staple for the historic web at 
 least the only one to make the stuff which 
 will stand the wear and tear of old Father 
 Time." 
 
 Fortunately his purse did not lay an em 
 bargo on his scholar s instinct. He was able 
 to purchase even such works as Lord Kings- 
 borough s sumptuous volumes on Mexican An 
 tiquities. " As I could not borrow, it was 
 necessary to buy his Lordship s mammoth 
 work the hard necessity of a country with- 
 
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 133 
 
 out libraries." Friends and scholars abroad 
 aided him in his collections until at last even 
 he was satisfied, and could write : 
 
 " The doubt as to the acquisition of the 
 materials essential to the success of my under 
 taking is dispelled ; and these materials, safe 
 from all the perils of land and water, are now 
 on my own shelves." 
 
 A preliminary difficulty remained. He 
 learned through Mr. Cogswell of the Astor 
 Library that Irving had begun to write on 
 the Conquest of Mexico. There followed as 
 generous an act of literary abnegation as could 
 be cited. Irving promptly and handsomely 
 yielded the field to Prescott. The correspond 
 ence between the two, at that time not per 
 sonally acquainted, is given by Ticknor and by 
 Pierre Irving in the biography of his uncle. 
 It is probable that Prescott did not fully 
 realize what it cost Irving to abandon the 
 project. The grace of the surrender hid its 
 bitterness. 
 
 But the nephew has recorded the " fit of 
 vexation " in which Irving destroyed what he 
 had already written, and George Sumner wrote 
 
134 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 to his brother Charles from Malaga, Novem 
 ber 19, 1843:- 
 
 " It is delightful to hear the tones of admi 
 ration in which Irving always speaks of Pres- 
 cott, although the abandonment of the 4 Con 
 quest of Mexico which he had commenced 
 cost him a pang ! His steam was just fairly 
 up when he heard that Prescott was at work 
 upon the same subject. For a week after 
 he abandoned it he felt like a fish out of 
 water and took to planting cabbages most 
 desperately." 
 
 There is no reason to think, however, that 
 Irving s self-sacrifice, while it heightened his 
 reputation for magnanimous dealing, resulted 
 in any real loss to American literature. Pres 
 cott had incomparably the ampler resources ; 
 he was a more relentless investigator than 
 Irving ; brooded longer over his subjects, until 
 their artistic form of presentation became clear 
 to him ; and so, even if he lacked something 
 of Irving s natural magic of style, was the 
 fitter man to do the work. Irving himself 
 freely acknowledged this when Prescott s vol 
 umes on the " Conquest " were put into his 
 
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 135 
 
 hands. Prescott, on his part, paid Irving the 
 finest compliments, in his preface and else 
 where. The entire incident was honorable to 
 both writers. Prescott did not forget to be 
 equally generous when it came time for him to 
 throw open his Spanish preserves to Motley. 
 
 In the journal the withdrawal of Irving is 
 thus recorded : 
 
 " The only competitor who, I feared, might 
 possibly have turned his eyes in the same di 
 rection was Irving not from any intimation 
 he had given of this which would have pre 
 vented me from thinking of it at all but 
 from the circumstance of his having formerly 
 hunted on this ground. A very polite and 
 courteous message from him, through our 
 common friend Cogswell, followed by a letter 
 of the same tone, has put these doubts at 
 rest, and left the field open to me. And now 
 I shall go merrily forward in my historical 
 labors." 
 
 Prescott himself placed the milestones along 
 his Mexican road. They are as follows : 
 
 May, 1838. " Began scattered reading on 
 the subject, doubtful if I get my documents 
 
136 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 from Spain. Very listless and far-nient-ish for 
 a year. Over-visiting and not in spirits." 
 
 April, 1839. "Began to read in earnest, 
 having received manuscripts from Madrid." 
 
 October 14, 1839. " Wrote first page of 
 Introduction at Pepperell." 
 
 March 1, 1841. "Finished Introduction 
 and Part I. of Appendix." 
 
 August, 1841-August, 1842. " Composed 
 562 pages of print, text and notes of the nar 
 rative." 
 
 August, 1842-August, 1843. "Composed 
 425 pages print, text and notes ; revised Tick- 
 nor s corrections and his wife s, of all the work. 
 Corrected, etc., proofs of nearly all the work. 
 The last book required severe reading of 
 MSS." 
 
 August 2, 1843. "Finished the work. So the 
 Introduction, about half a vol., occupied about 
 as long as the remaining two and a half vols. 
 of dashing narrative." 
 
 Further scattered excerpts from Prescott s 
 own notes on his work will reveal, better than 
 could labored description, his conception of his 
 task and his methods in its execution. 
 
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 137 
 
 July 7, 1839. The Conquest of Mexico 
 was the greatest miracle in an age of mir 
 acles. . . . 
 
 "In short, the true way of conceiving the 
 subject is, not as a philosophical theme, but as 
 an epic in prose. . . . 
 
 " It is without doubt the most poetic subject 
 ever offered to the pen of the historian." 
 
 One notes in passing that Lowell agreed 
 with Prescott. He at one time planned an epic 
 on the Conquest of Mexico. 
 
 Again from the journal : 
 
 July 21, 1839. "Not a bad week but 
 feel the want of solid materials to buckle 
 to." . . . 
 
 August 4, 1839. " My two volumes will be 
 completed by May 4, 1842, my forty-sixth birth 
 day. There is nothing extravagant in this 
 surely, and if I wrote from the auri fames it 
 would be done to a certainty. As it is in- 
 certus sum" . . . 
 
 January 1, 1840. " If I ever get out of the 
 moonshine period of the old Aztecs." . . . 
 
 February 9, 1840. " This last week received 
 a diploma from the Royal Academy of Science 
 
138 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 at Naples, and a letter accompanying it to Dr. 
 Bachi from the President, Count Carmaldoli, 
 in which he says my nomination was received 
 with unanime acclamazionej and that I have 
 written a work which, in the parts relating to 
 Italy is assai superiore agli stessi Italiani? 
 and that places Signor Prescott nel primo 
 rango de piu grandi Istorici. This will do for 
 pulcherrima Italia." . . . 
 
 June 15, 1840. " It [note-making] is a 
 twaddly business. Bancroft saves his time pro 
 digiously by making none at all. I will do my 
 duty by the Introduction, but when I have 
 slipped on the Narrative, I will send the notes 
 to the devil at least all but strictly critical 
 ones." . , . 
 
 January 3, 1841. " My journal is paved, 
 like some other places, with good resolu 
 tions." . . . 
 
 January 10, 1841. " I have not been dili 
 gent enough. I chew on my subject more than 
 enough. If I put my bones to it, I should do the 
 work better as well as faster. I will. Or write 
 against time and a forfeit as I did once to get 
 a start in Ferdinand and Isabella. "... 
 
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 139 
 
 April 1, 1841. "Allowing two days reading 
 for one of writing . . . will complete the work 
 in two years and a quarter say in July, 1843, 
 [later penciled mem. 4 The last pages were 
 written in July, 1843 ] and why should I not? 
 This is not faster than Gibbon wrote his last 
 six vols. on an infinitely harder subject, nor 
 nearly as fast as Irving wrote his Colum 
 bus. " . . . 
 
 September 28, 1841. " Finished text of chap. 
 I Book 3 rd , ... full of the picturesque 
 reads very like Miss Porter rather boarding- 
 schoolish finery. I am a fraud." . . . 
 
 June 27, 1842. "I will try [to do fixed 
 task] though this memorandum book is paved 
 with resolutions, as hell-floor is said to be 
 a broken pavement, too." . . . 
 
 August 2, 1843. " On the whole the last two 
 years have been the most industrious of my 
 life, I think especially the last year, and as 
 I have won the Capitol it entitles me to three 
 months of literary loafing." 
 
 Midway in his " Conquest of Mexico," the 
 historian was compelled to turn aside to make 
 an abridgment of " Ferdinand and Isabella." 
 
140 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 This was to head off a piratical edition then 
 threatened. The job was most distasteful to 
 Prescott, as Ticknor intimates, though he does 
 not give the language which the journal used. 
 The extract is full of that homely speech into 
 which the Yankee blood in Prescott often im 
 pelled him to break in private, though most of 
 it the elegant Ticknor passed by, in a stretch 
 of charity for one who was not, like himself, 
 always in full dress. 
 
 July 19, 1841. " Finished Abridg. Hist, of 
 F. & I. lo triumphe ! three weeks and a half 
 since I first put pen to paper. About one 
 tenth of the vol. written de novo the rest 
 docked, scissored, sweated, headed and tailed. 
 I shied, like a skittish horse at a leap, and find 
 tis a mudpuddle only. Dirty work, however, 
 and I wish the publishers would let it sleep till 
 some one starts up with a rival abridgment." 
 
 The abridgment was not, in fact, published, 
 the pirate having sailed away. 
 
 As usual, Prescott turned bookseller after 
 bookwriter, and painstakingly scrutinized his 
 accounts. The right of publishing the " Con 
 quest of Mexico " he sold to the Harpers from 
 
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 141 
 
 plates provided by himself. The publishers 
 were to have 5000 copies, for which they 
 offered $7500 in cash " an enormous price," 
 notes Prescott, " which I should not have had 
 the courage to ask of any publisher." The 
 agreement was for a single year, in which 
 Harper and Brothers were to take as many 
 more copies on the same terms as they might 
 order. " I hope they may not be disappointed, 
 for their sakes as well as mine. But this is 
 a different contract from that which ushered 
 Ferdinand and Isabella into the world." In 
 the result, the 5000 copies were sold in four 
 months. The English edition had also a great 
 sale. Passing over mere business details, the 
 following may be cited from Prescott s " Re 
 flections on the Printing, etc., of my Histo 
 ries," September 10, 1843. 
 
 "I have employed Folsom and paid him 
 fifty dollars per vol. for correcting the printed 
 proofs. He has done it faithfully, and though 
 I have not taken more than one in five of his 
 corrections, I think they are worth the money. 
 If I had taken them all, or nearly all, it would 
 have ruined the book." 
 
142 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 A characterization of this famous and still 
 familiar book of Prescott s could be called for 
 only on the principle of the mediaeval scholar 
 who, Hallam tells us, took for his motto, " This 
 I include lest anything be left unsaid." One 
 word may be inserted, however, in reply to the 
 natural question how the " Conquest of Mex 
 ico " has stood the wear and tear of subsequent 
 historical investigation. At first there was a 
 decided lurch adverse to Prescott. Wilson and 
 his school resolved " the golden cupolas of 
 Mexico," as Disraeli called them with charac 
 teristic grandiloquence, into Indian mud huts, 
 and made of the Spanish chroniclers a set of 
 impudent liars. But the due reaction came. 
 Archeology has, of course, uncovered many 
 things never guessed in Prescott s day in re 
 gard to " the moonshine period " of the Aztecs. 
 Later scholars have sifted and checked Bernal 
 Diaz " that jewel of a chronicler " and 
 the other Spanish writers in a way not possible 
 in Prescott s day. New material has come to 
 light. Yet when every allowance of this sort has 
 been made, the fact remains that the " Con 
 quest of Mexico " holds its own wonderfully 
 
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 143 
 
 well. Supercilious young novelists may sneer 
 at it as "Prescott s romance that he passed 
 off for history," but the competent know 
 better. A fair and sufficient summary of the 
 state of the case is given by H. H. Bancroft 
 in his monumental " History of Mexico : " 
 
 " For his Conquest of Mexico, besides all 
 printed material extant, Mr. Prescott drew 
 upon a large mass of new information in man 
 uscript, from several sources, notably from the 
 valuable collection of Munoz, brought together 
 for an intended history of America; that of 
 Vargas Ponce, obtained chiefly from Seville 
 archives ; that of Navarrete, president of the 
 Royal Academy of History at Madrid ; and the 
 archives of Cortes heirs, all of which shed new 
 light on almost every section of the subject. His 
 deep research, manifest throughout in copious 
 footnotes, is especially displayed in the very ap 
 propriate introduction on Mexican civilization, 
 which enables the reader to gain an intimate 
 knowledge of the people whose subjugation he 
 follows. Good judgment is also attested in the 
 dissertation on the moot question of the origin 
 
144 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 of this culture, wherein he prudently abstains 
 from any decided conclusions. The fact of 
 occasional inaccuracies cannot be severely crit 
 icised when we consider the infirmity under 
 which the author labored. Since his time so 
 great a mass of material has been brought to 
 light that the aspect of history is much 
 changed. This new material consists partly of 
 native records, and it is due to his unacquaint- 
 ance with these records that a great lack is im 
 plied in his pages. The fact that Prescott relied 
 too much on Spanish material may account 
 for the marked bias in favor of the conquer 
 ors in many instances where strict impartiality 
 might be expected, and for the condemna 
 tory and reflective assertions which at times 
 appear in direct contradiction to previous lines 
 of thought. At times, as if aware of this ten 
 dency, he assumes a calmness that ill fits the 
 theme, giving it the very bias he seeks to avoid. 
 Yet with all this it is safe to say that few 
 histories have been written in which the quali 
 ties of philosopher and artist are so happily 
 blended." 
 
 The immediate enthusiasm with which the 
 
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 145 
 
 " Conquest of Mexico " was received has been 
 implied. The book won a much wider audience 
 than " Ferdinand and Isabella." From across 
 the Atlantic came approving voices. Edward 
 Everett wrote of a dispute between Hallam 
 and Thomas Grenville over the question of 
 style. Was that of the " Conquest " superior 
 to that of "Ferdinand and Isabella"? Hal- 
 lam thought so. Grenville was inclined to 
 stand by his former preference. "What it was, 
 Everett stated in his address on Prescott be 
 fore the Massachusetts Historical Society in 
 1859 : " Calling one day on the venerable 
 Mr. Thomas Grenville, whom I found in his 
 library (the second in size and value of the 
 private libraries of England) reading Xeno- 
 phon s Anabasis in the original, I made 
 some passing remark on the beauty of that 
 work. 4 Here, said he, holding up a volume 
 of Ferdinand and Isabella, is one far 
 superior. " 
 
 From Hamburg, Francis Lieber wrote, on 
 November 9, 1844 : 
 
 " I had the pleasure of seeing A. Humboldt 
 at Pottsdam, and of hearing from his lips the 
 
146 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 praise of you. "We talked a good deal of your 
 works, and I was delighted to find that his 
 opinion agreed in every point, so far as our 
 conversation went, with mine. . . . 
 
