Literary historian and biographer; born in Boston, Mass., Aug. 1, 1791; graduated at Dartmouth College in 1807; admitted to the bar in Boston in 1813; spent four years (1815–19) in study and travel in Europe, and during his absence was chosen (1817) to the Smith professorship of Modern Languages at Harvard; filled that post from 1820 to 1835, when he resigned; spent three years in Europe, chiefly engaged in preparatory researches for his principal work, to which he devoted several more years of assiduous labor; published in 1849 in London and New York his “History of Spanish Literature,” which was translated into French, German, and Spanish, and accepted as the standard work on its subject even in Spain; printed some occasional essays, chiefly on educational topics, and several biographical sketches; wrote an elaborate “Life of William Hickling Prescott” (1864); contributed to various magazines and reviews; and was a munificent benefactor to the Boston Public Library, presenting it with 2,000 volumes in 1860. He was a member of the leading literary societies of Europe and the U. S. Died in Boston, Jan. 26, 1871. The 4th ed. of his “History of Spanish Literature” appeared shortly after his death under the editorship of George S. Hillard, who also published his “Life and Correspondence” (2 vols., Boston, 1876). See E. P. Whipple, “Recollections” (Boston, 1877), section on Ticknor.

Personal

  In the evening I attended Ticknor’s lecture, which was most beautiful and delightful, and on a subject as dry as possible. He explained to us on the map how languages progressed, and what was their origin. There is something very pleasing in his style and delivery, and he introduced figures very appropriately. But independently of this, there is a melody in his voice truly delightful.

  Mr. Ticknor has a great head, and his hair is gray or grayish. You recognize in him at once the man who knows the world, the scholar, too, which probably is his more distinctive character, though a little more under the surface…. Certainly, he is a fine example of a generous-principled scholar, anxious to assist the human intellect in its efforts and researches. Methinks he must have spent a happy life (as happiness goes among mortals), writing his great three-volumed book for twenty years; writing it, not for bread, nor with any uneasy desire of fame, but only with a purpose to achieve something true and enduring. He is, I apprehend, a man of great cultivation and refinement, and with quite substance enough to be polished and refined, without being worn too thin in the process,—a man of society.

  It has been my happiness to know Mr. Ticknor long and well. I associate him with the pleasant memories of early life. I have accompanied him into the vale of declining age. I have known him youthful, social, genial, jovial. I have parted from him after more than sixty years’ intercourse, infirm of limbs and of memory, but still courageous, still friendly, buoyant, and self-relying. Like many, even of the most gifted intellects of all times and ages, he has at last not always been able to complete the unfinished thought of the present hour; while at the same time the things, the persons, the readings of times long passed by, have remained, like the fern-prints and foot-tracks in ancient rocks, indelibly impressed on his remembrance.

  His qualities, his circumstances, and his opportunities were in some things unusual, in many things fortunate. He had the excellent gift of very decided tastes, in the good fortune of entire freedom. From the time when, a very young man, he took the then unusual step of going to study at Göttingen, to the last day of his life, he was singularly unhindered by circumstances. His two marked characteristics were a love of literature and a love of society, and they had full play for sixty years.

  Mr. Ticknor was the most marked type of the American man of letters and society of the first half of this century, as distinguished from the mere scholar or author. He combined traits not often found so happily mingled; his strong social tastes and his brilliant social gifts did not interfere with the steadiness of his literary industry or diminish the worth of its results. He had a fortunate temperament and an easy life. He was in fortunate relations to his times, and he succeeded in securing, together with such advantages as America could afford to a man of strong moral feeling, rational desires, and genial temper, the benefits of the best culture of Europe and the charms of its best society.

  No man, we imagine, was ever less troubled with self-dissatisfaction. He felt the limits of his faculties and qualities, if he felt them at all, only as useful and secure defences. Within them there was all the completeness that could be gained by persevering exercise and culture. There is not a page of his journals and letters that does not bear testimony to his earnest, careful and profitable study of men and books, while we doubt if a remark can be found in them that shows either sympathetic insight or subtle discrimination. His intellect had all its resources at command, but it had more of rigor than of vigor, more of formal precision in its methods than of well-directed force in its performances. Hence the semblance exceeded the reality, and it might have been said of him, as it was said of Guizot, “Il impose et il en impose.”

