CHAPTER IIITHE CHOICE OF A CAREER

"BOSTON, August 23rd."DEARFATHER:—I now write you a few lines to inform you of my fate. Yesterday at eight o'clock I was ordered to the President's and there, together with a Carolinian, Middleton, was examined for Sophomore. When we were first ushered into their presence, they looked like so many judges of the Inquisition. We were ordered down into the parlour, almost frightened out of our wits, to be examined by each separately; but we soon found them quite a pleasant sort of chaps. The President sent us down a good dish of pears, and treated us very much like gentlemen. It was not ended in the morning; but we returned in the afternoon when Professor Ware [the Hollis Professor of Divinity] examined us in Grotius'De Veritate. We found him very good-natured; for I happened to ask him a question in theology, which made him laugh so that he was obliged to cover his face with his hand. At half past three our fate was decided and we were declared 'Sophomores of Harvard University.'"As you would like to know how I appeared, I will give you the conversationverbatimwith Mr. Frisbie when I went to see him after the examination. I asked him,'Did I appear well in my examination?' Answer. 'Yes.' Question. 'Did I appearverywell, sir?' Answer. 'Why are you so particular, young man? Yes, you did yourself a great deal of credit.' I feel today twenty pounds lighter than I did yesterday.... Love to mother, whose affectionate son I remain,"WM. HICKLINGPRESCOTT."

"BOSTON, August 23rd.

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

"As you would like to know how I appeared, I will give you the conversationverbatimwith Mr. Frisbie when I went to see him after the examination. I asked him,'Did I appear well in my examination?' Answer. 'Yes.' Question. 'Did I appearverywell, sir?' Answer. 'Why are you so particular, young man? Yes, you did yourself a great deal of credit.' I feel today twenty pounds lighter than I did yesterday.... Love to mother, whose affectionate son I remain,

"WM. HICKLINGPRESCOTT."

Prescott entered upon his college life in the autumn of this same year (1811). We find that many of those traits which he had exhibited in his early school days were now accentuated rather sharply. He was fond of such studies as appealed to his instinctive tastes. English literature and the literatures of Greece and Rome he studied willingly because he liked them and not because he was ambitious to gain high rank in the University. To this he was more or less indifferent, and, therefore, gave as little attention as possible to such subjects as mathematics, logic, the natural sciences, philosophy, and metaphysics, without which, of course, he could not hope to win university honours. Nevertheless, he disliked to be rated below the average of his companions, and, therefore, he was careful not to fall beneath a certain rather moderate standard of excellence. He seems, indeed, to have adopted the Horatianaurea mediocritasas his motto; and the easy-going, self-indulgent philosophy of Horace he made for the time his own. In fact, the ideal which he set before himself was the life of a gentleman in the traditional English meaning of that word; and it was a gentleman's education and nothing more which he desired to attain. To be socially agreeable, courteous, and imbued with a liberal culture, seemed to him a sufficient end for his ambition. His father was wealthy and generous. He was himself extremely fond of the good things of life. He made friends readily, and had a very large share of personal attractiveness. Under the circumstances, it is not to be wondered at if his college life was marked by a pleasant, well-bred hedonism rather than by the austerity of the true New England temperament. The Prescotts as a family hadsome time before slipped away from the clutch of Puritanism and had accepted the mild and elastic creed of Channing, which, in its tolerant view of life, had more than a passing likeness to Episcopalianism. Prescott was still running over with youthful spirits, his position was an assured one, his means were ample, and his love of pleasure very much in evidence. We cannot wonder, then, if we find that in the early part of his university career he slipped into a sort of life which was probably less commendable than his cautious biographers are willing to admit. Mr. Ticknor's very guarded intimations seem to imply in Prescott a considerable laxity of conduct; and it is not unfair to read between the lines of what he has written and there find unwilling but undeniable testimony. Thus Ticknor remarks that Prescott "was always able to stop short of what he deemed flagrant excesses and to keep within the limits, though rather loose ones, which he had prescribed to himself. His standard for the character of a gentleman varied, no doubt, at this period, and sometimes was not so high on the score of morals as it should have been." Prescott is also described as never having passed the world's line of honour, but as having been willing to run exceedingly close to it. "He pardoned himself too easily for his manifold neglect and breaches of the compacts he had made with his conscience; but there was repentance at the bottom of all." It is rather grudgingly admitted also that "the early part of his college career, when for the first time he left the too gentle restraints of his father's house, ... was the most dangerous period of his life. Upon portions of it he afterwards looked back with regret." There is a good deal of significance,moreover, in some sentences which Prescott himself wrote, long afterwards, of the temptations which assail a youth during those years when he has attained to the independence of a man but while he is still swayed by the irresponsibility of a boy. There seems to be in these sentences a touch of personal reminiscence and regret:—

"The University, that little world of itself ... bounding the visible horizon of the student like the walls of a monastery, still leaves within him scope enough for all the sympathies and the passions of manhood.... He meets with the same obstacles to success as in the world, the same temptations to idleness, the same gilded seductions, but without the same power of resistance. For in this morning of life his passions are strongest; his animal nature is more sensible to enjoyment; his reasoning faculties less vigorous and mature. Happy the youth who in this stage of his existence is so strong in his principles that he can pass through the ordeal without faltering or failing, on whom the contact of bad companionship has left no stain for future tears to wash away."