 " Humboldt agreed with me that your Fer 
 dinand and Isabella is, so far as the taste of 
 the historian is concerned, the first work of all 
 which have appeared on either side of the water 
 these many years." 
 
 Robert C. Winthrop, in a letter from Paris, 
 told Prescott that "Mignet greeted me most 
 cordially as Vami de Prescott" Messages came 
 again from Thierry. 
 
 Reporters of English praise were many. 
 George Bancroft wrote from London, July 20, 
 1847:- 
 
 " There is but one opinion. They speak 
 without jealousy, and you are almost the only 
 American person, state, or thing that they com 
 mend without reserve." 
 
 An extract may be given from a letter by 
 Miss Edgeworth : 
 
 " What pleasure and pride, honest, proper 
 pride, you must feel, my dear Mr. Prescott, in 
 the sense of difficulty conquered, of diffi- 
 
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 147 
 
 culties innumerable vanquished by the perse 
 verance and fortitude of genius ! It is a fine 
 example to human nature ; and will form to 
 great works genius in the rising generation and 
 in ages yet unborn. 
 
 " What a new and ennobling view of post 
 humous fame ! a view which short-sighted, 
 narrow-minded mediocrity cannot reach, and 
 probably would call romantic ; but which the 
 noble-minded realize to themselves, and ask not 
 either the sympathy or the comprehension of 
 the commonplace mean ones. 
 
 " You need not apologize for speaking of 
 yourself to the world. No one in the world 
 whose opinion is worth looking to will ever 
 think or call this 4 egotism. " 
 
 In his journal Prescott noted, under date of 
 February 3, 1844 : - 
 
 " Letter to Ticknor from Lyell, * everybody 
 in London is reading the " C. of M.," and old 
 Professor Smyth writes to T., its arrival is 
 most welcome, for Mr. P. is considered in this 
 country as the first of modern historians. 
 This from such a quarter is not to be laid on 
 the shelf. But the favorable impression which 
 
148 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 the work seems to have made in England does 
 not please me more than a passage in a letter 
 of Mr. George Sumner, now in Spain, to his 
 brother. Mr. S., with whom I am unacquainted, 
 says : 
 
 " Only a few days since, at a session of the 
 Academia de Bellas Artes in Seville, I was 
 welcomed by all, from the President down to 
 the porter, and welcomed como conduct ad ano 
 del Senor Prescott. This tribute from the 
 people to whose annals I have devoted myself, 
 is very grateful to me." 
 
 Another entry gives an extract from a letter 
 by George Sumner containing Irving s opin 
 ion on the " Conquest of Mexico " which Pres 
 cott said that he valued next to Humboldt s. 
 Irving was reported : 
 
 " I have just received Prescott s Conquest 
 of Mexico. I had already perused it in proof 
 sheets lent me by Mr. Calderon de la Barca. 
 It is an admirable work and fully sustains the 
 high reputation he acquired by his Ferdinand 
 and Isabella. It has the advantage, too, of 
 being quite different as to the nature of the 
 theme, so as to afford a variety in the exercise 
 
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 149 
 
 of his pen. I shall now look forward with con 
 fident anticipations of delight to the history of 
 4 Philip the Second which he is about to un 
 dertake, and which will open a new field for 
 his talent. The two works he has produced 
 are signal triumphs for our literature, which 
 will be repeated in every language of the civi 
 lized world." 
 
 Humboldt himself came forward with his 
 tribute : 
 
 February, 1 845. " Eec d a letter from Baron 
 Humboldt a gratifying testimonial of his 
 approval of my Mexican labors. He says he 
 has gone over the book line by line, with a 
 critical eye, and professes his intention to have 
 translated it, but was anticipated. May be so 
 may be not. But at all events, such a let 
 ter from this quarter is as high a recompense 
 as I can receive in this way. But it loses 
 its peculiar value to me, for my father cannot 
 read it with me." 
 
 Unspoiled by praise, Prescott thought chiefly 
 of the pleasure which the honor done him would 
 give to others. Thus on April 23, 1845, he 
 noted : 
 
150 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 " In my laziness I forgot to record at the 
 time the greatest academic honor I have re 
 ceived the greatest I shall ever receive 
 my election as corresponding member of the 
 French Institute of the Academy of Moral and 
 Political Science. I was chosen to fill the 
 vacancy made by the death of the illustrious 
 Navarrete. . . . By the last steamer I received 
 a diploma also from the Eoyal Academy of 
 Berlin as corresponding member of the Class 
 of Philosophy and History. This body, over 
 which Humboldt presides, and which has been . 
 made famous by the learned labors of Niebuhr, 
 Raumer, Ranke, etc., etc., ranks next to the 
 Institute among the greatest Academies of the 
 Continent. Such testimonies from a distant 
 land are the real rewards of the scholar. 
 What pleasure would they have given to 
 my dear father ! I feel as if they came too 
 late!" 
 
 In a final note on the flattering reception 
 of his " Conquest of Mexico " by both the pub 
 lic and scholars, Prescott wrote, character 
 istically, " It is somewhat enervating, and 
 has rather an unwholesome effect to podder 
 
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 151 
 
 long over these personalities. The best course 
 is action things not self at all events 
 not self-congratulation. So now I propose to 
 dismiss all further thoughts of my literary 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 THE "CONQUEST OF PERU" 
 
 PKESCOTT S " Peru " was of the nature of a 
 by-product. Much of the materials Munoz, 
 Navarrete, and the others that gave him 
 Cortes gave him also Pizarro. The historian 
 pressed on quickly after his " Mexico " and 
 wrote his thousand octavo pages on the " Con 
 quest of Peru " in what was, for him, the short 
 space of two years. This did not mean scamped 
 work. It signified, rather, collections in hand 
 and mastery of method. He was himself hu 
 morously appalled at his rapid progress. 
 
 " I began composition Wednesday ; finished 
 Saturday noon ; about three days, or more than 
 twelve pages print per diem. I never did so 
 much, I think, before in the same time, though 
 I have done more in a single day. At this 
 rate, I should work up the Peru the two 
 volumes in just about two months. Lord, 
 deliver me ! What a fruitful author I might 
 
THE CONQUEST OF PERU 153 
 
 become, were I so feloniously intent ! Felo de 
 se, it would be more than all others." 
 
 July 28, 1845. " At this rate I shall turn 
 off a brace of octavos a year ! ... It would 
 not be decent, nor politic, to turn out histories 
 like romances people would not believe 
 them ! any more than the writers of them 
 do. For do our best what is truth and 
 where ? Not in the records of stupid soldiers, 
 false priests, and credulous chroniclers." 
 
 August 15, 1845. " Great doings for so long 
 a stretch and would carry me through more 
 than 1000 pages per annum ! , . . Lucky for 
 the world I am not starving ! " 
 
 December 26, 1845. " If I can once get in 
 harness and at work I shall do well but my 
 joints are stiff, I think, as I grow old. So, to 
 give myself a start, I have made a wager with 
 Otis that I will reel off at least one page per 
 diem for four months. ... If I can t do this, 
 it must be a gone case and Pizarro may look 
 to have his misdeeds shown up by a better pen. 
 . . . When I have the great reign of Philip 
 the Prudent to prosecute, I will, God willing, 
 conclude The History of the Conquest of 
 
154 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 Peru by December 31, 46. . . . Shame on 
 me if I faH." 
 
 January 11, 1846. "A miracle I have 
 kept my resolve thus far and been industrious 
 three whole days ! Now, meliora spero." 
 
 He was none too deeply in love with his 
 subject " second-rate," he voted it to him 
 self ; " quarrels of banditti over their spoils." 
 j He also felt an artistic lack in his theme : - 
 
 April 23, 1845. " Its great defect is want 
 of unity. ... A consecutive tissue of adven 
 tures, . . . but not the especial interest that 
 belongs to the Iliad and to the Conquest 
 of Mexico, a story, by the way, which Che 
 valier, in his critique, rightly regards as supe 
 rior to the Iliad in true epic proportion and 
 capabilities. . . . Variety, variety is the se 
 cret of interest. Expectation is another. . . . 
 Deal candidly but with stern candor in describ 
 ing the deeds and misdeeds of the Conquerors ; 
 and never call hard names, a la Southey. It is 
 unhistorical, unphilosophical, ungentlemanlike. 
 . . . But beware of Robertson. Never glance 
 at him till after subject moulded in my mind 
 and thrown into language." 
 
THE CONQUEST OF PERU 155 
 
 Swift, but in accordance with law, to use 
 his favorite quotation from the Italian poet, 
 he pushed on his work, finishing it only two 
 months after his vowed Christmas of 1846. 
 
 One more indication of Prescott s industry 
 at this period may be taken from his private 
 records : 
 
 May 4, 1846. "My fiftieth birthday; a 
 half century ! This is getting on with a ven 
 geance. It is one of those frightful halting- 
 places in a man s life, that may make him 
 reflect a little. But half a century is too long 
 a road to be looked over in half an hour ; so 
 I will defer it till when ? . But what have I 
 done the last year ? Not misspent much of it. 
 The first eleven months, from April 26th, 1845, 
 to March 26th, 1846, I wrote five hundred 
 and twenty pages, text and notes, of my Con 
 quest of Peru. The quantity is sufficient, and, 
 in the summer especially, my industry was at 
 fever-heat. But I fear I have pushed the mat 
 ter indiscreetly." 
 
 The indiscretion was in overstraining his 
 eye. He injured it severely, " Heaven knows 
 how," he wrote, " probably by manuscript- 
 
156 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 digging." His resolve was to depend more and 
 more upon the vision of others. Not much later 
 than this, after taking advice from the best 
 oculists of the day in New York and Boston, 
 he determined to " relinquish all use of the eye 
 for the future in studies, and to be content if 
 I can preserve it for the more vulgar purposes 
 of life." 
 
 The " Conquest of Peru " was published in 
 March, 1847. The Harpers paid him 17500 
 on the day of publication at the rate of one 
 dollar a copy terms, Ticknor remarks, " more 
 liberal than had ever been offered for a work 
 of grave history on this side of the Atlantic." 
 The English rights were bought by Bentley 
 for $4000. Before this, Prescott had made a 
 note on the value of his copyrights. 
 
 May 4, 1846. " The Harpers give me good 
 accounts of my works. They consider my copy 
 rights as worth no less than $25,000 apiece. 
 If I allow only half that sum, which I should 
 be very loath to take for them, the amount, 
 with about $30,000 I have already received 
 on the two histories, will swell up to a very 
 pretty little honorarium for my literary lum- 
 
THE CONQUEST OF PERU 157 
 
 ber. . . . My hours have been since my re 
 turn [from New York] a fortnight ago sadly 
 broken up by sitting for my portrait to West 
 not for myself but for some unknown who 
 has thought it worth paying for. It is a cruel 
 moth, eating up time and temper. But it will 
 go hard before I sit for another. Yet I should 
 like to get one satisfactory likeness as those 
 hitherto taken have not pleased my friends." 
 
 Prescott had pleasant personal relations with 
 a young man destined to become the first au 
 thority on Peru. Clements (afterwards Sir 
 Clements) R. Markham wrote from London 
 on March 5, 1856 : 
 
 " The perusal of your charming Conquest 
 at a time when I was serving on the west coast 
 of South America first gave me a wish to see 
 Cuzco, and steadily keeping this wish in view 
 I was on my road to gratify it when I had the 
 pleasure of spending a few agreeable days at 
 Pepperell in 1852." 
 
 It was in reference to this visit that Mark- 
 ham testified of Prescott : - 
 
 " He it was who encouraged me to under 
 take my Peruvian investigations, and to perse- 
 
158 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 vere in them. To his friendly advice and assist 
 ance I owe more than I can say, and to him is 
 due, in no small degree, the value of anything 
 I have since been able to do in furtherance 
 of Peruvian research." 
 
 Markham s mature verdict on Prescott s 
 "Peru" was ("Academy," No. 95) : "It de 
 servedly stands in the first rank as a judicious 
 history of the Conquest." This competent 
 critic does not deny, in his masterly elucida 
 tions of early Peruvian history, that Prescott 
 needs largely to be supplemented in all that 
 relates to Inca civilization. Of the elaborate 
 researches now available, the historian of sixty 
 years ago was necessarily ignorant. But he 
 knew all that was to be known at the time ; 
 he sifted his authorities with enormous dili 
 gence and much acumen ; and produced a work 
 which, while contributing only a little to the 
 philosophy of history, brought out stores of 
 information conveyed in animated narrative. 
 
 Among the many letters which the " Con 
 quest of Peru " brought Prescott, only one, 
 not before published, need be referred to here. 
 It touches American literature on the quaint 
 
THE CONQUEST OF PERU 159 
 
 side. K. G. Haliburton writes from Halifax, 
 April 9, 1857, saying that he is engaged in 
 investigating the popular customs of various 
 peoples and in trying to trace them to their 
 source. He submits to Prescott two ques 
 tions : 
 
 1. Was the Peruvian plough in the form of 
 a cross ? 
 
 2. A certain instrument (described) was 
 found in the hand of a statue discovered by 
 Stephens in Central America ; could Mr. Pres 
 cott give him any light upon the question of 
 its use and significance ? 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 THE ENGLISH VISIT 
 
 IN the journal for June 16, 1839, occurs this 
 entry : " Received a pleasant letter from Mr. 
 Kenyon, who quotes Sydney Smith as saying 
 that if I shall visit London, and can t swim, 
 I shall be drowned, either in their claret or 
 turtle soup." 
 