  Were he living now, as a young man, he would probably be thought to be posing too much with reference to effect at magnificent distances. You hear him referred to by some as a literary autocrat. Cold he doubtless was, and conservative in the grain. One day when a young man was telling him of some new philosophical inquiries, he declared, with impatience, “John Locke settled all that for me, sir, years ago.” Thackeray, however, made short work of his dignity when, as it is related, on the novelist’s dining with him the historian of Spanish literature fell to musing of love. Ticknor resembled his guest in appearance, even to the latter’s oddly shaped nose. “Yes, yes,” assented Thackeray, listening to his rather sentimental monologue; “but, after all, what have two broken-nosed old fellows like you and me got to do with love?” Another time, when a young Westerner, who was lecturing in Boston, was asked by Theodore Parker if he had seen Ticknor, “No,” was the reply. “Well,” Parker answered him, “you might as well go to hell without seeing the devil.”

  In Park Street, above the common, the ample mansion of George Ticknor—the chronicler of “Spanish Literature” and the autocrat of literary taste—was during many years a haunt of the best of Boston culture. We find its stately walls still standing, but the interior has been surrendered to the Philistines.

  As the first learned professor of modern languages in an American university, as the first exponent in our university life of continental scholarship, as the earliest of Americans to attempt the development of an American college into a modern university, and finally as the chief founder of the chief public library in the United States, Ticknor’s claims upon popular memory are remarkable. What is more, those who knew him well felt for him a strong personal attachment; and it is probable that no scholar or man of letters was ever more generous in aiding and encouraging whomever he found eager in learning or letters. At least in his later years, however, Ticknor’s manners did not impress the public as engaging. His dignity seemed forbidding; his tongue was certainly sharp; to people who did not attract him his address was hardly sympathetic; and his social habits, confirmed by almost lifelong intimacy with good European society, were a shade too exclusive for the growingly democratic taste about him. Yet it is hard to overestimate the difference which Ticknor’s personal presence made in the intellectual history of New England, or the diffusion of knowledge which sprang from his generous impulse.

History of Spanish Literature, 1849

  While reading it, one feels and recognizes the peculiar qualities of Spanish poetry and romance, which are so singularly in union with the chivalrous and romantic nation which produced them. You have given extracts enough from each prominent work to allow the reader to feel its character, and to produce upon his mind the agreeable illusion that he himself knows something of the literature to which you introduce him. You analyze enough to instruct, without wearying the reader with too elaborate details.

  Your reach of knowledge is really marvellous in a foreigner; and I particularly admire the candor and good sense with which you have escaped the ordinary fault of exaggerating the writers whom you have occasion to bring before the public, while you have done ample justice to their real deserts. Your style is clear, firm, and well-sustained.

  It is capital—capital! It takes me back into dear old Spain; into its libraries, its theatres; among its chronicles, its plays; among all those scenes and characters and customs that for years were my study and delight. No one that has not been in Spain can feel half the merit of your work; but to those who have, it is a perpetual banquet. I am glad you have brought it out during my lifetime, for it will be a vade mecum for the rest of my days. When I have once read it through, I shall keep it by me, like a Stilton cheese, to give a dig into whenever I want a relishing morsel. I began to fear it would never see the light in my day, or that it might fare with you as with that good lady who went thirteen years with child, and then brought forth a little old man, who died in the course of a month of extreme old age. But you have produced three strapping volumes, full of life and freshness and vigor, and that will live forever. You have laid the foundation of your work so deep that nothing can shake it; you have built it up with a care that renders it reliable in all its parts; and you have finished it off with a grace and beauty that leave nothing to be desired. It is well worth a lifetime to achieve such a work.

  Much as I have read of Spanish, and though I counted myself among the connoisseurs in the province of poetry, your beautiful book has yet put me to shame, for I have gained an endless amount of new information from it. The chapters on the Romances seemed to me especially new and instructive, and I rejoice in the prospect of repeated readings, that I may study and learn more.

  Mr. Ticknor, who has displayed the resources of a well-stored and accomplished mind in his recent work on the literature of Spain.