Just how much is meant by this reluctant testimony can only be conjectured. It is not unfair, however, to assume that, for a time, Prescott's diversions were such as even a lenient moralist would think it necessary to condemn. The fondness for wine, which remained with him throughout his life, makes it likely that convival excess was one of his undergraduate follies; while the flutter of a petticoat may at times have stirred his senses. No doubt many a young man in his college days has plunged far deeper into dissipation than ever Prescott did and has emerged unscathed to lead a useful life. Yet in Prescott's case there existed a peculiar danger. His future did not callupon him to face the stern realities of a life of toil. He was assured of a fortune ample for his needs, and therefore his easy-going, pleasure-loving disposition, his boundless popularity, his handsome face, his exuberant spirits, and his very moderate ambition might easily have combined to lead him down the primrose path where intellect is enervated and moral fibre irremediably sapped.

One dwells upon this period of indolence and folly the more willingly, because, after all, it reveals to us in Prescott those pardonable human failings which only serve to make his character more comprehensible. Prescott's eulogists have so studiously ignored his weaknesses as to leave us with no clear-cut impression of the actual man. They have unwisely smoothed away so much and have extenuated so much in their halting and ambiguous phrases, as to create a picture of which the outlines are far too faint. Apparently, they wish to draw the likeness of a perfect being, and to that extent they have made the subject of their encomiums appear unreal. One cannot understand how truly lovable the actual Prescott was, without reconstructing him in such a way as to let his faults appear beside his virtues. Moreover, an understanding of the perils which at first beset him is needed in order to make clear the profound importance of an incident which sharply called a halt to his excesses and, by curbing his wilful nature, set his finer qualities in the ascendant. It is only by remembering how far he might have fallen, that we can view as a blessing in disguise the blow which Fate was soon to deal him.

In the second (Junior) year of his college life, hewas dining one day with the other undergraduates in the Commons Hall. During these meals, so long as any college officers were present, decorum usually reigned; but when the dons had left the room, the students frequently wound up by what, in modern student phrase, would be described as "rough-house." There were singing and shouting and frequently some boisterous scuffling, such as is natural among a lot of healthy young barbarians. On this particular occasion, as Prescott was leaving the hall, he heard a sudden outbreak and looked around to learn its cause. Missiles were flying about; and, just as he turned his head, a large hard crust of bread struck him squarely in the open eye. The shock was great, resembling a concussion of the brain, and Prescott fell unconscious. He was taken to his father's house, where, on recovering consciousness, he evinced extreme prostration, with nausea, a fluttering pulse, and all the evidences of physical collapse. So weak was he that he could not even sit upright in his bed. For several weeks unbroken rest was ordered, so that nature, aided by a vigorous constitution, might repair the injury which his system had sustained. When he returned to Cambridge, the sight of the injured eye (the left one) was gone forever. Oddly enough, in view of the severity of the blow, the organ was not disfigured, and only through powerful lenses could even the slightest difference be detected between it and the unhurt eye. Dr. James Jackson, who attended Prescott at this time, described the case as one of paralysis of the retina, for which no remedy was possible. This accident, with the consequences which it entailed, was to have a profound effect not only upon the whole ofPrescott's subsequent career, but upon his character as well. His affliction, indeed, is inseparably associated with his work, and it must again and again be referred to, both because it was continually in his thoughts and because it makes the record of his literary achievement the more remarkable. Incidentally, it afforded a revelation of one of Prescott's noblest traits,—his magnanimity. He was well aware of the identity of the person to whom he owed this physical calamity. Yet, knowing as he did that the whole thing was in reality an accident, he let it be supposed that he had no knowledge of the person and that the mishap had come about in such a way that the responsibility for it could not be fixed. As a matter of fact, the thing had been done unintentionally; yet this cannot excuse its perpetrator for never expressing to Prescott his regret and sympathy. Years afterwards, Prescott spoke of this man to Ticknor in the kindest and most friendly fashion, and once he was able to confer on him a signal favour, which he did most readily and with sincere cordiality.