 Prescott s quiet addition was : 
 " I believe I can swim in those seas." 
 But it was long before he made the plunge. 
 The European reputation which his " Ferdi 
 nand and Isabella " won him, together with 
 his exchange of private letters with scholars, 
 early brought Prescott many and warm invita 
 tions to go abroad. These he steadily with 
 stood, though often after much hesitation, 
 and it was not until 1850 that he yielded, 
 partly on physicians advice. Extracts from 
 his journal show his decisions and his va 
 cillations on the subject : 
 
THE ENGLISH VISIT 161 
 
 January 26, 1841. "Now why should I 
 not go ahead ? Because I am thinking of going 
 to England ! . . . My mind is distracted with 
 the pros and cons." 
 
 March 11, 1841. "Have decided at length 
 after as much doubt and deliberation as 
 most people would take for a voyage round the 
 world and decided not to go to England. 
 ... I consider my free, full, and final deter 
 mination now as settling the question forever, 
 respecting a visit to Europe, whither I shall 
 never go nor think of going, except for impor 
 tant business exacting it or with my own 
 family." 
 
 June 1, 1846. "I wish also to be free for 
 a voyage there [England] if I so dispose, next 
 Spring." 
 
 Sailing from New York on the 22d of May, 
 1850, Prescott had a seasick passage. Though 
 spending so large a part of his summers by the 
 sea, he was a poor sailor, and he wrote to his 
 wife from the steamer Niagara, June 3 : 
 
 "Nothing can redeem the utter wretched 
 ness of a sea life and never will I again put 
 my foot in a steamer, except for Yankee land, 
 
162 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 and, if I were not ashamed, should reembark 
 in the Saturday steamer from Liverpool, and 
 settle the wager in another fortnight." 
 
 He also wrote : 
 
 "This sea life is even worse than I thought 
 it was. I had forgotten half its miseries. I 
 will never trust a man hereafter who talks 
 complacently of it. As to Kirk [his private 
 secretary] he has been actively sick ever since 
 we left Halifax. For myself, I have had a 
 basis of nausea that turns my stomach against 
 everything I usually like. Chewing camomile 
 is my best satisfaction almost as bad off as 
 Milton s devils with their dust apples." 
 
 But from the moment of landing in Liver 
 pool he was in the warmest air of English 
 hospitality, and, throughout his stay, was over 
 whelmed with the most flattering attentions 
 by the leaders of society and the lights of the 
 learned world. A large bundle of the invitations 
 which the season brought him is preserved 
 among his papers. He was, in fact, one of the 
 lions of the year. When Lockhart met him, it 
 was with the remark, " You and the Nepaulese 
 ambassador are the lions of London, I believe." 
 
THE ENGLISH VISIT 163 
 
 "And the Hippopotamus," Prescott added 
 readily. His Nepaulese rival he described to 
 his wife : " He is walking about here at the 
 evening parties with a huge necklace of rough 
 emeralds, a scarlet petticoat well garnished 
 with pearls, and a head-gear made of the beak 
 of a bird, six inches high." 
 
 Ticknor was not far wrong in saying that 
 Prescott s was "the most brilliant visit ever 
 made to England by an American citizen not 
 clothed with the prestige of official station." 
 The justifying letters are largely given in the 
 two chapters devoted to the episode in the 
 "Life." Ticknor took certain liberties with 
 the text. His severe pen struck out passages 
 wherein the Yankee levity of his compatriot 
 seemed too daring especially when in the 
 presence of royal personages. Thus Prescott s 
 description of the young queen at Castle How 
 ard is amusingly toned down and now and 
 then boldly altered. It is evident that, through 
 all the round of sight-seeing and entertain 
 ment the historian remained wholly himself. 
 Whether with his titled friends, or in the com 
 pany of Hallam and Macaulay, Ford and 
 
164 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 Thackeray, Rogers and Milman, he lost neither 
 his native charm nor his native simplicity and 
 shrewdness. Going to England with a high 
 " preconceived estimate of the English char 
 acter," he found it raised by his experience. 
 Yet he allowed his critical faculty full play as 
 respects " the great-little island," and felt the 
 pull of his native land through all. " I was 
 not in my own dear wild America," he wrote 
 to his wife, when explaining his longing to 
 see " a ragged fence or an old stump, or a bit 
 of rock, or even a stone as big as one s fist," 
 in the passage through the well-kept country 
 between Liverpool and London. 
 
 A few intimate bits may be rescued from 
 the letters which Ticknor passed by : 
 
 LONDON, June 7, 1850. 
 
 It was a rich cit s dinner dull eno and 
 concluded by a clergyman a great gun here 
 making an exposition of a verse or two of 
 " Revelations " a hopeful theme. In the 
 midst of the lecture a mischievous clock in 
 the room struck ten and at once went off 
 with a waltz, running it off merrily, as if to 
 
THE ENGLISH VISIT 165 
 
 distance the preacher. The poor host was in 
 great alarm tried in vain to throttle the 
 imp ; the more he tried, the louder the tunes 
 it played; till the good divine was fairly 
 silenced. Is it not a strange style of things 
 at a dinner ? But they tell me here it is not 
 likely I shall meet with such an experience 
 again. 
 
 LONDON, June 9, 1850. 
 
 In the latter part of the evening, as I was 
 talking with the Duchess of Leeds one of 
 the Catons (Louisa) who has grown coarser, 
 with a bad complexion a rather striking-look 
 ing Jewish cast of physiognomy, with long love 
 locks, attracted my eye, and she said, " That 
 is Disraeli, would you like to know him?" 
 " Pray," said he, " are you related to the great 
 American author the author of the Spanish 
 Histories ? " I squeezed his arm, telling him 
 that I could not answer for the greatness, but 
 I was the man himself ; and though at first he 
 was a little confused as one or two near 
 smiled at the blunder we had a merry 
 chat. 
 
166 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 June 11, 1850. 
 
 The lunch [with Ford] was all Spanish, 
 Spanish wines, delicious ; Spanish dishes, 
 which good breeding forced me to taste, but 
 no power could force me to eat, for they were 
 hotter than the Inquisition. 
 
 June 30, 1850. 
 
 The Prince did me the honor to say a few 
 words to me. He asked me, of course, how long 
 I had been here, said he believed this was not 
 my first visit to the country, and expressed his 
 satisfaction that I had now repeated my visit. 
 To all which I replied with wonderful pre 
 sence of mind, " Your Royal Highness does 
 me honor." I was introduced, by the bye, at 
 Hallam s the other day, to a gentleman whom 
 I thought he called Ld. Aberdeen. Hallam in 
 introducing me made a little flourish about my 
 being already known, etc., and as I like to 
 give tit for tat on such occasions, as far as 
 may be, I said, " And the name of the person 
 to whom I have the honor of being intro 
 duced is also known wherever the Anglo-Saxon 
 race is to be found." Afterwards at dinner I 
 
THE ENGLISH VISIT 167 
 
 observed that this individual with whom I had 
 then no further talk, seemed very shy when 
 ever I attempted to address him across the 
 table. On my asking the lady next me if this 
 was not Lord Aberdeen she said it was Lord 
 Harry Vane. 
 
 LONDON, July 18, 1850. 
 
 Lockhart showed us the diary of Sir Walter. 
 He (Lockhart) had two copies of it printed for 
 himself. One of them was destroyed in printing 
 the memoir, for which he made extracts. One 
 he did not make because the party was living. 
 It was this : " We dined at Sam Rogers etc. 
 He told me that it was recommended to print 
 the Italian on the opposite pages of Rose s 
 translation of Ariosto, in order the better to 
 understand the English. " 
 
 LONDON, September 4, 1850. 
 Just seen old Rogers, for the last time, 
 Cato the Censor Atticized. He was in his draw 
 ing-room, preparing to go to Brighton, and says 
 he has humbugged the world this time. 
 
 Rogers had been desperately ill and not ex 
 pected to live hence the " humbug." 
 
168 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 For a contemporary English account of the 
 impression which Prescott made upon the Eng 
 lish society in which he was so welcome, an 
 extract may be taken from a privately printed 
 memoir by Sir William Stirling : 
 
 " Amongst the many occasions when it was 
 the good fortune of the author of this sketch 
 to meet Mr. Prescott, there is one which has 
 especially stamped itself on his memory. It 
 was on a delightful summer day, at a dinner 
 given at the 4 Trafalgar, at Greenwich, by Mr. 
 Murray, of Albemarle Street. Of that small 
 and well-chosen circle, the brightest lights are, 
 alas ! already quenched. The festive humor of 
 Ford will no more enliven the scene he loved 
 so well ; nor will the wit of Lockhart and the 
 wisdom of Hallam evermore brighten or adorn 
 banquets like that at which they met their 
 fellow-laborer from the New World. Every 
 thing was in perfection, the weather, the 
 preliminary stroll beneath the great chestnut- 
 trees in Greenwich Park, the cool upper room 
 with its balcony overhanging the river, the 
 dinner, from the prefatory water-souchy to 
 the ultimate deviled white-bait, the assortment, 
 
THE ENGLISH VISIT 169 
 
 spirits, and conversation of the guests. On our 
 return to town in the cool of the summer night, 
 it was the good fortune of the present writer 
 to sit beside Mr. Prescott, on the box of the 
 omnibus which Mr. Murray had chartered for 
 his party. It was there that the historian re 
 lated to him the fortunes of his first historical 
 work. He likewise described with great zest 
 a more recent incident of his life. Some days 
 before that, he had dined with the late Sir 
 Robert Peel. With the punctuality which was 
 very noticeable amidst all the bustle of Mr. 
 Prescott s endless London engagements, he was 
 in Whitehall gardens at the precise moment 
 indicated on the card of invitation. It followed, 
 as a natural result, that he was for some min 
 utes the sole occupant of the drawing-room. 
 In due time, Sir Robert walked in, very bland 
 and a little formal, somewhat more portly than 
 he appeared on the canvas of Lawrence, some 
 what less rotund than he was wont to be fig 
 ured in the columns of Punch. Although 
 not personally known to his host, Mr. Prescott 
 took for granted that his name had been an 
 nounced. It was to his great surprise, there- 
 
170 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 fore, that he found himself addressed in French. 
 He replied in the same language, inly musing 
 whether he had been mistaken for somebody 
 else, or whether to speak French to all persons 
 from beyond the sea was the etiquette of Brit 
 ish statesmanship, or the private predilection 
 of Peel. After some introductory topics had 
 been got over, he was still further mystified 
 by finding the dialogue turned towards the 
 drama, and being complimented on his great 
 success in that unfamiliar walk of letters. The 
 astonished historian was making the reply which 
 his native modesty dictated, when a second 
 guest, a friend of his own, entered, and ad 
 dressed both of them in English. Mr. Prescott 
 had been mistaken for M. Scribe, a blun 
 der ludicrous enough to those who know the 
 contrast that existed between the handsome 
 person of the historian, and the undistinguished 
 appearance of the most prolific of modern play 
 wrights. By a curious chance, M. Scribe did 
 not arrive until a large party of political and 
 literary celebrities were seated at dinner, and 
 Mr. Prescott concluded his story by remarking 
 
THE ENGLISH VISIT 171 
 
 on the graceful kindness with which Sir Rob 
 ert hastened to meet him at the door, and 
 smoothed the foreigner s way to a place amongst 
 strangers." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 PERSONAL TRAITS 
 
 GEORGE HILLARD, writing to Prescott in 1844, 
 spoke impulsively of "that warm heart of 
 yours which makes those who have the privi 
 lege of being your friends entirely forget that 
 you are a great historian, and only think of 
 you as a person to be loved." This is but one 
 of a hundred testimonies to Prescott s extraor 
 dinary personal charm that might be cited. 
 He was a universal social favorite. " If I were 
 asked," said Theophilus Parsons, " to name the 
 man whom I have known whose coming was 
 most sure to be hailed as a pleasant event by 
 all whom he approached, I should not only 
 place Prescott at the head of the list, but I 
 could not place any other man near him." It 
 was not that he was a professional diner-out, 
 still less the even more portentous being, a pro 
 fessional teller of stories and retailer of smart 
 sayings. Prescott used sometimes to make 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS 173 
 
 horrible puns, it is true, but his social manner 
 had its immense attraction mainly through un 
 failing kindness, unerring sympathy, and viva 
 cious good spirits which nothing could depress. 
 It was his simplicity and spontaneity which 
 delighted everybody. This is illustrated by a 
 letter from Mr. G. T. Curtis to Mr. Hillard. 
 " Prescott, the historian," he writes, " not yet 
 an author, was at that time in the full flush of 
 his early manhood, running over with animal 
 spirits, which his studies and self-discipline 
 could not quench ; talking with a joyous aban 
 don, laughing at his own inconsequences, recov 
 ering himself gayly, and going on again in a 
 graver strain, which soon gave way to some 
 new joke or brilliant sally. Wherever he came 
 there was always a fillip to the discourse, be 
 it of books or society, or reminiscences of for 
 eign travel, or the news of the day." 
 