  The tone of criticism in these volumes is temperate and candid…. We cannot conclude without some notice of the style, so essential an element in a work of elegant literature. It is clear, classical, and correct, with a sustained moral dignity that not unfrequently rises to eloquence. But it is usually distinguished by a calm philosophical tenor that is well suited to the character of the subject. It is especially free from any tendency to mysticism,—from vagueness of expression,—a pretty sure indication of vague conceptions in the mind of the author, which he is apt to dignify with the name of philosophy…. We consider the work as one that does honour to English literature. It cannot fail to attract much attention from European critics who are at all instructed in the topics which it discusses. We predict with confidence that it will be speedily translated into Castilian and into German, and that it must become the standard work of Spanish literature, not only for those who speak our own tongue, but for the Spaniards themselves.

  That the best European critics have recognized it a permanent authority; it is both authentic and tasteful; the translations are excellent, the arrangement judicious, and the whole performance a work of genuine scholarship. It supplies a desideratum, and is an interesting and thorough exposition of a subject at once curious, attractive, and of general literary utility.

  Is of the highest authority, and is very readable.

  As far as solid and accurate reading is concerned, it is incomparably the best history of Spanish literature in existence, and is so acknowledged in Spain…. Erudition cannot confer insight, nor can genius be communicated by mere companionship with it. Mr. Ticknor’s defect was a lack of sympathy and imagination, and to the historian of literature nothing can compensate for a deficiency in these. He could not mentally transform himself into a Spaniard, and therefore could not penetrate into the secret of the genius of Spain. He studied its great writers, but he did not look into and behold their souls. There was something cold, hard, resisting, and repellent in his mind. His criticism, therefore, externally judicious, had not for its basis mental facts vividly conceived and vitally interpreted. Had Mr. Ticknor possessed the realizing imagination of his friend Prescott,—who was never in Spain,—he would have made what is now a valuable work also a work of fascinating interest and extensive popularity.

  Is one of those laborious, careful works that never lose their value. It is allowed to be the best of its kind, the most complete treatment of its subject.

  One of the most creditable contributions ever made to American letters. It is founded on the most extensive and critical studies; is written in a style that is a happy combination of force and grace, and it comprehends within its scope the whole period of Spanish literature down to the early part of the present century. It has been translated into the most important languages of Europe, and it is everywhere recognized as a work of great and permanent qualities. In no country have its merits received more hearty recognition than in Spain.

  A careful and creditable performance. It is impartial, judicious and appreciative.

  Spanish can scarcely be said to have shared, to an extent commensurate with its interest, in the benefit of recent study of the older forms of modern languages. There is, at any rate in English, and I think elsewhere, still nothing better than Ticknor’s “History of Spanish Literature.”

  It was not until thirty years after he began the work of the Smith professorship that he published his history. Fifty years later, this deeply scholarly book, which involved untiring investigation of the best German type, remains authoritative; and it was perhaps the first American book to establish throughout the learned world the position of any American scholar. On the other hand, it is not interesting. Ticknor’s mind was rather acquisitive and retentive than creative. His work is that of a thoroughly trained scholar; of a man, too, so sincerely devoted to literature that, as we have seen, his services to literary culture in America can hardly be overestimated; of a man, furthermore, whose letters and journals show him, though deficient in humour, to have had at command an agreeable and fluent everyday style. When all is said, however, the “History of Spanish Literature,” taken by itself, is heavily respectable reading.

General

  Ticknor is a thorough man,—armed at all points with information, and using it with great readiness.

  We have in the work before us [“Life of Prescott”] a delightful edition to the class of literary biography, for which we venture to predict a wide and enduring popularity. It is the biography of one who was not only an eminent man of letters, but also, in his private character and personal relations, one of the most frank, amiable, warm-hearted, and open-hearted of human beings. It is written by a man who from early youth was his intimate friend, and knew and understood him as well as one man can know and understand another,—whom all the common friends of the two would have pointed out as the most proper person to do the work which he has done.

  Mr. Ticknor’s style was from the beginning simple and animated. He wrote with fluency and ease. His head was not turned by the flattering attentions he received at all hands, and his journals and letters are free from the conceit and egotism that too often mark productions of the sort. The freedom from extravagance of expression in the accounts of his experiences, was a characteristic sign of the even balance of his temper and of his fixed habit of self control. His sympathies, though quick, never betrayed him into enthusiasm, nor was his judgment overmastered by excitement of feeling.

  The “Life of Prescott” attained an immediate popularity, and it still holds its place among the most delightful of literary biographies.

  There was perhaps no man of his time who was more widely read, or who used his reading with a steadier industry and a better judgment, than Mr. Ticknor.