Prescott returned to the University in a mood of seriousness, which showed forth the qualities inherited from his father. Hitherto he had been essentially his mother's son, with all her gayety and mirthfulness and joy of life. Henceforth he was to exhibit more and more the strength of will and power of application which had made his father so honoured and so influential. Not that he let his grave misfortune cloud his spirits. He had still the use of his uninjured eye, and he had recovered from his temporary physical prostration; but he now went about his work in a different spirit, and was resolved to win at least an honourablerank for scholarship. In the classics and in English he studied hard, and he overcame to some extent his aversion to philosophy and logic. Mathematics, however, still remained the bane of his academic existence. For a time he used to memorise word for word all the mathematical demonstrations as he found them in the text-books, without the slightest comprehension of what they meant; and his remarkable memory enabled him to reproduce them in the class room, so that the professor of mathematics imagined him to be a promising disciple. This fact does not greatly redound to the acumen of the professor nor to the credit of his class-room methods, and what followed gives a curious notion of the easy-going system which then prevailed. Prescott found the continual exertion of his memory a good deal of a bore. To his candid nature it also savoured of deception. He, therefore, very frankly explained to the professor the secret of his mathematical facility. He said that, if required, he would continue to memorise the work, but that he knew it to be for him nothing but a waste of time, and he asked, with muchnaïveté, that he might be allowed to use his leisure to better advantage. This most ingenuous request must have amused the gentleman of whom it was made; but it proved to be effectual. Prescott was required to attend all the mathematical exercises conscientiously, but from that day he was never called upon to recite. For the rest, his diligence in those studies which he really liked won him the respect of the faculty at large. At graduation he received as a commencement honour the assignment of a Latin poem, which he duly declaimed to a crowded audience in the old "meeting-house" at Cambridge, in August, 1814. This poem was in Latin elegiacs, and was an apostrophe to Hope (Ad Spem), of which, unfortunately, no copy has been preserved. At the same time, Prescott was admitted to membership in the Phi Beta Kappa, from which a single blackball was sufficient to exclude a candidate. His father celebrated these double honours by giving an elaborate dinner, in a pavilion, to more than five hundred of the family's acquaintances.

Prescott had now to make his choice of a profession; for to a New Englander of those days every man, however wealthy, was expected to have a definite occupation. Very naturally he decided upon the law, and began the study of it in his father's office, though it was evident enough from the first that to his taste the tomes of Blackstone made no very strong appeal. He loved rather to go back to his classical reading and to enlarge his knowledge of modern literature. Indeed, his legal studies were treated rather cavalierly, and it is certain that had he ever been admitted to the bar, he would have found no pleasure in the routine of a lawyer's practice. Fate once more intervened, though, as before, in an unpleasant guise. In January, 1815, a painful inflammation appeared in his right eye—the one that had not been injured. This inflammation increased so rapidly as to leave Prescott for the time completely blind. Nor was the disorder merely local. A fever set in with a high pulse and a general disturbance of the system. Prescott's suffering was intense for several days; and at the end of a week, when the local inflammation had passed away, the retina of the right eye was found to be so seriously affected as to threaten a permanent loss of sight.At the same time, symptoms of acute rheumatism appeared in the knee-joints and in the neck. For several months the patient's condition was pitiable. Again and again there was a recurrence of the inflammation in the eye, alternating with the rheumatic symptoms, so that for sixteen weeks Prescott was unable to leave his room, which had to be darkened almost into blackness. Medical skill availed very little, and no doubt the copious blood-letting which was demanded by the practice of that time served only to deplete the patient's strength. Through all these weary months, however, Prescott bore his sufferings with indomitable courage, and to those friends of his who groped their way through the darkness to his bedside he was always cheerful, animated, and even gay, talking very little of his personal affliction and showing a hearty interest in the concerns of others. When autumn came it was decided that he should take a sea voyage, partly to invigorate his constitution and partly to enable him to consult the most eminent specialists of France and England. First of all, however, he planned to visit his grandfather, Mr. Thomas Hickling, who, as has been already mentioned, was American consul at the island of St. Michael's in the Azores, where it was thought the mildness of the climate might prove beneficial.

Prescott set out, on September 26th of the same year (1815), in one of the small sailing vessels which plied between Boston and the West African islands. The voyage occupied twenty-two days, during which time Prescott had a recurrence both of his rheumatic pains and of the inflammatory condition of his eye. His discomfort was enhanced by the wretchedness of hisaccommodations—a gloomy little cabin into which water continually trickled from the deck, and in which the somewhat fastidious youth was forced to live upon nauseous messes of rye pudding sprinkled with coarse salt. Cockroaches and other vermin swarmed about him; and it must have been with keen pleasure that he exchanged this floating prison for the charming villa in the Azores, where his grandfather had made his home in the midst of groves and gardens, blooming with a semi-tropical vegetation. Mr. Hickling, during his long residence at St. Michael's, had married a Portuguese lady for his second wife, and his family received Prescott with unstinted cordiality. The change from the bleak shores of New England to the laurels and myrtles and roses of the Azores delighted Prescott, and so appealed to his sense of beauty that he wrote home long and enthusiastic letters. But his unstinted enjoyment of this Hesperian paradise lasted for little more than two short weeks. He had landed on the 18th of October, and by November 1st he had gone back to his old imprisonment in darkness, living on a meagre diet and smarting under the blisters which were used as a counter-irritant to the rheumatic inflammation. As usual, however, his cheerfulness was unabated. He passed his time in singing, in chatting with his friends, and in walking hundreds of miles around his darkened room. He remained in this seclusion from November to February, when his health once more improved; and two months later, on the 8th of April, 1816, he took passage from St. Michael's for London. The sea voyage and its attendant discomforts had their usual effect, and during twenty-two out of the twenty-four days, to which hisweary journey was prolonged, he was confined to his cabin.