 Sometimes this native spontaneity of his 
 betrayed him into an unconscious malapropos. 
 " What have I said ? " he would cry out when 
 he saw his wife, who kept a dutiful watch upon 
 these lapses of his, looking at him severely. 
 Once a titled Englishwoman was arguing with 
 
174 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 him in his own home on the subject of Amer 
 icanisms. She objected strongly to our use of 
 the word " snarl " in the sense of confusion. 
 " Why, surely," spoke up Prescott in all inno 
 cence, "you would say that your ladyship s 
 hair is in a snarl ? " As such unfortunately 
 was the case at the moment and it was the 
 day of smooth braids and polished bands 
 the visitor had to cool her wrath by remem 
 bering that her host was blind. He used to 
 enjoy little dinners which he called " crony- 
 ings." His friend from boyhood, Gardiner, 
 describes one of the latest of these occa 
 sions : 
 
 " It was at my own house, either on the last 
 day of January, or one of the earliest days of 
 February, 1858. It was a party so small that 
 it hardly deserves the name. Prescott and two 
 of his most intimate friends, besides myself 
 and my family, were all who filled a small 
 round table. He had suffered during the past 
 year from frequent and severe headaches ; a 
 source of more uneasiness to his friends than 
 to himself, for he never attributed these head 
 aches to what the event proved them to be. He 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS 175 
 
 thought them either neuralgic, or a new phase 
 of his old enemy, rheumatism ; nothing that 
 required extraordinary care. For a few days 
 past he had been unusually free from them, 
 and this day he was particularly bright and 
 clear. From the beginning he was in one of 
 his most lively and amusing moods. The la 
 dies were induced by it to linger longer at 
 the table than usual. When they had left, the 
 whole company was reduced to only a party 
 of four, but of very old friends, each of whom 
 was stored with many reminiscences of like 
 occasions, running far back into younger days. 
 Prescott overflowed with the full tide of mirth 
 belonging to those days. It was a gush of rare 
 enjoyment. After nearly five years, the date 
 at which I write, I cannot recall a thing that 
 was said. Probably nothing was said in itself 
 worth recalling, nothing that would bear to 
 stand alone on cold paper. But all that quick- 
 wittedness, lively repartee, sparkling humor, 
 exceeding naivete, and droll manner of saying 
 droll things, for which he was so remarkable 
 when he let himself out with perfect freedom, 
 were brought into full play. And then he 
 
176 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 laughed, as he only could laugh, at next to 
 nothing, when he was in one of these moods, 
 and made us inevitably laugh too, almost as 
 the Cambridge professor did according to his 
 own story. He stayed, too, considerably be 
 yond his usual time, the rarest of all things 
 with him. But he had come bent on having 
 * a good time, it was so long, he said, since 
 he had had one, and laid out for it accord 
 ingly. 
 
 " On comparing notes a few days afterwards 
 with the two friends who were present, we all 
 agreed that we had not seen the great his 
 torian for years in such a state of perfect 
 youthful abandonment." 
 
 From the pen of Samuel Eliot we have an 
 account of the home life of Prescott at his 
 country place in Pepperell. Here the man of 
 whom a friend said that he " could be happy 
 in more ways and more happy in every one 
 of them than any other person I have ever 
 known," passed his happiest hours. Work went 
 on as usual, but did not seem to be his princi 
 pal interest. This lay in "the enjoyment of 
 the family and the friends forming a portion 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS 177 
 
 of the family ; the drive or the walk ; the gay 
 dinner ; the evening with readings, but oftener 
 and more delightfully with games and songs." 
 One game in particular was an especial favor 
 ite with Prescott. It was called Albano, be 
 cause introduced by some young friends of his 
 who had played it in Rome. It was really only 
 a variant of Puss in the Corner. The players 
 chose names from the four quarters of the 
 globe ; but the one which Prescott took, and 
 which he never shouted out without provoking 
 tumultuous outbursts of glee, was Nessitisset. 
 It was the name of the stream flowing by his 
 farm. Eliot also tells of a comic dispute which 
 once occurred at Pepperell between Prescott 
 an& his uncle, Isaac Davis. The old gentle 
 man complained of growing deaf, but Prescott 
 maintained that his uncle s hearing was as 
 good as his own. To decide the matter, he had 
 his wife hang an old-fashioned watch at the end 
 of the room, and the two men advanced slowly 
 towards it to determine which could first hear 
 the ticking. " Do you hear it, Davis ? " " No." 
 "Neither do I." So on, step by step, until 
 in amazement Prescott put his ear actually 
 
178 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 to the timepiece. " Susan ! the thing is n t 
 going ! " he cried to the sly woman who had 
 stopped it. 
 
 " He is forty-five," wrote Sumner of Prescott 
 in 1841, "but with the freedom and warmth 
 and frolic of a boy." This boyish spirit and well 
 ing gayety Prescott carried into his work as 
 well as his social relaxation. One of his secre 
 taries wrote that whenever the historian came 
 to describe some stirring scene, like a battle, 
 he would humorously key himself up to it by 
 bursting into song. One favorite was a ballad, 
 beginning, " O, give me but my Arab steed ! " 
 He was fond of music. Sentimental songs 
 would sometimes set him weeping. " They are 
 only my opera tears," he would explain. This 
 was one sign of that " simplicity in which 
 nobleness of nature most largely shares," to 
 quote the words of Thucydides which Professor 
 Felton applied to Prescott after his death. 
 Such tributes could be indefinitely multiplied. 
 " One of the most frank, amiable, warm-hearted, 
 and open-hearted of human beings," wrote Hil- 
 lard ; and added, "Of all men I have known 
 he was most generally beloved." It might be 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS 179 
 
 said of Prescott, as Sydney Smith said of 
 Mackintosh, that " the gall-bladder was omit 
 ted in his composition." " Not a single unkind 
 or harsh or sneering expression," testifies one 
 of his secretaries, " could be found in any of 
 the hundreds of letters I wrote at his dicta 
 tion." The same may be said of his private 
 journals. Not a line of them need be blotted. 
 This man had that even sweetness of temper 
 and exhaustless benevolence which can endure 
 the searching test of impressions made upon 
 children and servants. He was not a hero to 
 his valet, but was something better a man 
 to win the undying respect and love of all who 
 served him in humblest offices. All his private 
 secretaries had an almost unbounded affection 
 for him. To children, his appearance was like 
 a burst of sunshine. He could instantly be 
 come the playfellow of the youngest. He him 
 self had a sweet tooth. In his early travels he 
 carefuUy noted, after sampling, the confection 
 ery of the various countries he visited. Until 
 within a few years a Boston druggist was liv 
 ing who used to supply Prescott regularly with 
 licorice root that child s dainty of a ruder 
 
180 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 age ! His grandchildren recall the little packets 
 of it which, with other sweets, he always had 
 ready for them. 
 
 With his innocent fondness for the good 
 things of life, and his expansive social nature, 
 Prescott often found it difficult to adhere to 
 hours and plans of work. He did not, with 
 Tyndall, hold society to be the great enemy of 
 science, yet he sometimes found the tax paid 
 to friendship onerous. A boon companion of 
 his youth gives an early instance of the way in 
 which pleasure struggled with his rule of quit 
 ting any company by ten o clock. 
 
 " Mr. Prescott was the entertainer, at a re 
 staurateur s, of an invited company of young 
 men of the bon vivant order. He took that 
 mode sometimes of giving a return dinner to 
 avoid intruding too much on the hospitality of 
 his father s roof, as well as to put at ease the 
 sort of company which promised exuberant 
 mirth. His dinner hour was set early ; pur 
 posely, no doubt, that all might be well over 
 in good season. But it proved to be a pro 
 longed festivity. Under the brilliant auspices 
 of their host, who was never in higher spirits, 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS 181 
 
 the company became very gay, and not at all 
 disposed to abridge their gayety, even after a 
 reasonable number of hours. As the hour of 
 ten drew near, I noticed that Prescott was 
 beginning to get a little fidgety, and to drop 
 some hints, which no one seemed willing to 
 take, for no one present, unless it were my 
 self, was aware that time was of any more 
 importance to our host than it was to many 
 of his guests. Presently, to the general sur 
 prise, the host himself got up abruptly, and 
 addressed the company nearly as follows : 
 Really, my friends, I am very sorry to be 
 obliged to tear myself from you at so very 
 unreasonable an hour ; but you seem to have 
 got your sitting-breeches on for the night. I 
 left mine at home, and must go. But I am 
 sure you will be very soon in no condition 
 to miss me, especially as I leave behind 
 that excellent representative, - - pointing to a 
 basket of several yet uncorked bottles, which 
 stood in a corner. Then you know, he added, 
 you are just as much at home in this house as 
 I am. You can call for what you like. Don t 
 be alarmed, I mean on my account. I aban- 
 
182 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 don to you, without reserve, all my best wine, 
 my credit with the house, and my reputation 
 to boot. Make free with them all, I beg of 
 you, and, if you don t go home till morning, 
 I wish you a merry night of it. With this he 
 was off, and the Old South clock, hard by, was 
 heard to strike ten at the instant." 
 
 A few extracts from the journals will further 
 light up this point : 
 
 November 10, 1839. "Diverted too much 
 by passing objects children s recitations, 
 talking, etc. Another year arrange what hours 
 children may occupy the library [at Pepperell] 
 how often ask questions about their lessons, 
 and allow a definite time for them not to be 
 exceeded." . . . 
 
 February 6, 1842. " Have not been superin- 
 dustrious on the contrary, I have got through 
 with Dickens, who dined with me yesterday, 
 and as the lions are all done up, I suspect, 
 for the season, I will be true and hearty, al 
 most exclusive, in my own work till May 4, 
 say, my birthday. My daily labor and my 
 thoughts by night. Eschew company, especially 
 dining." . . . 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS 183 
 
 September 4, 1842. " Company company 
 company ! It will make me a misanthrope. 
 And yet there is something very interesting 
 and instructive in the conversation of travel 
 ers from distant regions. Last week we had 
 Calderon just from Mexico Stephens 
 from Central America and Yucatan, General 
 Harlan from Afghanistan, where he com 
 manded the native troops for many years. 
 But what has it all to do with the Conquest 
 of Mexico ?" . . . 
 
 September 8, 1842. " I am here [Pepperell] 
 40 miles from all enemies and friends, worse 
 than enemies except a few dear ones." . . . 
 
 November 16, 1842. " I will see if I can t 
 adopt some rules which shall secure me as 
 much time in town as country." . . . 
 
 June 24,1843. "Nahant! To-day I have been 
 settling, clearing the decks for action. Now 
 if I don t make the powder and shot fly ! I will 
 be out to everybody. I will have but one idea. 
 I will be a free man by September first week. 
 I will not invite nor will I go out to dine, and 
 very rarely have company once or twice 
 only and that only at Nahant, and not sit 
 
184 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 long then. I will answer letters short hand, 
 and economize every way, eyes and time. . . . 
 The very day of this entry a stranger came to 
 Nahant and, being refused admittance I be 
 ing out staid over night and passed all 
 the evening with us. He came, he said, to 
 Boston to see me, so what could I do less ? 
 What then becomes of the Conquest ? 01 /xot 
 It is no joke." . . . 
 
 December 14, 1845. " Twaddle twaddle ! 
 ... I will make regular hebdomadal entries 
 of my laziness. I think I can t stand the repe 
 tition of such records long. ... I may find 
 some apology in the demi-winter days, and in 
 an influx of visiting friends in my new quar 
 ters and be hanged to them not the quar 
 ters, but the friends." . . . 
 
 October 1, 1855. " Pepperell. I shall have 
 at least the sense of sweet security from friends 
 the worst foes to time." 
 
 The kindest and most considerate of men, 
 Prescott inherited much of the active philan 
 thropy of his mother. He was interested in 
 many public charities. Particularly to the 
 Perkins Institution for the Blind did he give 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS 185 
 
 time and money. " Much occupied the iast ten 
 days with the affairs of the Blind," is an entry 
 of May 9, 1833, not without its pathetic sug 
 gestion. He had his private pensioners as well, 
 some of whom were passed on to him, so to 
 speak, from that lady bountiful, his mother. 
 One of his secretaries tells us that he regularly 
 gave away one tenth of his income. The latter 
 was figured, in the late forties (of course, after 
 his father had died), at upwards of $12,000 a 
 year. It spelled luxury for the times. Pres- 
 cott s methods in almsgiving were not always, 
 one fears, such as would commend themselves 
 to the Charity Organization Society. Here is 
 a specimen of his minute accounts, written 
 down after taking a walk : 
 
 " Apple 2 newspaper 2 gloves 1.00 
 charity 25." During his stay in London he 
 employed a valet, one Penn (" a Penn I will 
 not cut," was his punning aside to his wife), 
 who, he wrote home, would be " perfectly in 
 valuable if he did not drink, to which he has 
 an amiable inclination." There is something 
 human in the addition, " I will let him get 
 drunk once before I part with him." 
 
186 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 Prescott s Boston home was for twenty-eight 
 years with his father on Bedford Street. The 
 house was spacious and the scene of warm hos 
 pitality. " Shall I ever forget," wrote Lady 
 Lyell to Prescott in 1857, " the Thanksgiving 
 in Bedford Street ? Never, as long as I live. 
 It is now more than fifteen years ago, but still 
 I see the rooms, the dinner table, the blind- 
 man s-buff, and the adjournment to your study 
 to see Lord Kingsborough s 4 Mexico. " After 
 Judge Prescott s death, the son bought, in 1845, 
 the house on Beacon Street, No. 55, where the 
 remainder of his life was passed. A vivid re 
 minder of the changes which time has brought 
 in the city s topography may be had from a 
 descriptive sentence of Prescott s own : " My 
 house is in Beacon Street looking on the Com 
 mon, which is an uncommonly fine situation, 
 commanding a noble view of land and water." 
 
 But he never passed the entire twelvemonth 
 in the city. Indeed, his personal preference 
 would appear to have been for life in the coun 
 try throughout the year. " I have found the 
 country favorable to industry, health, and gen 
 eral cheerfulness." 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS 187 
 
 October 6, 1844. " How much more correct 
 is the estimate one makes of life and the ob 
 jects of life of character and of pleasures, 
 in the silent solitudes of the country, than in 
 the bustling haunts and senseless hurly-burly 
 of the city ! And with my contemplated pur 
 suits how much more congenial! Yet should 
 I not be lonely without a family around 
 me?" 
 
