William Hickling Prescott

d been refuted by the brilliant French historian, Augustin Thierry, whose scholarly study of the Merovingian period was composed after he had wholly lost his sight.[7] Moreover, Prescott was

Prescott himself, moreover, had at this time done comparatively little special reading in the subject of which he proposed to write; and the skilled assistance which he might easily have secured in Europe was

igest the principal French, Spanish, and Italian historians-Mariana, Llorente, Varillas, Fléchier, and Sismondi-and give a well-balanced account of Ferdinand and Isabella's reign based upon what these and a few other scholarly authorities had written. But the zeal of the investigator soon had him in its grip. Scarcely had the packages of books which he had ordered from Madrid begun to reach his library than his project broadened out immensely into a work of true creative scholarship. His year of reading now appeared to him absurdly insufficient. It had, indeed, already been badly broken into by one of his inflammatory attacks; and his progress was hampered by the inadequate assis

composition was established and was continued with other secretaries throughout Prescott's life. Mr. English has left some interesting notes of his experiences, which admit us to the library of the large house on Bedford Street, where the two men worked so diligently together. It was a spacious room in the back of the house, lined on two sides with books which reached the ceiling. Against a third si

visit there in 1816. It was a contrivance called "the noctograph," meant for the use of the blind. A frame like that of a slate was crossed by sixteen parallel wires fastened into the sides and holding down a sheet of blackened paper like the carbon paper now used in typewriters and copying-machines. Under this blackened paper was place

ce before it should be written down. In this pre-thinking Prescott showed a power of memory and of visualisation that was really wonderful. To carry in his mind the whole of what had been read over to him in a session of several hours,-names, dates, facts, authorities,-and then to shape his narrative, sentence by sentence, before setting down a word, and, finally, to bear in mind the whole structure of each succeeding paragraph and the form in which they had been carefully built up-this was, indeed, an intellectua

nificant. These marked passages were later copied out in a large clear hand for future reference. When the time came, they would be read, studied, compared, verified, and digested. Sometimes he spent as much as five days in thus mastering the notes collected for a single chapter. Then at least another day would be given to reflection and (probably) to composition, while from five to nine days more might go to the

rits, having, as he expressed it, "wound himself up for the day." After a very simple breakfast, he went at once to his library, where, for an hour or so, he chatted with Mrs. Prescott or had her read to him the newspapers or some popular book of the day. By ten o'clock, serious work began with the arrival of his secretary, with whom he worked diligently until one o'clock, for he seldom sat at his desk for more than three consecutive hours. A brisk walk of a mile or two gave him an appetite for dinner, which was served at three o'clock, an hour which, in the year 1827, was not regarded as remarkable, at least in Massachusetts. This was a time of relaxation, of chat and gossip and family fun; and it was th

ural tendencies. In the first place, he was, as has been already noted, of a somewhat indolent disposition; and a steady grind, day after day and week after week, was something which he had never kn

ther have been too busy to work at

r way, as a crazy hulk that ha

pon a bit of writing that interested him, but when he was prevented by rheumatic pains from sitting upright. Prescott then placed his no

he never permitted them to pay. He did a like thing on a larger scale and in a somewhat different way by giving a bond to his secretary, Mr. English, binding himself to pay a thousand dollars if within one year from September, 1828, Prescott should not have written two hundred and fifty pages of Ferdinand and Isabella. This number of pages was spec

him often to break the regularity of his way of living. Nothing, indeed, testifies more strikingly to his naturally buoyant disposition than the fact that years of unvarying routine were unable to make of Prescott a formalist or to render him less charming as a social favourite. In his study he was conspicuously the scholar, the investigator; elsewhere he was the genial companion, full of fun and jest, telling stories and manifesting that gift of personal attractiveness which compelled all within its range to feel wholly and completely at their

up to his study and put an end to the most profound researches, greatly, it is recorded, to the delight of his secretary, who thus got a little moment of relief from the deciphering of almost undecipherable scrawls. Her death was sudden, and the shock of it was therefore all the greater. Years afterward, Prescott, in writing to a friend who had suffered a like bereavement, disclosed the depths of his own

at nothing, good, bad, or indifferent, can safely be neglected. The packets which now reached him from Spain and France grew bulkier and their contents more diversified. Not merely modern tomes, not merely printed books were there, but parchments in quaint and crabbed script, to be laboriously deciphered by his secret

e chapter, and two months more in writing out the second and the third. From this time a sense of elation filled him, now that all his patient labour was taking concrete form, and there was no more question of putting his task aside. His progress might be, as he called it, "tortoise-like," but he had felt the joy of creation; and the work went on, always with a firmer grasp, a surer sense of form, and the clearer l

or Prescott's reputation. What is true of this is true of everything that he wrote outside of his histories. In his essays, and especially in his literary criticisms, he seemed devoid of penetration and of a grasp upon the verities. His style, too, in all such work was formal and inert. He often showed the extent of his reading, but never an intimate feeling for character. He could not get down to the very core of his subject and weigh an

ain, he spent from three to four months in preliminary reading, and then occupied nearly three months more in writing out the article. In this particular case, however, he fel

ete form was a continual stimulus to him. He was still, so far as the public was concerned, a young author, and he felt all of the young author's joy in contemplating the printed pages of his first real book. In the second place, he wished to make a number of final alterations and corrections; and every writer of experience is aware that the last subtle touches can be given to a book only when it is actually in type, for only then can he see the workmanship as it really i

uctance to publish, and should probably keep it by me for emendations and additions, were it not for the belief that the ground would be more or less occupied in the meantime by abler writers." The allusion here is to a history of the Spanish Arabs announced by Southey. But what really spurred Prescott on to give his book to the world was a quiet remark of his father's, in which there was something of a challenge and a taunt. "The man," said he, "who writes a book which he is afraid to publish is a coward." "Coward" was a name which no true Prescott could endure; and so, after some months of negotiation and reflection, an arrangement was made to have the history appear with the imprin

pular. I know myself too well to suppose the former for a moment. I know the public too well, and the subject I have chosen, to expect the latter. But I have made a book illustrating an unexplored and important period, from authentic materials, obtained with much difficulty, and probably in the possession of no one libra

in vain, since it has encouraged me in forming systematic habits of intellectual occupation, and proved to me that my g

first printed copies, and had written to Prescott, in February, 1837: "The book will be successful-bought, read, and praised." And so finally, on Christmas Day of 1837,-though dated 1838 u

ts, and by no means given to reading, rose early on Christmas morning and waited outside of the bookshop in order to secure the first copy sold. Literary Boston, which was also fashionable Boston, adopted the book as its favourite New Year's present. The bookbinders could not work fast enough to supply the demand, and in a few months the whole of the 1250 copie

t naturally looked forward with interest and something like anxiety. American approval he might well ascribe to national bias if not to personal friendship. Therefore, the uniformly favour

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

an unknown American;[9] but, none the less, his criticism, in spite of his reluctance to praise, gave Prescott genuine pleasure. Ford found fault with some of the details of Ferdinand and Isabella, yet he was obliged to admit both the sound scholarship and literary merit of the book. On the Continent appeared the most elaborate review of all in a series of five articles written for the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève, by the Comte Adolphe de Circourt. The Comte was a friend of Lamartine (who called him la mappemonde vivante des connaissances humaines) and also of Tocqueville and Cavour. Few of his contemporaries possessed so minute a knowledge of the subject which Prescott treated, and of the original sources of