On reaching London his case was very carefully diagnosed by three of the most eminent English specialists, Dr. Farre, Sir William Adams, and Mr. (afterward Sir) Astley Cooper. Their verdict was not encouraging, for they decided that no local treatment of his eyes could be of any particular advantage, and that the condition of the right eye would always depend very largely upon the general condition of his system. They prescribed for him, however, and he followed out their regimen with conscientious scrupulosity. After a three months' stay in London, he crossed the Channel and took up his abode in Paris. In England, owing to his affliction, he had been able to do and see but little, because he was forbidden to leave his room after nightfall, and of course he could not visit the theatre or meet the many interesting persons to whom Mr. John Quincy Adams, then American Minister to England, offered to present him. Something he saw of the art collections of London, and he was especially impressed by the Elgin Marbles and Raphael's cartoons. There was a touch of pathos in the wistful way in which he paused in the booksellers' shops and longingly turned over rare editions of the classics which it was forbidden him to read. "When I look into a Greek or Latin book," he wrote to his father, "I experience much the same sensation as does one who looks on the face of a dead friend, and the tears not infrequently steal into my eyes." In Paris he remained two months, and passed the following winter in Italy, making a somewhat extended tour, and visiting the most famous of the Italian cities in companywith an old schoolmate. Thence he returned to Paris, where once more he had a grievous attack of his malady; and at last, in May of 1817, he again reached London, embarking not long after for the United States. Before leaving England on this second visit, he had explored Oxford and Cambridge, which interested him extremely, but which he was glad to leave in order to be once more at home.

PRESCOTT'Sreturn to his home brought him face to face with the perplexing question of his future. During his two years of absence this question must often have been forced upon his mind, especially during those weary weeks when the darkness of his sick-room and the lack of any mental diversion threw him in upon himself and left him often with his own thoughts for company. Even to his optimistic temperament the future may well have seemed a gloomy one. Half-blind and always dreading the return of a painful malady, what was it possible for him to do in the world whose stir and movement and boundless opportunity had so much attracted him? Must he spend his years as a recluse, shut out from any real share in the active duties of life? Little as he was wont to dwell upon his own anxieties, he could not remain wholly silent concerning a subject so vital to his happiness. In a letter to his father, written from St. Michael's not long before he set out for London, he broached very briefly a subject that must have been very often in his thoughts.

"The most unpleasant of my reflections suggested by this late inflammation are those arising from the probable necessity of abandoning a profession congenial with my taste and recommended by such favourable opportunities, and adoptingone for which I am ill qualified and have but little inclination. It is some consolation that this latter alternative, should my eyes permit, will afford me more leisure for the pursuit of my favourite studies. But on this subject I shall consult my physician and will write you his opinion."

Apparently at this time he still cherished the hope of entering upon some sort of a professional career, even though the practice of the law were closed to him. But after the discouraging verdict of the London specialists had been made known, he took a more despondent view. He wrote:—

"As to the future, it is too evident I shall never be able to pursue a profession. God knows how poorly I am qualified and how little inclined to be a merchant. Indeed, I am sadly puzzled to think how I shall succeed even in this without eyes."

It was in this uncertain state of mind that he returned home in the late summer of 1817. The warmth of the welcome which he received renewed his buoyant spirits, even though he soon found himself again prostrated by a recurrence of his now familiar trouble. His father had leased a delightful house in the country for his occupancy; but the shade-trees that surrounded it created a dampness which was unfavourable to a rheumatic subject, and so Prescott soon returned to Boston. Here he spent the winter in retirement, yet not in idleness. His love of books and of good literature became the more intense in proportion as physical activity was impossible; and he managed to get through a good many books, thanks to the kindness of his sister and of his former school companion, William Gardiner, both of whom devoted a part of each day to reading aloud to Prescott,—Gardiner theclassics, and Miss Prescott the standard English authors in history, poetry, and belles-lettres in general. These readings often occupied many consecutive hours, extending at times far into the night; and they relieved Prescott's seclusion of much of its irksomeness, while they stored his mind with interesting topics of thought. It was, in reality, the continuation of a system of vicarious reading which he had begun two years before in St. Michael's, where he had managed, by the aid of another's eyes, to enjoy the romances of Scott, which were then beginning to appear, and to renew his acquaintance with Shakespeare, Homer, and the Greek and Roman historians.