 It was, in fact, the educational advantages 
 for his children which the city could offer that 
 turned the scale. Still he clung to the country 
 for what he called his " chronic " residence, 
 prolonging the season out of town. Besides 
 the ancestral house at Pepperell, he had a 
 cottage at Nahant where he used to spend the 
 earlier summer months. About this home he 
 had two minds. Sometimes it was a " para 
 dise." Again, when fogs and chill air made 
 his rheumatism more acute, he was tempted to 
 say that it should be " nae haunt of mine." 
 Indeed, in the later years of his life, he gave 
 up the site on the rocky promontory, and 
 bought a house on the shore of Lynn Bay, six 
 miles away. The many months thus passed 
 
188 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 by the sea probably account for the nautical 
 metaphors frequent in Prescott s letters and 
 journals ; but it does not appear that he 
 was fond of sailing. His favorite exercise was 
 walking and riding. At Nahant "Prescott s 
 Walk " is still pointed out, and he used to 
 do miles back and forth under the trees at 
 Pepperell. Horseback riding he kept up with 
 the utmost regularity. An entry in the 
 journal shows the regimen of one who 
 might have posed for Emerson s " athletic 
 scholar." 
 
 August 10, 1845. " Ride in saddle before 
 breakfast, 1| h. Walk | h. at noon under my 
 orchard shade. Drive 1| h. in evening. Walk 
 a mile. So, pretty fair for exercise." 
 
 The historian s method of work has been 
 described in preceding pages. It was imposed 
 upon him through his having, like Thierry, to 
 "make friends with darkness." One result 
 was to develop an extraordinary power of 
 memory. He not only composed while riding 
 or walking, but carried whole pages, even 
 chapters, in his head with verbal accuracy. 
 He could even amend and alter as freely as if 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS 189 
 
 the written page lay before him. What range 
 and grasp his memory had at its prime may be 
 inferred from knowing that, when on the third 
 volume of "Philip II," he complained of the 
 fact that he could not perfectly command more 
 than forty printed pages as a proof of failing 
 powers. At the time of his father s death he 
 noted that the " shock " wiped out the pages 
 he then had in mind " as completely as though 
 with a sponge." His library and study were 
 real workshops. A homely touch is given by 
 one of his private secretaries, who tells us that 
 twenty pairs of old shoes were piled on a step- 
 ladder that stood in a corner. Prescott s jour 
 nal he kept largely out of methodic bent. But 
 he once wrote in it : 
 
 June 28, 1849. " I have ever found it a 
 great stimulus to industry to be able to talk 
 thus to myself. But I cannot do this if there 
 is another looking over my shoulder if I 
 write for another to transcribe." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Let the entries be brief and practical, and 
 set down naught from vanity, which would be 
 very silly and misplaced here. Yet when will 
 
190 WILLIAM HICKL1NG PRESCOTT 
 
 not that pitiful failing creep in ? Was there 
 ever a creature too humble not to have some 
 store of it ? " 
 
 The admonitory entries are as thick in Pres- 
 cott s diary as they were in Dr. Johnson s. 
 One amusing resort of his to flog himself along 
 was his habit of imposing a money forfeit upon 
 the failure to complete a given task by a day 
 fixed. This device he appears to have taken 
 up while still in college. Very early in his 
 journals we find traces of the custom. Thus 
 one of his " Maxims of Composition " written 
 down almost at the beginning reads : " Pay a 
 forfeit if you read a word as you are writing 
 it if you look over the last 3 lines you have 
 written, except it be impossible after trying 
 to recollect them (you may at last 3 words), 
 if you review any except 2 pages when I be 
 gin to write in the day. ... I may read what 
 has been written on the same day in which I 
 take this liberty, provided it shall be absolutely 
 necessary to write further." Later, he com 
 muted his system of forfeits into a plan of 
 making wagers (the odds heavily against him 
 self) with his private secretaries. A memo- 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS 191 
 
 randum of one of them survives, and runs as 
 follows : 
 
 "June 4 th 1846. This memorandum is to 
 witness that a bet of one dollar to fifty dol 
 lars has been made between E. B. Otis and 
 W^ H. Prescott Esq., the latter betting fifty 
 dollars that he will read for, compose and 
 write one hundred pages of his History of 
 Peru in a hundred days, the days to be 
 counted from the fourth day of June, 1846, 
 inclusive, making due allowance for the ex- 
 cepted days hereinafter specified. 
 
 " This bet shall be renewed at the end of 
 the hundred days (the amount, conditions and 
 exceptions of the second bet being the same 
 in every particular with those herein recited) ; 
 unless Mr. Prescott shall, within two days 
 from the expiration of the first period of a 
 hundred days, enter on this memorandum a 
 written statement of his desire to dissolve the 
 Bet. If the History, including the Postscripts, 
 should not hold out, but should fall short of 
 the second hundred pages, the wager shall be 
 construed pro rata, that is, Mr. Prescott shall 
 lose his second bet of fifty dollars unless he 
 
192 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 finishes the remainder of his History at the 
 rate of a page a day, (reckoning the days from 
 the expiration of the first hundred days) for 
 every day after the determination of the first 
 wager till the work is finished, with the follow 
 ing exceptions. 
 
 " The days to be excepted when calculating 
 the result of either bet are these, viz : 
 
 " When Mr. Prescott is absent from town 
 for a day or more, also a day before and after 
 return, also two days must be allowed for 
 moving to Nahant, to Boston and to Pepperell, 
 each ; or when prevented from study by the 
 sickness of himself or friends for a day or 
 more, or by the occurrence of any unforeseen 
 
 (to be determined himself) also 
 
 event A that might occupy him otherwise, A the 
 days employed in writing the Memoir of Mr. 
 Pickering ; (Writing letters is not an unfore 
 seen event ;) also the days that gentlemen vis 
 itors stay in the house with Mr. Prescott. No 
 days shall be excepted but those herein speci 
 fied, and entered on this sheet. 
 
 " Weakness of the eyes shall not count as 
 illness unless upon such days as Mr. Prescott 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS 193 
 
 cannot read himself 2 hours and has not his 
 
 the latter, (when Mr. Prescott is unable to read said two hours) 
 
 secretary with him, or A from any cause is un- 
 
 Mr. Prescott 
 
 able to read 3 hours on any day when A is not 
 employed in composing text of a chapter and 
 except working (not reading) causes pain. 
 
 exclusive of reading 
 
 " If working A causes pain for several days 
 Mr. Prescott has a right to dissolve this agree 
 ment. 
 
 " Signed June 4^ 
 
 " W* H. PRESCOTT, 
 " EDMUND B. OTIS. 
 
 " I promise on my honor as a gentleman not 
 to release Mr. Prescott from any forfeiture 
 that he may incur by this engagement except 
 in such cases as are provided for in the con 
 tract this contract being made at his desire 
 for his own accommodation solely. 
 
 " EDMUND B. OTIS. 
 "Days excepted June 7-21, 25, 26, 28, 
 
 July 6-14." 
 
 Prescott always took this betting on his own 
 industry with perfect seriousness. Sometimes 
 he would radiantly greet his secretary with 
 " You have lost ! You owe me a dollar." And 
 
194 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 he would exact payment. Occasionally he would, 
 with woebegone countenance, produce and pay 
 over to the protesting secretary the twenty or 
 thirty dollars he himself had lost. It was Pres- 
 cott s one "oddity," according to a friend. 
 Madame de Sevigne, who had a similar habit, 
 called it a sottise. " Je reviens a nos lectures : 
 c est sans prejudice de Cleopatre [a romance 
 in twelve octavo volumes] que j ai gage d ache- 
 ver (vous savez comme je soutiens mes ga- 
 geures) : je songe quelquefois d oii vient la folie 
 que j ai pour ces sottises-la." 
 
 Three children survived Prescott. The 
 happy marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to 
 James Lawrence gave him much pleasure, 
 though he wrote : " What shall I do with two 
 nurseries grandchildren and a that ? " His 
 first daughter he lost in childhood. It was for 
 this four-year-old Catherine that, at the end 
 of one of his noctograph letters to his wife, 
 written from Philadelphia, Prescott printed a 
 sentence with most painstaking care : "I love 
 little Kitty, and will buy her a work box in 
 New York if she is a good girl." But on Feb 
 ruary 1, 1829, this eldest child died. The event 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS 195 
 
 was, to her father, not only a source of pro 
 found sorrow, but the occasion of driving him 
 to a close examination of the foundations of 
 his religious faith. " The death of my dearest 
 daughter," he wrote in his journal, "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 in reviewing the evidences 
 of the Christian religion." To this work, with 
 characteristic thoroughness, he devoted many 
 weeks. In company with his father, "an old 
 and cautious lawyer," he read thoroughly the 
 various standard works on the Evidences, for 
 and against. His conclusion was that the Gos 
 pel narratives were authentic, though he did 
 not find in them the doctrines commonly ac 
 counted orthodox, and deliberately recorded 
 his rejection of the dogmas of " eternal damna 
 tion, the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, Election 
 and Original Sin." Theologically, therefore, 
 he confirmed his belief in that more liberal 
 form of Unitarianism in which he had been 
 reared. Practically, he was one to make ob 
 servers say that his creed couldn t be wrong, 
 
196 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 so reverent and pure was his life, and so filled 
 with goodness. Yet it was this gentle and tol 
 erant man, abounding in all charity of thought 
 and deed, whom a reviewer in the Baltimore 
 " Catholic Magazine " dubbed a " bigot," while 
 the Dublin " Quarterly Keview " breathed a 
 prayer for his " conversion from spiritual error." 
 Prescott s sole comment in his journal was : 
 " As I have always considered charity as the 
 foundation of every honest creed, whether re 
 ligious or political, I don t believe I deserve 
 the name of bigot." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 POLITICAL SYMPATHIES 
 
 IT was apropos of Prescott, I believe, that 
 John Quincy Adams made the remark, "A 
 great historian has neither politics nor re 
 ligion." He meant, of course, bias as a writer. 
 But as regards politics, at any rate, it has 
 been commonly thought that the saying was 
 literally true of Prescott. Ticknor dismisses 
 this aspect of the man in a cold sentence 
 or two. Nor, in fact, did Prescott ever take 
 such a close and keen interest in the pageant 
 of present politics, which makes future history, 
 as did, for example, that other historian, Dr. 
 Thomas Arnold. Brought up a conservative 
 Whig, and kept by physical limitations as 
 well as by his chosen pursuits from the hurly- 
 burly of actual participation in public affairs, 
 it was only late in life that he gave evidence of 
 being deeply stirred by the conflict of political 
 doctrines which foreshadowed the Civil War. 
 
198 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 At once a test and illustration of his attitude 
 we may see in his relations with Charles Sum- 
 ner. Friends early and until parted by death, 
 the two men had, at first, little in common, po 
 litically. Prescott had a great admiration for 
 Sunnier, and stood by him personally and 
 socially when all blue-blooded Boston turned 
 its very cold shoulder upon the man whose 
 radicalism, Ticknor said, had placed him out 
 side "the pale of society." Apropos of this 
 early obloquy, Prescott wrote to Sumner in 
 1851, reminding him how Judge Story had 
 suffered from " the bitterness of party feeling," 
 and adding, " Boston is worse than New York 
 in this respect." Yet Sumner understood per 
 fectly that Prescott did not go with him polit 
 ically. Writing to Lord Morpeth in 1847, he 
 said, " Prescott shakes his head because I have 
 anything to do with the thing [slavery]. His 
 insensibility to it is a perfect bathos. This is 
 wrong : I wish you would jar him a little on 
 this side." Yet it was only six years later, 
 when Sumner made his great speech in the 
 Senate on the repeal of the Missouri Compro 
 mise, that Prescott wrote, " I don t see but 
 
 
POLITICAL SYMPATHIES 199 
 
 what all Boston has got round; in fact, we 
 must call Sumner the Massachusetts Senator." 
 Brooks s assault on Sumner roused Prescott 
 as no display of the slavery spirit had before 
 done. " You have escaped the crown of mar 
 tyrdom," he wrote to his friend, " by a narrow 
 chance, and have got all the honors, which are 
 almost as dangerous to one s head as a gutta- 
 percha cane. There are few in old Massachu 
 setts, I can assure you, who do not feel that 
 every blow on your cranium was a blow on 
 them." And when the Senator returned to 
 receive the homage of Boston, Prescott and his 
 family waved a welcome to him, as the proces 
 sion passed, from the balcony of their Beacon- 
 Street house. Calling on Sumner the next 
 day, the historian told him that if he had 
 known there were to be decorations and in 
 scriptions on the houses he should have placed 
 on his own these words : 
 
 " May 22, 1856. 
 
 " * Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, 
 Whilst bloody treason flourish d over us. " 
 
 Sumner, on his part, was loyalty itself to the 
 man with whom, as he testified, his relations 
 
200 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 "had for years been of peculiar intimacy. 
 " This death," he wrote to Longfellow, when, in 
 France, he heard of Prescott s end, "touches 
 me much. Perhaps no man, so much in peo 
 ple s mouths, was ever the subject of so little 
 unkindness. Something of that immunity which 
 he enjoyed in life must be referred to his 
 beautiful nature, in which enmity could not 
 live." To the widow, five years later, Sumner 
 wrote, on occasion of the publication of Tick- 
 nor s " Life of Prescott : " " The past has been 
 revived. ... I have felt keenly how much I 
 was permitted to enjoy and how much I have 
 lost. Those evenings in the darkened room in 
 Bedford Street, with the kind, sparkling, in 
 timate talk on books, history, friends abroad 
 and at home; the pleasant suppers below, 
 where were the venerable parents, so good and 
 cordial ; then as I became absorbed in public 
 affairs, the constant friendship which we main 
 tained ; the welcome he always gave me on 
 my return from "Washington; our free con 
 versations on public affairs and public men ; 
 and perhaps more than all things else his 
 tender sympathy as he sat by my bedside, 
 
POLITICAL SYMPATHIES 201 
 
 revealing how his heart was moved, only a 
 short time before the summons came to himself 
 all these I think of, and in selfish sorrow I 
 grieve that he is gone." 
 