From reading literature, it was a short step to attempting its production. Pledging his sister to secrecy, Prescott composed and dictated to her an essay which was sent anonymously to theNorth American Review, then a literary fledgling of two years, but already making its way to a position of authority. This littleballon d'essaimet the fate of many such, for the manuscript was returned within a fortnight. Prescott's only comment was, "There! I was a fool to send it!" Yet the instinct to write was strong within him, and before very long was again to urge him with compelling force to test his gift. But meanwhile, finding that his life of quiet and seclusion did very little for his eyes, he made up his mind that he might just as well go out into the world more freely and mingle with the friends whose society he missed so much. After a little cautious experimenting, which apparently did no harm, he resumed the old life from which, for three years, he had been self-banished. The effect upon him mentally was admirable, and he was nowsafe from any possible danger of becoming morbidly introspective from the narrowness of his environment. He went about freely all through the year 1818, indulging in social pleasures with the keenest zest. His bent for literature, however, asserted itself in the foundation of a little society or club, whose members gathered informally, from time to time, for the reading of papers and for genial yet frank criticism of one another's productions. This club never numbered more than twenty-four persons, but they were all cultivated men, appreciative and yet discriminating, and the list of them contains some names, such as those of Franklin Dexter, Theophilus Parsons, John Ware, and Jared Sparks, which, like Prescott's own, belong to the record of American letters. For their own amusement, they subsequently brought out a little periodical calledThe Club-Room, of which four numbers in all were published,[5]and to which Prescott, who acted as its editor, made three contributions, one of them a sort of humorous editorial article, very local in its interest, another a sentimental tale called "The Vale of Allerid," and the third a ghost story called "Calais." They were like thousands of such trifles which are written every year by amateurs, and they exhibit no literary qualities which raise them above the level of the commonplace. The sole importance ofThe Club-Room'sbrief existence lies in the fact that it possibly did something to lure Prescott along the path that led to serious literary productiveness.

One very important result of his return to social life was found in his marriage, in 1820, to Miss SusanAmory, the daughter of Mr. Thomas C. Amory, a leading merchant of Boston.[6]The bride was a very charming girl, to whom her young husband was passionately devoted, and who filled his life with a radiant happiness which delighted all who knew and loved him. His naturally buoyant spirits rose to exuberance after his engagement. He forgot his affliction. He let his reading go by the board. He was, in fact, too happy for anything but happiness, and this delight even inspired him to make a pun that is worth recording. Prescott was an inveterate punster, and his puns were almost invariably bad; but when his bachelor friends reproached him for his desertion of them, he laughed and answered them with the Vergilian line,—

"Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus Amori"—

a play upon words which Thackeray independently chanced upon many years later in writingPendennis, andà proposof a very different Miss Amory. It is of interest to recall the description given by Mr. Ticknor of Prescott as he appeared at the time of his marriage (May 4, 1820) and, indeed, very much as he remained down to the hour of his death.

"My friend was one of the finest looking men I have ever seen; or, if this should be deemed in some respects a strong expression, I shall be fully justified ... in saying that he was one of the most attractive. He was tall, well formed, manly in his bearing but gentle, with light brown hair thatwas hardly changed or diminished by years, with a clear complexion and a ruddy flash on his cheek that kept for him to the last an appearance of comparative youth, but above all with a smile that was the most absolutely contagious I ever looked on.... Even in the last months of his life when he was in some other respects not a little changed, he appeared at least ten years younger than he really was. And as for the gracious sunny smile that seemed to grow sweeter as he grew older, it was not entirely obliterated even by the touch of death."

After Prescott had been married for about a year, the old question of a life pursuit recurred and was considered by him seriously. Without any very definite aim, yet with a half-unconscious intuition, he resolved to store his mind with abundant reading, so that he might, at least in some way, be fitted for the career of a man of letters. Hitherto, in the desultory fashion of his boyhood, he had dipped into many authors, yet he really knew nothing thoroughly and well. In the classics he was perhaps best equipped; but of English literature his knowledge was superficial because he had read only here and there, and rather for the pleasure of the moment than for intellectual discipline. He had a slight smattering of French, sufficient for the purposes of a traveller, but nothing more. Of Italian, Spanish, and German he was wholly ignorant, and with the literatures of these three languages he had never made even the slightest acquaintance. Conning over in a reflective mood the sum total of his acquisitions and defects, he came to the conclusion that he would undertake what he called in a memorandum "a course of studies," including "the principles of grammar and correct writing" and the history of the North American Continent. He also resolved to devoteone hour a day to the Latin classics. Some six months after this, his purpose had expanded, and he made a second resolution, which he recorded in the following words:—

"I am now twenty-six years of age, nearly. By the time I am thirty, God willing, I propose with what stock I have already on hand to be a very well read English scholar; to be acquainted with the classical and useful authors, prose and poetry, in Latin, French, and Italian, and especially in history—I do not mean a critical or profound acquaintance. The two following years I may hope to learn German, and to have read the classical German writers; and the translations, if my eye continues weak, of the Greek."

To this memorandum he adds the comment that such a course of study would be sufficient "for general discipline"—a remark which proves that he had not as yet any definite plan in undertaking his self-ordered task. For several years he devoted himself with great industry to the course which he had marked out. He went back to the pages of Blair's Rhetoric and to Lindley Murray's Grammar, and he read consecutively, making notes as he read, the older masters of English prose style from Roger Ascham, Sidney, Bacon, and Raleigh down to the authors of the eighteenth century, and even later. In Latin he reviewed Tacitus, Livy, and Cicero. His reading seems to have been directed less to the subject-matter than to the understanding and appreciation of style as a revelation of the writer's essential characteristics. It was, in fact, a study of psychology quite as much as a study of literature. Passing on to French, he found the literature of that language comparatively unsympathetic, and he contrasted it unfavourablywith the English. He derived some pleasure from the prose of Montaigne and Bossuet, and from Corneille and Molière; but, on the whole, French poetry always seemed to him too rigid in its formal classicism to be enjoyable. Side by side with his French reading, he made the acquaintance of the early English ballad-poetry and the old romances, and, in 1823, he took up Italian, which appealed to him intensely, so that he read an extraordinary amount and made the most voluminous notes upon every author that interested him, besides writing long criticisms and argumentative letters to his friend Ticknor, full of praises of Petrarch and Dante, and defending warmly the real existence of Laura and the genuineness of Dante's passion for Beatrice. For Dante, indeed, Prescott conceived a most enthusiastic admiration, which found expression in many a letter to his friend.

The immediate result of his Italian studies was the preparation of some articles which were published in theNorth American Review—the first on Italian narrative poetry (October, 1824). This was the beginning of a series; since, nearly every year thereafter, some paper from his pen appeared in that publication. One article on Italian poetry and romance was originally offered to the EnglishQuarterly Reviewthrough Jared Sparks, and was accepted by the editor; but Prescott, growing impatient over the delay in its appearance, recalled the manuscript and gave it to theNorth American. These essays of Prescott were not rated very highly by their author, and we can accept his own estimate as, on the whole, a just one. They are written in an urbane and agreeable manner, but are wholly lacking in originality, insight, and vigour;while their bits of learning strike the more modern reader as old fashioned, even if not pedantic. This literary work, however, slight as may be its intrinsic merit, was at least an apprenticeship in letters, and gave to Prescott a useful training in the technique of composition.

In 1824, something of great moment happened in the course of Prescott's search for a life career. He had, in accordance with the resolution already mentioned, taken up the study of German; but he found it not only difficult but, to him, uninteresting. After several months he became discouraged; and though he read on, he did so, as he himself has recorded, with no method and with very little diligence or spirit. Just at this time Mr. George Ticknor, who had been delivering a course of lectures in Harvard on the subject of Spanish literature, read over some of these lectures to Prescott, merely to amuse him and to divert his mind. The immediate result was that Prescott resolved to give up his German studies and to substitute a course in Spanish. On the first day of December, 1824, he employed a teacher of that language, and commenced a course of study which was to prove wonderfully fruitful, and which ended only with his life. He seems to have begun the reading of Spanish from the very moment that he took up the study of its grammar, and there is an odd significance in a remark which he wrote down only a few days after: "I snatch a fraction of the morning from the interesting treatise of M. Jossé on the Spanish language and from theConquista de Mexico, which, notwithstanding the time I have been upon it, I am far from having conquered." The deadening effects ofGerman upon his mind seem to have endured for a while, since at Christmas time he was still pursuing his studies with a certain listlessness; and he wrote to Bancroft, the historian, a letter which contained one remark that is very curious when we read it in the light of his subsequent career:—

"I am battling with the Spaniards this winter, but I have not the heart for it as I had for the Italians.I doubt whether there are many valuable things that the key of knowledge will unlock in that language."

Another month, however, found him filled with the joy of one who has at last laid his hand upon that for which he has long been groping. He expressed this feeling very vividly in a letter quoted by Mr. Ticknor:—

"Did you never, in learning a language, after groping about in the dark for a long while, suddenly seem to turn an angle where the light breaks upon you all at once? The knack seems to have come to me within the last fortnight in the same manner as the art of swimming comes to those who have been splashing about for months in the water in vain."

Spanish literature exercised upon his mind a peculiar charm, and he boldly dashed into the writing of Spanish even from the first. Ticknor's well-stored library supplied him with an abundance of books, and his own comments upon the Castilian authors in whom he revelled were now written not in English but in Spanish—naturally the Spanish of a beginner, yet with a feeling for idiom which greatly surprised Ticknor. Even in after years, Prescott never acquired a faultless Spanish diction; but he wrote with clearness and fluency, so that his Spanish was very individual, and, in this respect, not unlike the Latin of Politian or of Milton.

Up to this time Prescott had been cultivating hismind and storing it with knowledge without having formed any clear conception of what he was to do with his intellectual accumulations. At first, when he formed a plan of systematic study, his object had been only the modest one of "general discipline," as he expressed it. As he went on, however, he seems to have had an instinctive feeling that even without intention he was moving toward a definite goal. Just what this was he did not know, but none the less he was not without faith that it would ultimately be revealed to him. Looking back over all the memoranda that he has left behind, it is easy now to see that his drift had always been toward historical investigation. His boyish tastes, already described, declared his interest in the lives of men of action. His maturer preferences pointed in the same direction. It has heretofore been noted that, in 1821, when he marked out for himself his first formal plan of study, he included "the compendious history of North America" as one of the subjects. While reading French he had dwelt especially upon the chroniclers and historians from Froissart down. In Spanish he had been greatly attracted by Mariana'sHistoria de España, which is still one of the Castilian classics; and this work had led him to the perusal of Mably's acute and philosophicalÉtude de l'Histoire. He himself long afterward explained that still earlier than this he had been strongly attracted to historical writing, especially after reading Gibbon'sAutobiography, which he came upon in 1820. Even then, he tells us, he had proposed to himself to become an historian "in the best sense of the term." About 1822 he jotted down the following in his private notes:—

"History has always been a favourite study with me and I have long looked forward to it as a subject on which I was one day to exercise my pen. It is not rash, in the dearth of well-written American history, to entertain the hope of throwing light upon this matter. This is my hope."