 To piece out the account of Prescott s polit 
 ical associations and gradual change of view, 
 the testimony of his private secretary, Mr. 
 Robert Carter, may be cited. Speaking of their 
 first acquaintance (1847), he wrote, " He was 
 a Conservative Whig as I a Free Soiler." 
 But he adds, " Ten years later, I had the plea 
 sure of knowing that he voted for Fremont for 
 President, and for Burlingame for Congress, 
 notwithstanding his high personal esteem for 
 his friend and neighbor, Mr. Appleton, the 
 candidate opposed to Burlingame." It would 
 be a mistake to class Prescott among abolition 
 ists, or even as pronounced against the aggres 
 sions of slavery ; but that his nature did not 
 fail to thrill under the indignities heaped upon 
 the free North, is made manifest in a letter 
 which he wrote to an Englishwoman in 1854 : 
 
 " We have had most alarming doings here 
 lately in the fugitive slave line. ... A regi 
 ment of the militia was called out, the streets 
 
202 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 in certain quarters were closed against passen 
 gers, and swords and muskets were flashing in 
 our eyes as if we had been in a state of siege. 
 " I am rather of the conservative order, you 
 know, but I assure you it made my blood boil 
 to see the good town placed under martial law 
 so unceremoniously for no other purpose than 
 to send back a runaway negro to his master. 
 It is a disagreeable business at any time, and 
 it was only a strong conviction of the claims 
 which the South had on us by virtue of the 
 Constitution, which made us one nation, that 
 induced our people to sign the famous Com 
 promise act of 1850. But the Nebraska Bill 
 looks to us so much like double dealing in the 
 matter that there is now a great apathy in 
 regard to our enforcing our own part of the 
 contract. Then the thing was carried here with 
 such a rash hand. The town was turned over to 
 the military by the mayor. . . . Every petty 
 captain of a militia corps was left to act at 
 his own discretion. In one case the guns were 
 leveled to fire on the multitude without any 
 notice to warn the people of the danger ; and 
 it was by a mere accident that a bloody fray 
 
POLITICAL SYMPATHIES 203 
 
 did not take place, which, if once begun, would 
 have put us in mourning for many a day. Old 
 Boston has rather a relish for rebellion, and 
 when it lay in the path, as it seemed to do 
 here, it required some restraining grace not to 
 pick it up. ... I am told the government 
 was quite willing we should dip our fingers in 
 rebellion. It knows it cannot have any sup 
 port, and for that reason would be very glad 
 to put us in the wrong with the rest of the 
 country. The Nebraska business has called up 
 a feeling which, though not Free Soil, or Aboli 
 tionist, is so near akin to them that they can 
 all work in the same harness." 
 
 It is, in truth, in Prescott s English corre 
 spondence that we find the workings of his 
 mind on American politics most clearly re 
 vealed. At one time, he is enlisting the sym 
 pathies and receiving the contributions of 
 English friends in behalf of a slave pre 
 sumably a fugitive. At another, he is discuss 
 ing with the Duke of Argyll or with Lord 
 Morpeth the fatal drift of slavery towards the 
 extinction of human rights. Not immediately 
 upon these themes, but on others which, after 
 
204 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 all, were kindred with them, a couple of un 
 published letters are of interest : 
 
 TO K. C. WINTHKOP 
 
 May 30, 1847. 
 
 Everything has gone well for you here, no 
 extra session of Congress, and none like to be. 
 We ride on conquering and to conquer, as you 
 see, up to the very Halls of Montezuma, and 
 many, I should think from the positive manner 
 they speak of them, expect to find the palace 
 of the old Aztec still standing. The Mexicans 
 have missed it in fighting pitched battles in 
 stead of trusting to a guerilla warfare. My 
 friend, General Miller, who has much expe 
 rience of the Spanish- American character, told 
 me that the guerilla was the only way by 
 which they could fight us with success ; and if 
 they pursued that system they would be invin 
 cible. They may trouble us yet in that way ; 
 but the capital and seaports seem destined to 
 come into our hands. But what shall we do 
 with them ? It will be a heavy drag on our 
 republican car, and the Creole blood will not 
 mix well with the Anglo-Saxon. Then there 
 
POLITICAL SYMPATHIES 205 
 
 will be the slavery question as a firebrand 
 which will keep you hot enough next winter 
 in the Capitol. 
 
 TO C. CUSHING 
 
 BOSTON, April 3, 1848. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, I should sooner have 
 thanked you for your friendly letter from the 
 environs of Mexico. You are in a position for 
 an accurate comprehension of my narrative 
 and the subject of it. And I shall be very glad 
 if the result does not lead to the detection 
 of greater inaccuracies than those you have 
 pointed out. 
 
 You have closed a campaign as brilliant as 
 that of the great conquistador himself, though 
 the Spaniards have hardly maintained the re 
 putation of their hardy ancestors. The second 
 conquest would seem a priori to be a matter 
 of as much difficulty as the first, considering 
 the higher civilization and military science of 
 the races who now occupy the country, but it 
 has not proved so, and my readers, I am 
 afraid, will think I have been bragging too 
 much of the valor of the old Spaniard. 
 
206 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 I hope we shall profit by the temporary pos 
 session of the capital to discover some of the 
 Aztec monuments and MSS. The Spanish ar 
 chives everywhere, both public and those be 
 longing to private families in Old Spain and 
 in the colonies, are rich in MSS., which are 
 hoarded up from the eye of the scholar as care 
 fully as if they were afraid of the facts coming 
 to light. Of late these collections have been 
 somewhat opened in the Peninsula. But such 
 repositories must exist in Mexico, and Senor 
 Alaman, formerly minister of foreign affairs, 
 has communicated some to me and made liberal 
 use of others in his own publications. If you 
 meet with him you will see one of the most 
 accomplished and clever men in Mexico. But 
 I hear he was in disgrace a year since from 
 his royalist predilections. Could you oblige 
 me by saying to him if you meet him, that I 
 am very desirous to send him my " Conquest 
 of Peru," and if he can let me know how to 
 do so I shall do it at once with great pleasure. 
 Have you met on the spot any of the Mexican 
 translations of my "Mexico"? The third vol 
 ume of one of them contains and is filled with 
 
POLITICAL SYMPATHIES 207 
 
 engravings taken from old pictures of the time 
 of the Conquest, at least so it purports. This 
 edition alone contains also some very learned 
 and well-considered criticism on different pas 
 sages of the work. I trust that your military 
 duties and dangers are now at an end, and 
 that Mexico will accept our propositions for 
 peace. It has been a war most honorable to 
 our arms, as all must admit, whatever we may 
 think of the wisdom of the counsels that rushed 
 us into it. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 "PHILIP II" 
 
 " You have had," wrote Dean Milman to 
 Prescott, in 1852, "I will not say the good 
 fortune, rather the judgment to choose noble 
 subjects." This was in connection with a 
 friendly inquiry how Philip II was getting on. 
 That last, and as it proved, unfinished work, 
 if it had a noble subject, was the occasion of 
 revealing nobility in the author. As the " Con 
 quest of Peru " links Prescott s name with 
 Markham, the " Philip II " does with Motley. 
 The story is well known. Motley made grate 
 ful public acknowledgment of the generous en 
 couragement and sympathy which he received 
 from the older historian. Going to him with 
 a proposal to abandon the field in which the 
 younger man had not known that Prescott was 
 working, the beginner was rather urged warmly 
 to continue his own researches, and was offered 
 every aid, including the loan of books and 
 
PHILIP II 209 
 
 manuscripts, within the power of the writer of 
 established reputation. It was a fine example 
 of passing on the torch of learning. As Mot 
 ley wrote appreciatively to Prescott from Paris, 
 in 1857, it was only a proof of the latter s 
 " untiring benevolence." He had previously 
 written from Florence, in 1855 : 
 
 " I thank you very much for your very 
 handsome allusion [in the Preface to " Philip 
 II "] to my forthcoming work which I am sure 
 in America at least will be of much value to 
 me. I hope you will take the trouble to read 
 the work when it appears (a copy will of course 
 be sent you) and that you will not be ashamed 
 afterwards of having complimented me on 
 trust. It is so much the fashion for literary 
 men and artists generally to look upon any 
 man in the street who is trying to get into the 
 omnibus as an intruder, and to bully him with 
 assurances that there is no room for him, that 
 I feel most sensibly your courtesy in trying to 
 make a place for me at your side, however, un 
 able or unworthy I may be of your kindness." 
 
 Prescott came early to have a high estimate 
 of Motley s powers. In a letter to Allibone, 
 
210 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 referring to one " whose path crosses my own 
 historic field," he said, " I can honestly bear 
 my testimony to the extent of his researches ; " 
 and added, with a touch of genuine criticism, 
 " every page is instinct with the love of free 
 dom." One recalls Motley s letter to his father, 
 expressing the patriotic satisfaction it gave 
 him to "pitch into the Duke of Alva and 
 Philip Second to my heart s content." Two 
 such differing natures as Prescott s and 
 Motley s excellently illustrate the personal 
 equation in the writing as well as the reading 
 of history. Dr. Holmes observed : " Those 
 who have known Motley and Prescott would 
 feel sure beforehand that the impulsive nature 
 of the one and the judicial serenity of the other 
 would as surely betray themselves in their writ 
 ings as in their conversation and in their every 
 movement." Motley himself shrewdly remarked 
 on this diversity of temperament in writing to 
 Prescott about the first volume of "Philip 
 II:"- 
 
 " I think there can be no doubt of the suc 
 cess of the work and that it will stand as high 
 as (or even higher than) any of your other 
 
PHILIP II 211 
 
 histories. I can vouch for its extraordinary 
 accuracy both of narration and of portrait 
 painting. You do not look at people or events 
 from my point of view, but I am therefore a 
 better witness as to your fairness and clearness 
 of delineation and statement. You have by 
 nature the judicial mind, which is the costume 
 de rigueur of all historians. Non equidem 
 invideo miror magis for I have n t the 
 least of it I am always in a passion when I 
 write and so shall be accused very justly 
 perhaps of the qualities for which Byron 
 commended Mitford, wrath and partiality. 
 Thus far you are very just to my idol, Wil 
 liam the Silent, a man whom it has been the 
 fashion for Catholic and Calvinist canters to 
 blacken for three centuries. Pray don t rely, 
 by the way, too much on Groen van Prin- 
 sterer s good opinion of Philip II. He is more 
 of a Jesuit than Father Strada, and a Cal 
 vinist monk is the most mischievous of all. 
 Cucullus non facit, etc. I allude of course 
 to his opinion of Philip himself not your 
 history of him, which I feel sure that he will 
 appreciate as highly as it deserves. I earnestly 
 
212 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 hope that you will have plenty of time and 
 health and eyesight to go on with the succeed 
 ing volumes of your history, and do not doubt 
 that they will be a? brilliant and as masterly 
 as these two. No one will welcome the follow 
 ing ones more than I shall do." 
 
 Professor Allen of Wisconsin University 
 thought that Prescott was somewhat " lacking 
 in indignation." He could not rival Motley 
 in pitching into Philip. His own Philip was 
 voted by Sir William Stirling-Maxwell to be, 
 so Motley wrote to his wife, " altogether too 
 mild and flattered a portraiture of that odious 
 personage." On the other hand, Prescott 
 thought Motley too hard on Philip. This ap 
 pears in the letter which he wrote to the author 
 of the " Dutch Republic " in April, 1856 : 
 
 BOSTON, April 28, 1856. 
 
 MY DEAK MOTLEY, I am much obliged 
 to you for the copy of the " History of the 
 Dutch Republic " which you have been so kind 
 as to send me. A work of that kind is not 
 to be run through in a few days, particularly 
 by one who does his reading chiefly through 
 
PHILIP II 213 
 
 his ears. I shall take my own time therefore 
 for going thoroughly through the book, which 
 I certainly shall do from beginning to end, 
 notes inclusive. Meantime I have yielded to 
 my impatience of seeing what sort of stuff it 
 is made of by pitching here and there into 
 various places, particularly those with which 
 I am most familiar myself and which would 
 be most likely to try your power as a writer. 
 The result of a considerable amount of read 
 ing in this way has satisfied me that you 
 have more than fulfilled the prediction which 
 I had made respecting your labors to the pub 
 lic. Everywhere you seem to have gone into 
 the subject with a scholar-like thoroughness 
 of research, furnishing me on my own beaten 
 track with a quantity of new facts and views, 
 which I was not aware it could present to 
 the reader. In one passage I remember, the 
 sack of St. Quentin, you give a variety of 
 startling and very interesting particulars, and 
 when I envied you the resources at your com 
 mand for supplying them to you, I found they 
 were all got from a number of the " Docu- 
 inentos Ineditos" which slept harmlessly on 
 
214 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 my shelves from my own unconsciousness that 
 it contained anything germane to the mat 
 ter. Your descriptions are everywhere graphic 
 and picturesque. One familiar with your ro 
 mances will not be surprised at your powers 
 in this way. But yet, after all, the style for 
 history is as different from what is required 
 for romance as that of a great historical picture 
 is from a scene painting for a theatre. You 
 prove that you possess both. Your portraiture 
 of character is vigorous and animated, full of 
 characteristic touches, from a pencil that is 
 dipped in the colors of the old masters. 
 