Nevertheless, although his bent was so evidently for historical composition, he had as yet received no impulse toward any especial department of that field. In October, 1825, we find him making this confession of his perplexity: "I have been so hesitating and reflecting upon what I shall do, that I have in fact done nothing." And five days later, he set down the following: "I have passed the last fortnight in examination of a suitable subject for historical composition." In his case there was no need for haste. He realised that historical research demands maturity of mind. "I think," he said, "thirty-five years of age full soon enough to put pen to paper." And again: "I care not how long a time I take for it, provided I am diligent in all that time."

It is clear from one of the passages just quoted, that his first thought was to choose a distinctively American theme. This, however, he put aside without any very serious consideration, although he had looked into the material at hand and had commented upon its richness. His love of Italian literature and of Italy drew him strongly to an Italian theme, and for a while he thought of preparing a careful study of that great movement which transformed the republic of ancient Rome into an empire. Again, still with Italy in mind, he debated with himself the preparation of a work on Italian literature,—a work (to use his own words) "which, without giving a chronological andminute analysis of authors, should exhibit in masses the most important periods, revolutions, and characters in the history of Italian letters." Further reflection, however, led him to reject this, partly because it would involve so extensive and critical a knowledge of all periods of Italian literature, and also because the subject was not new, having in a way been lately treated by Sismondi. Prescott makes another and very characteristic remark, which shows him to have been then as always the man of letters as well as the historian, with a keen eye to what is interesting. "Literary history," he says, "is not so amusing as civil."

The choice of a Spanish subject had occurred to him in a casual way soon after he had taken up the study of the Spanish language. In a letter already quoted as having been written in December of 1825, he balances such a theme with his project for a Roman one:—

"I have been hesitating between two topics for historical investigation—Spanish history from the invasion of the Arabs to the consolidation of the monarchy under Charles V., or a history of the revolution of ancient Rome which converted the republic into an empire.... I shall probably select the first as less difficult of execution than the second."

He also planned a collection of biographical sketches and criticisms, but presently rejected that, as he did, a year later, the Roman subject; and after having done so, the mists began to clear away and a great purpose to take shape before his mental vision. On January 8, 1826, he wrote a long memorandum which represents the focussing of his hitherto vague mental strivings.

"Cannot I contrive to embrace thegistof the Spanish subject without involving myself in the unwieldy barbarousrecords of a thousand years? What new and interesting topic may be admitted—not forced—into the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella? Can I not indulge in a retrospective picture of the constitutions of Castile and Aragon—of the Moorish dynasties and the causes of their decay and dissolution? Then I have the Inquisition with its bloody persecutions; the conquest of Granada, a brilliant passage; the exploits of the Great Captain in Italy; ... the discovery of a new world, my own country.... A biography will make me responsible for a limited space only; will require much less reading; will offer the deeper interest which always attaches to minute developments of character, and the continuous, closely connected narratives. The subject brings me to a point whence [modern] English history has started, is untried ground, and in my opinion a rich one. The age of Ferdinand is most important.... It is in every respect an interesting and momentous period of history; the materials authentic, ample. I will chew upon this matter and decide this week."

Long afterward (in 1847) Prescott pencilled upon this memorandum the words: "This was the first germ of my conception ofFerdinand and Isabella." On January 19th, after some further wavering, he wrote down definitely: "I subscribe to theHistory of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella." Opposite this note he made, in 1847, the brief but emphatic comment,—"A fortunate choice."

From this decision he never retreated, though at times he debated with himself the wisdom of his choice. His apparent vacillation was due to a return of the inflammation in his eye. For a little while this caused him to shrink back from the difficulties of his Spanish subject, involving as it did an immense amount of reading; and there came into his head the project of writing an historical survey of English literature. But on the whole he held fast to his originalresolution, and soon entered upon that elaborate preparation which was to give to American literature a masterpiece. In his final selection of a theme we can, indeed, discern the blending of several currents of reflection and the combination of several of his earlier purposes. Though his book was to treat of two Spanish sovereigns, it nevertheless related to a reign whose greatest lustre was conferred upon it by an Italian and by the discovery of the Western World. Thus Prescott's early predilection for American history his love for Italy, and his new-born interest in Spain were all united to stimulate him in the task upon which he had now definitely entered.

DR. JOHNSON, in his rather unsympathetic life of Milton, declares that it is impossible for a blind man to write history. Already, before Prescott began historical composition, this dictum had 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 not wholly blind, for at times he could make a cautious use of the right eye. Nevertheless, the task to which he had set himself was sufficiently formidable to deter a less persistent spirit. In the first place, all the original sources of information were on the other side of the Atlantic. Nowhere in the United States was there a public library such as even some of our smaller cities now possess. 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 not to be had in the United States. Finally, though he was not blind in the ordinary sense, he could not risk a total loss of sight by putting upon his remaining eye the strain of continuous and fatiguing use.