 You have laid it on Philip rather hard. 
 Indeed you have whittled him down to such 
 an imperceptible point that there is hardly 
 enough of him left to hang a newspaper para 
 graph on, much less five or six volumes of solid 
 history, as I propose to do. But then you 
 make it up with your own hero, William of 
 Orange, and I comfort myself with the reflec 
 tion that you are looking through a pair of 
 Dutch spectacles after all. As to the back 
 bone of the work, the unfolding of the great 
 revolution, I am not in a condition to criticise 
 
PHILIP II 215 
 
 that, as no one can be who has not read the 
 work carefully through. But I have conversed 
 with several, not merely your personal friends, 
 who have done so, and they bear emphatic 
 testimony to the power you have exhibited, in 
 presenting the subject in an original and 
 piquant way to the reader. Indeed you have 
 seen enough of criticism, probably, from the 
 presses of this country and of England, to sat 
 isfy you that the book has made a strong 
 impression upon the public mind and that it 
 must be entirely successful. There is one little 
 matter which I have heard quarreled with, and 
 which I must say I think is a mistake, but 
 which relates to the form not to the fonds of 
 the work that is, the headings of the chap 
 ters and the running titles of the pages. They 
 are so contrived as to show the author s wit, 
 but nothing of the contents of the book, and 
 have the disadvantage of giving a romantic 
 air which is out of place in history. 
 
 But this sort of criticism you may very 
 well think is like praising one for his intellec 
 tual, his moral [qualities], and all that, and 
 then taking exception to the cut of his waist- 
 
216 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 coat. You have good reason to be pleased with 
 the reception the book has had from the Eng 
 lish press, considering that you had no one 
 particularly to stand godfather to your bant 
 ling, but that it tumbled into the world almost 
 without the aid of a midwife. Under these cir 
 cumstances success is a great triumph. . . . 
 
 With my kindest regards to your wife, be 
 lieve me, dear Motley, 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 WM. H. PRESCOTT. 
 
 Like all Prescott s histories, "Philip II" 
 was long meditated. As early as December 6, 
 1845, his journal betrays incidentally where 
 his thoughts were turning. " I have the great 
 reign of Philip the Prudent to prosecute." 
 This was while the " Conquest of Peru " was 
 still in hand, and was adduced as one spur 
 more to press him on to its conclusion. Later 
 entries yield glimpses of the progress of the 
 work : - 
 
 March 1, 1848. ..." Being thus relieved 
 of all further solicitude in respect to the suc 
 cess of my last historical bantling, what re- 
 
PHILIP II 217 
 
 mained for me but to turn at once to my rich 
 mine of < Philip II ?" . . . 
 
 May 20, 1848. Kead carefully Ticknor s 
 MS. 4 History of Spanish Literature a most 
 thorough, scholar-like performance and impor 
 tant contribution to letters. Read also i. e. 
 listened to an ocean of newspapers the 
 staple of the day the age of revolutions. 
 What next?" . . . 
 
 September 9, 1848. [Pepperell.] Now 
 cannot I Philippize in these shades ? " . . . 
 
 October 27, 1848. " The last three weeks 
 have been lounging through the purlieus of 
 my subject. Is it to be mine ? " . . . 
 
 February 15, 1849. " I must economize time 
 by taking only the best authorities and the 
 MSS. The last I must approfondir the true 
 ammunition for the historian to fight his paper 
 battles with. ... If I do not make sensible 
 progress, I shall have no heart to go on at 
 all. After skimming along on a railroad as 
 I did in Peru, how can I feel enthusiasm 
 when limping like a blind beggar on foot? I 
 must make my brains somehow or other 
 save my eyes and my time too." . . . 
 
218 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 September 2, 1849. " Never so happy as 
 when fairly under weigh in composing. . . . 
 One great drag on me is the pain writing 
 occasions in the urethra, etc. . . . But pa- 
 zienza I must learn that at least from my 
 Spaniard." 
 
 November 25, 1849. " Mem. Whining 
 about my troubles unmans me, and is of itself 
 the worst augury. Making light of these 
 quiet energy, justifiable self-reliance, cheerful 
 views of life are the best guarantees of success 
 as I have hitherto succeeded. I will" 
 
 September 14, 1851. "I have no right at 
 fifty -five to say solve senescentem equum. I 
 have still a course to run over, and a good 
 plate to win . . . even though I have a touch 
 of the blind staggers." . . . 
 
 October 14, 1851. " I now enter on ... 
 the story of the Netherlands, a fit subject 
 for an independent history, as Motley will 
 show the world before my limping volumes 
 come out." . . . 
 
 July 4, 1852. "Letter just received from 
 Bentley begs me to fix a time for its [my work] 
 publication, but I cannot consent to become 
 
PHILIP II 219 
 
 the slave of the lamp and of the publishers 
 as that would make me." . . . 
 
 " Left Nahant Sept. 6th, and came to the 
 Highlands September 9, full of good intent. 
 Delicious solitudes ; safe even from friends 
 for a time ! Xow for the Spanish battle-cry, 
 * St. Jago, and at them ! "... 
 
 December 4, 1852. " St. Jago has not done 
 much for me after all. The gods won t help 
 those that won t help themselves. I have daw 
 dled away my summer, and have only to show 
 for it Chapter XII, thirty-five pages of text, 
 and four pages of notes. Fie on it ! I am now 
 well read up for Chapter XIII, and I mean 
 to have a conscience and reform. "V^Te left Pep- 
 perell for town, Oct. 26th." . . . 
 
 February 2, 1853. " The reign of terror - 
 I must not go to sleep over it nor let my 
 readers." . . . 
 
 March 20, 1853. " The last week revived 
 the industry of the Peruvian the golden 
 age." . . . 
 
 July 30, 1853. " Yesterday fell asleep while 
 Kirk read it [Chapter XVIII] to me for cor 
 rections. A good omen for my readers. . . . 
 
220 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 Now for that exacting old dame, the Muse of 
 History who will not go halves with any 
 body." 
 
 The question of foreign copyright assumed 
 some importance for Prescott on the eve of 
 publishing his " Philip II." Motley, discuss 
 ing with his father the wisdom of taking out an 
 English copyright, wrote that, " It may be 
 well for Mr. Prescott to do so, as he can sell 
 his books for 1000 a volume or more." On 
 September 14, 1851, Prescott noted: "The 
 late decision in favor of foreign copyright ap 
 peals to my avarice, if my ambition should go 
 to sleep ; for it will put some thousands into 
 my pocket." But later this hope was dashed, 
 and he wrote : 
 
 August 22, 1854. " In May, an English pub 
 lisher, Routledge, made me the offer of 1 000 
 a volume for as many volumes, not exceeding 
 six, as I should write of Philip II in case I 
 could give him a good copyright ; that is, if 
 the case before the House of Lords on appeal 
 should be decided in favor of foreigners. If 
 decided against them, he agreed to pay me 
 500 a volume for these two first volumes, and 
 
PHILIP II 221 
 
 <250 for each of the following for the ad 
 vance sheets I was to be allowed to propose 
 these terms to Bentley first, which I did, and 
 they were at once accepted. The late decision 
 in the House of Lords has gone against the 
 right of foreigners, and all my dreams of copy 
 right and all the title by which Bentley has 
 hitherto had an exclusive copyright in my 
 books have vanished into air. The sum, how 
 ever, I am to receive for priority of publication 
 is more in the case of the two first volumes 
 than he paid me for the copyright of the two 
 volumes of Peru. ... I have quitted the Har 
 pers, and entered into a contract with the house 
 of Phillips, Sampson & Co. of Boston. I have 
 left the Harpers not from any dissatisfaction 
 with them, for they have dealt well by me from 
 the first to the last, but because they were not 
 prepared to come up to the liberal offer made 
 by the other party. We part, therefore, with 
 the same good understanding in which we have 
 always kept together. ... I am to receive 
 $6000 for each of the vols. of that work. 
 . . . Also agree to pay me $6000 a year for 
 six consecutive years for the right to publish 
 
222 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 3000 copies of each of my former historical 
 works." 
 
 The first two volumes of " Philip II " were 
 completed on August 22, 1854. On that date 
 we find the customary Laus Deo in the jour 
 nal. The composition, Prescott notes, had oc 
 cupied him about five years. " I thought of 
 calling the work Memoirs, and treating the 
 subject in a more desultory and superficial 
 manner than belongs to a regular history. I 
 did not go to work in a businesslike style till 
 I broke ground on the troubles of the Nether 
 lands. Perhaps my critics may find this out." 
 The usual task of revision and printing kept 
 him busy for a year more. " Nothing remains 
 now but to correct the earlier portions of the 
 work, especially those relating to Charles the 
 Fifth, in which all my new things have been 
 forestalled since I began to write by Mignet, 
 Stirling, etc., a warning to procrastinating 
 historians." The volumes were published in 
 November, 1855. The result was a renewal 
 and even enlargement of former successes. His 
 own record, six months after publication, best 
 tells the story : - 
 
PHILIP II 223 
 
 "A settlement made with my publishers 
 here last week enables me to speak of the suc 
 cess of the work. In England it has been pub 
 lished in four separate editions ; one of them 
 from the rival house of Routledge. It has been 
 twice reprinted in Germany, and a Spanish 
 translation of it is now in course of publica* 
 tion at Madrid. In this country eight thou 
 sand copies have been sold, while the sales of 
 the preceding works have been so much im 
 proved by the impulse received from this, that 
 nearly"thirty thousand volumes of them have 
 been disposed of by my Boston publishers, 
 from whom I have received seventeen thou 
 sand dollars for the Philip and the other 
 works the last six months. So much for the 
 lucre ! 
 
 " From the tone of the foreign journals and 
 those of my own country, it would seem that 
 the work has found quite as much favor as any 
 of its predecessors, and, as the sales have been 
 much greater than of any other of them in 
 the same space of time, I may be considered to 
 have as favorable a breeze to carry me forward 
 on my long voyage as I could desire. This is 
 
224 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 very important to me, as I felt a little nervous 
 in regard to the reception of the work, after 
 so long an interval since the preceding one 
 had appeared." 
 
 Intercalated between the first two volumes 
 and the third of " Philip II " came Prescott s 
 continuation of Robertson s " Charles the 
 Fifth." This was a sort of compromise. Pres- 
 cott had been urged to undertake an entire 
 work of his own on the reign of Charles. But 
 his mind was filled with Philip ; he did not de 
 sire to seem to be supplanting Eobertson ; and 
 so he pitched upon a new conclusion of the lat- 
 ter s work, bringing it into harmony with the 
 latest researches and at the same time furnish 
 ing an introduction to his own volumes on 
 Philip. This labor he went through with his 
 habitual fidelity, spending more than a year on 
 the hundred and eighty pages. To Ticknor he 
 wrote on December 8, 1856 : 
 
 "My < Charles the Fifth, or rather Robert 
 son s, with my Continuation, made his bow to 
 the public to-day, like a strapping giant with 
 a little urchin holding on to the tail of his coat. 
 I can t say I expect much from it, as the best 
 
PHILIP II 225 
 
 and biggest part is somewhat of the oldest. 
 But people who like a complete series will 
 need it to fill up the gap betwixt 4 Ferdinand 
 and Philip. " 
 
 An extract or two from his diary may be 
 appended : 
 
 August 6, 1855. " I am getting rather an 
 ambling gait as the papers called my gait 
 in the streets not even the butter-woman s 
 trot to market. Fie on it ! " . . . 
 
 October 28, 1855. " Boston is not Pepperell. 
 The first day I dined with a large party. The 
 second, at the theatre with Mile. Rachel till 
 midnight. This is not the way they lived at 
 Yuste." . . . 
 
 June 4, 1857. " Rebellion of the Moriscoes, 
 making in all 289 pages more than half a 
 volume ! As bad as Macaulay without his 
 merits to redeem it." . . . 
 
 June 16, 1857. "Finished Battle of Le- 
 panto. I hope it will smell of the ocean." . . . 
 
 September 27, 1857. " The subject will be 
 a hard one. For it is easier to discuss battles 
 than politics." 
 
 " Philip II " brought Prescott a full chorus 
 
226 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 of praise. He was most touched, as before, by 
 the appreciation of foreign scholars. Hallam 
 and Milman and Macaulay sent warm congrat 
 ulations. Sumner wrote from Aix-les-Bains : 
 
 September 15, 1858. 
 
 . . . One day as I was halting through the 
 street I observed a Frenchman busily occupied, 
 as he walked, with a book which I recognized 
 at once as one of your volumes. You know I 
 am far-sighted, and easily recognize a friend. 
 That incident made my walk pleasant, and I 
 forgot my hurts. 
 
 From Castle Howard, his friend, Lord Car 
 lisle, wrote : 
 
 September 13, 1858. 
 
 . . . You are a brave fellow to stick to Philip, 
 and I rejoice on every account to hear of such 
 being your intention. I have had much plea 
 sure this year in making Mr. Motley s acquaint 
 ance, but I wish to ask you confidentially 
 whether you think he has been poaching at all 
 on your manor ? 
 
PHILIP II 227 
 
 The best answer to this question, and the 
 best way of closing a chapter in which, both 
 at the end and the beginning, Motley s name 
 should go with Prescott s, is to quote the 
 explanation which the author of the " Dutch 
 Republic " gave to his father : 
 
 VEVEY, March 3, 1855. 
 
 We [Prescott and Motley] had a perfect 
 understanding about our respective plans be 
 fore I went away. I remember that he thought 
 that it might be better if we should arrange to 
 publish at somewhat different times, as the 
 works are a good deal upon the same subject. 
 As this is a consideration, however, which only 
 affects me, as my work can t interfere with the 
 sale of his, I have never thought it a matter 
 of great consequence, particularly as I don t 
 know, and never shall know, when I ought to 
 publish. . . . 
 
 Philip the Second, although he is, of course, 
 the Deus ex macJiina in much of my present 
 work, is not my head devil. 
 