In spite of all these obstacles and discouragements, however, he began his undertaking with a touch of that stoicism which, as Thomas Hughes has somewhere said, makes the Anglo-Saxon find his keenest pleasure in enduring and overcoming. Prescott had planned to devote a year to preliminary studies before putting pen to paper. The work which he then had in mind was intended by him to be largely one of compilation from the works of foreign writers, to be of moderate size, with few pretensions to originality, and to claim attention chiefly because the subject was still a new one to English readers. He felt that he would be accomplishing a great deal if he should read and thoroughly digest 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 assistance which he received. A reader, employed by him to read aloud the Spanish books, performed the duty valiantly but without understanding a single word of Spanish, very much as Milton's daughters read Greek and Hebrew to their father. Thinking of his new and more ambitious conception of his purpose and of the hindrances whichbeset him, Prescott wrote: "Travelling at this lame gait, I may yet hope in five or six years to reach the goal." As a matter of fact, it was three years and a half before he wrote the opening sentence of his book. It was ten years before he finished the last foot-note of the final chapter. It was nearly twelve years before the book was given to the public.

Some account of his manner of working may be of interest, and it is convenient to describe it here once for all. In the second year, after he had begun his preliminary studies, he secured the services of a Mr. James English, a young Harvard graduate, who had some knowledge of the modern languages. This gentleman devoted himself to Prescott's interests, and henceforth a definite routine of study and 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 side was a large green screen, toward which Prescott faced while seated at his table; while behind him was an ample window, over which a series of pale blue muslin shades could be drawn, thus regulating the illumination of the room according to the state of Prescott's eye and the conditions of the weather. At a second window sat Mr. English, ready to act either as reader or as amanuensis when required.

Allusion has been made from time to time to Prescott's written memoranda and to his letters, which, indeed, were often very long and very frequent. Itmust not be thought that in writing these he had to make any use of his imperfect sight. The need of this had been obviated by an invention which he had first heard of in London during his 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 placed a sheet of plain white note-paper. A person using the noctograph wrote with a sort of stylus of ivory, agate, or some other hard substance upon the blackened paper, which conveyed the impression to the white paper underneath. Of course, the brass wires guided the writer's hand and kept the point of the stylus somewhere near the line.[8]

Of his noctograph Prescott made constant use. For composition he employed it almost altogether, seldom or never dictating to a scribe. Obviously, however, the instrument allowed no erasures or corrections to be made, and the writer must go straight forward with his task; since to go back and try to alter what had been once set down would make the whole illegible. Hence arose the necessity of what Irving once described as "pre-thinking,"—the determination not only of the content but of the actual form of the sentence before it should be written down. In this pre-thinking Prescott showed a power of memory and ofvisualisation 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 intellectual and literary achievement of an unusual character. Of course, such a power as this did not come of itself, but was slowly gained by persistent practice and unwearied effort. His personal memoranda show this: "Think closely," he writes, "gradually concentrating the circle of thought." And again: "Think continuously and closely before taking up my pen. Make corrections chiefly in my own mind." And still again: "Never take up my pen until I have travelled over the subject so often that I can write almost from memory."

But in 1827, the time had not yet come for composition. He was hearing books read to him and was taking copious notes. How copious these were, his different secretaries have told; and besides, great masses of them have been preserved as testimony to the minute and patient labour of the man who made and used them. As his reader went on, Prescott would say, "Mark that!" whenever anything seemed to him especially significant. 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 daywould be given to reflection and (probably) to composition, while from five to nine days more might go to the actual writing out of the text. This power of Prescott's increased with constant exercise. Later, he was able to carry in his head the whole of the first and second chapters of hisConquest of Peru(nearly sixty pages) before committing them to paper, and in preparing his last work,Philip II., he composed and memorised the whole fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of Book II., amounting to seventy-two printed pages.

Prescott had elaborated a system of his own for the regulation of his daily life while he was working. This system was based upon the closest observation, extending over years, of the physical effect upon him of everything he did. The result was a regimen which represented his customary mode of living. Rising early in the morning, he took outdoor exercise, except during storms of exceptional severity. He rode well and loved a spirited horse, though sometimes he got a fall from letting his attention stray to his studies instead of keeping it on the temper of his animal. But, in the coldest weather, on foot or in the saddle, he covered several miles before breakfast, to which he always came back in high spirits, 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, whichwas 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 then that Prescott treated himself to the amount of wine which he had decided to allow himself. His fondness for wine has been already casually mentioned. To him the question of its use was so important, that once, for two years and nine months, he recorded every day the exact amount that he had drunk and the effect which it had had upon his eye and upon his general health. A further indulgence which followed after dinner was the smoking of a mild cigar while his wife read or talked to him. Then, another walk or drive, a cup of tea at five, and finally, two or more industrious hours with his secretary, after which he came down to the library and enjoyed the society of his family or of friends who happened in.

This, it will be seen, was not the life of a recluse or of a Casaubon, though it was a life regulated by a wise discretion. To adjust himself to its routine, Prescott had to overcome many of his natural 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 known in school or college. Even now in his maturity, and with the spurring of a steady purpose to urge him on, he often faltered. His memoranda show now and then a touch of self-accusation or regret.

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