 I still mean to write to Mr. Prescott, but I 
 thought I would send him this message through 
 
228 WILLIAM H1CKL1NG PRESCOTT 
 
 you, for I would not have him think me forget 
 ful of the many acts of kindness and friend 
 ship which I have received at his hands, and 
 it is possible that he might wish to hear my 
 plans. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 THE UNFINISHED WINDOW 
 
 OPENING, in 1858, a new volume of the journal 
 which he had kept for more than forty years, 
 Prescott wrote on the inside of the cover, 
 "Literary Memorandum Book No XIV- 
 and, as I eschew long entries, probably the 
 last." Less than three pages were actually 
 written. The last entry of all was this : 
 
 Pepperell, October 28. " Return to town 
 to-morrow. The country is now in its splendid 
 autumn robe, somewhat torn, however, and 
 draggled by the rain. Have been occupied 
 with corrections and additions to my Mexico/ 
 On my return to Boston shall resume my 
 labors on Philip, and, if my health continues 
 as good as it has been this summer, shall hope 
 to make some progress. But I shall not press 
 matters. Our mllegiatura has been bright 
 ened by the presence of all the children and 
 grandchildren, God bless them ! And now we 
 scatter again, but not far apart." 
 
230 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 Prescott always labored under a physical 
 handicap. In addition to his major disability, 
 rheumatism seldom left off plaguing him. But 
 there was, as an intimate friend noted, "a 
 stoical element" in this gentle and smiling 
 man, and he could whip a reluctant body along. 
 A persistent local pain compelled him at one 
 period to do a good deal of writing in a kneel 
 ing posture. The first really serious warning, 
 however, came to him on February 4, 1858, 
 when he suffered a slight stroke of apoplexy. 
 He lost the power of speech for a time, and 
 partly lost consciousness. His first articulate 
 words disclosed the self -forgetful man : " My 
 poor wife ! I am so sorry for you, that this 
 has come upon you so soon ! " But the attack 
 passed off, and his strength slowly returned. 
 His own record of the affair was under date of 
 April 18, and was as follows: 
 
 "On the 4th of February I had a slight 
 apoplectic shock, which affected both sight 
 and power of motion, the last but for a few 
 moments. 
 
 " The attack so unexpected, though I had 
 been troubled with headaches through the 
 
THE UNFINISHED WINDOW 231 
 
 winter, in a less degree, however, than in the 
 preceding year caused great alarm to my 
 friends at first. Much reason have I to be 
 grateful that the effects have gradually disap 
 peared, and left no traces now, except a slight 
 obscurity in the vision, and a certain degree of 
 weakness, which may perhaps be imputable to 
 my change of diet. For I have been obliged 
 to exchange my carnivorous propensities for 
 those of a more innocent and primitive nature, 
 picking up my fare as our good parents did 
 before the fall. In this way it is thought I 
 may defy the foul fiend for the future. But I 
 must not make too heavy or long demands on 
 the cranium, and if I can get three or four 
 hours work on my historic ground in a day, I 
 must be content . . . With prudence and the 
 blessing of Heaven I may hope still to be in at 
 the death of Philip, though it may be some 
 years later than I had expected." 
 
 The rest of his life was passed in some 
 thing of a shadow, though he never lost his 
 light vivacity. How he could jest at his own 
 wounds appears in this extract from a letter to 
 his friend of many years, Madame Calderon. 
 
232 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 Writing from Lynn on September 7, 1858, lie 
 said : 
 
 " For myself, I have been very well of late, 
 though, during the last winter, in February, I 
 experienced, what was little expected, an apo 
 plectic attack. It alarmed my friends a good 
 deal, and frightened me out of my wits for a 
 time. But the effects have gradually passed 
 off, leaving me only a slight increase of the 
 obscurity in my vision. As I don t intend the 
 foul fiend shall return again, I live upon vege 
 tables and farinaceous matter, like the ancho 
 rites of old. For your apoplexy is a danger 
 ous fellow, who lives upon good cheer, fat and 
 red-faced gentlemen, who feed upon something 
 better than beets and carrots. I don t care 
 about the fare, but I should be sorry not to 
 give the last touches to Philip the Prudent, 
 and to leave him in the world in a dismembered 
 condition ! " 
 
 To his daughter-in-law he wrote in comic 
 deprecation of his vegetarian regimen ; one 
 recalls Tennyson on FitzGerald s fare : 
 
 "I must expect a little debility, as they 
 have brought me to an anchorite diet of vege- 
 
THE UNFINISHED WINDOW 233 
 
 tables and the running brook, and I feel as 
 light as air. These are not to be despised, are 
 they ? And I expect to become quite an epi 
 cure in spinach and potatoes. Nothing can 
 exceed the bounty of my friends who send me 
 all kinds of slops and hasty puddings, and vol 
 umes of receipts for different sorts of dainties 
 in this way. I had no idea of the wealth of 
 the vegetable kingdom." 
 
 With slackened, though never abandoned, 
 researches in preparation for another volume 
 on " Philip II," but with lowered vitality, he 
 entered upon 1859. The closest observation 
 foresaw no collapse. Ticknor, who, in 1855, 
 had predicted that Prescott had "20 good years 
 of work in him at 59," wrote to Hon. Edward 
 Twistleton, on January 18, 1859, "Prescott 
 is looking as well as ever, and his constitution 
 has accommodated itself with wonderful alac 
 rity to the vegetable diet prescribed for him 
 eleven months ago." Yet the end was but ten 
 days away. On January 28, parting with his 
 wife in merry laughter, he went into his study. 
 The blow fell swiftly ; he was heard groaning ; 
 was found absolutely unconscious ; and died in 
 
234 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 
 
 a few hours. As grieving Motley wrote, " The 
 night of time had suddenly descended upon the 
 unfinished peristyle of a stately and beautiful 
 temple." 
 
 Before burial, the body of Prescott was 
 taken, in accordance with a request he had 
 made, to lie for a time in his library. The best 
 of all ages looked down upon him from their 
 books; but not one of those "lettered dead" 
 was manlier or purer than he. " All who knew 
 him," said George Bancroft, "will say that 
 he was greater and better than his writings. 
 Standing by his grave, we cannot recall any 
 thing in his manner, his character, his endow 
 ments, or his conduct we could wish changed." 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 ASPINWALL, COLONEL, letter 
 to, 25. 
 
 Bancroft, George, letter from, 
 129; reports English opin 
 ion, 146 ; on Prescott s char 
 acter, 234. 
 
 Bancroft, H. H., estimate of 
 " Conquest of Mexico," 143. 
 
 Brown, Charles Brockden, 
 Life of, 70. 
 
 Carlisle, Lord, letter from, 
 226. 
 
 Carter, Robert, Prescott s 
 secretary, 35, 37, 201. 
 
 Club-Room, 59-63. 
 
 " Conquest of Mexico " : first 
 conception of, 132 ; Irving 
 surrenders topic, 133-135; 
 record of work on, 135, 136 ; 
 W. H. P. s comments on, 
 137-139 ; pecuniary results, 
 140, 141 ; viewed in modern 
 light, 142 ; H. H. Bancroft s 
 estimate of, 143. 
 
 " Conquest of Peru " : rapidly 
 written, 152; "second- 
 rate " subject, 154 ; pub 
 lished, 156 ; bookselling 
 details, 156, 157; C. R. 
 Markham s verdict on, 158. 
 
 Curtis, G. T., characterizes 
 Prescott, 173. 
 
 Cushing, C., letter to, 205. 
 
 Edgeworth, Maria, supposes 
 W. H. P. blind, 20; ad 
 miration for Prescott, 110 ; 
 letter from, 111 ; extract of 
 letter from, 140. 
 
 Eliot, Samuel, on Prescott, 
 
 176 seq. 
 
 Everett, A. H., letter to, 30. 
 Everett, Edward, letter from, 
 
 25. 
 
 Felton, Professor C. C., on 
 Prescott s simplicity, 178. 
 
 " Ferdinand and Isabella " : 
 first germ of, 77 ; choice of, 
 78 ; ten years labor, 81, 84 ; 
 finished, 84 ; motives for 
 publishing, 84, 85 ; W. H. 
 P. s reflections on, 85, 86; 
 published in Boston, 88 ; 
 published in London, 89; 
 pecuniary results, 90-95 ; 
 criticisms of, 96-98 ; Euro 
 pean recognition, 103, 104 ; 
 writes abridgment of, 140. 
 
 Ford, Richard, suggests Span 
 ish History, 81; reviews 
 " Ferdinand and Isabella," 
 in " ; Quarterly," 114. 
 
 Frothingham, Rev. N. L., on 
 W. H. P. s eyesight, 38. 
 
 Gardiner, Rev. Dr., W. H. 
 P. s teacher, 17. 
 
 Gardiner, W. H., on Pres 
 cott s social manner, 174- 
 176. 
 
 Gayangos, P., 32. 
 
 Griswold, R. W., letters to, 
 2, 19 ; sketch of W. H. P., 
 36. 
 
 Haliburton, R. G., letter 
 
 from, 159. 
 Hallam, Henry, letter from, 
 
 105. 
 
238 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hillard, George, 23. 
 Holmes, O. W., on Prescott 
 
 and Motley, 210. 
 Humboldt, A. von, sends 
 
 greetings to W. H. P., 113 ; 
 
 message of approval from, 
 
 145 ; letter from, 149, 
 
 Irving, W., surrenders Mexi 
 can theme to W. H. P., 
 133-135; estimate of P. s 
 " Conquest of Mexico," 148. 
 
 Kohl, J. G., impression of 
 Prescott, 119- 
 
 Lieber, Francis, transmits 
 praise from Humboldt, 145. 
 
 Louisiana, W. H. P. urged to 
 write history of, 82. 
 
 Mark ham, Clements R., let 
 ter from, 157 ; verdict on 
 " Conquest of Peru," 158. 
 
 Milman, Dean, on Prescott s 
 " noble subjects," 208. 
 
 Motley, J. L., compliment 
 from, 32 ; acknowledges in 
 debtedness to W. H. P.. 
 209; praises " Philip II, * 
 210; letter to, 212; under 
 standing with Prescott, 227. 
 
 Pepperell, first acquired by 
 Prescott family, 6 ; W. H. 
 P. s life at, 176 seq. 
 
 "Philip II," 208; first con 
 ception of, 216 ; question of 
 foreign copyright, 220 ; pub 
 lished, 222 ; reception and 
 sales, 223. 
 
 Pickering, John, memoir of. 
 70, 72. 
 
 Prescott, Judge, 6-10. 
 
 "Prescott Memorial," 2. 
 
 Prescott, William Hickling: 
 genealogy, 2-7; sketch of 
 his father, 8-10; his mother, 
 11-14; birth, 15; boyhood 
 at Salem, 16, 17; schooling 
 
 at Boston, 17, 18; reading 
 in Athenaeum, 18 ; enters 
 Harvard, 19 ; record of col 
 lege reading, 20 ; graduates, 
 21 ; family room at Har 
 vard, 22 ; loss of eye, 23, 
 24 ; condition of eyesight, 
 26-29 ; employs secretaries, 
 33; his noctograph, 33-35; 
 averse to dictation, 37 ; trip 
 to Azores, 39 ; first letters 
 and journals, 41 ; travels in 
 England, France, and Italy, 
 42 ; habits of self-inspec 
 tion, 42, 46 ; moral self-idis- 
 cipline, 46, 47 ; plans wide 
 reading, 49 ; critiques, not 
 extracts, 51, 52; French, 
 Italian, and Spanish stud 
 ies, 53, 54 ; bent toward 
 history, 55 ; marriage to 
 Susan Amory, 57 ; writes for 
 North American Review, 
 63, 64; review of Lock- 
 hart s "Scott," 68; essay 
 on Cervantes, 69 ; influ 
 enced by Gibbon s autobi 
 ography, 73; contemplates 
 Roman history, 76 ; con 
 templates Italian literature, 
 77 ; contemplates English 
 literature, 79; difficulties 
 and discouragements, 88 ; 
 secrecy of literary plans, 
 100 ; scrutinizes his own 
 style, 114-116; burden of 
 letter-writing, 118; enter 
 tains foreigners, 119 ; beset 
 by literary aspirants, 120- 
 126; contemplates life of 
 Moliere, 131 ; member of 
 learned societies, 105, 150 ; 
 esteemed in Spain, 148 ; un 
 spoiled by praise, 151 ; vis 
 its England, 160 ; Stirling s 
 account of success in Eng 
 lish society, 168-171 ; per 
 sonal traits, 172 seq. ; life 
 at Pepperell, 1 7<> seq. ; com 
 panion of children, 179 ; 
 
INDEX 
 
 239 
 
 active philanthropy, 184; 
 homes in Boston, 186 ; 
 home at Nahant, 187 ; 
 habits of exercise, 188 ; won 
 derful memory, 189 ; work 
 ing under wager, 191 ; his 
 children, 194 ; religious 
 views, 195 ; political sym 
 pathies, 197 ; relations with 
 Sumner, 198-201 ; views 
 about slavery, 201-204 ; 
 writes continuation of Rob 
 ertson s "Charles V," 224; 
 stroke of apoplexy, 230 ; 
 death, 233. 
 
 Scott, General, offers papers 
 for history of second Mexi 
 can Conquest, 82, 83. 
 
 Sparks, Jared, letter from, 
 71. 
 
 Stirling, Sir William : his " In 
 Memoriam" in "Eraser," 
 114 ; account of W. H. P. s 
 success in English society, 
 168-171. 
 
 Stuart, Professor Moses, pro 
 
 poses to W. H. P. an Ameri 
 can theme, 82. 
 
 Sumner, Charles : purveyor of 
 European praise, 107-109 ; 
 on Prescott s boyish spirits, 
 178; relations with Pres- 
 cott, 198-201 ; letter from, 
 226. 
 
 Thackeray, W. M. : relations 
 with Prescott, 1. 
 
 Thierry, Augustin, letter to, 
 28. 
 
 Ticknor, George : Prescott 
 reads his " Spanish Litera 
 ture " in MS., 217 ; letter to, 
 224 ; on Prescott at the age 
 of fifty-nine, 233. 
 
 Von Raumer sends Hum- 
 boldt s greeting, 113. 
 
 Walker, President: a class 
 mate of W. H. P., 16. 
 
 Winthrop, Robert C., reports 
 W. H. P. s fame in France, 
 146 ; letter to, 204. 
 
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