Born, at Salem, Mass., 4 May 1796. Early education at Salem. At school in New York, Jan. 1803 to June 1808. Parents removed to Boston, 1808. To Harvard Coll., Aug. 1811; B.A., 1814. While at Harvard lost the sight of one eye through an accident; the other soon afterwards became seriously and permanently affected. At St. Michael’s, Azores, for health, Oct. 1815 to April 1816. Travelled in Europe, 1816–1817. In Boston, winter 1817–1818. Married Susan Amory, 4 May 1820. Adopted literary career. Corresponding Member of French Academy, Feb. 1845. Corresponding Mem. Royal Soc. of Berlin, Feb. 1845. Visit to England, 1850. Died, in Boston, 28 Jan. 1859. Buried in St. Paul’s Church, Boston. Works: “Life of Charles Brockden Brown,” 1834; “History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella” (3 vols.), 1838; “History of the Conquest of Mexico” (3 vols.), 1843; “Critical and Historical Essays,” 1845; “History of the Conquest of Peru” (2 vols.), 1847; “Memoir of … J. Pickering,” 1848; “The History of the Reign of Philip II,” vols. I, II, 1855; vol. III, 1858; “Memoir of the Hon. A. Lawrence” (priv. ptd.), 1856; “The Life of Charles V after his Abdication” (vol. III of Robertson’s “Hist. of the Reign of Charles V”), 1857. He edited: Mme. Calderon de la Bara’s “Life in Mexico,” 1843. Life: by G. Ticknor, 1863.

Personal

  This morning, as I was sitting at breakfast, a gentleman on horseback sent up word that I should come down to him. It was Prescott, author of “Ferdinand and Isabella.” He is an early riser and rides about the country. There on his horse sat the great author. He is one of the best fellows in the world, and much my friend; handsome, gay, and forty; a great diner-out; gentle, companionable, and modest; quite astonished to find himself so famous.

  Prescott, the author of “Ferdinand and Isabella,” a handsome, half-blind shunner of the vanities of the world, with some others who read and write a good deal, and no one the wiser for it.

  When Prescott comes to England, a Caspian Sea of soup awaits him.

  The Niagara steamer arrived this morning from Liverpool. In her came passenger William H. Prescott, our eminent historian, and excellent good fellow. I had a visit from him this morning at my office. He returns in good health and excellent spirits, after an absence of five months, during which time the greatest respect and attention were paid to him by the distinguished people of England, from the Queen down; as an evidence of which he told me (but without any vainglorious boasting) that he had, during his sojourn in London, twelve dinner invitations for one day. These highly merited compliments reflect equal honour on both parties.

  There is little in the external aspect of this house in Beacon Street to distinguish it from the others in its immediate vicinity. It is one of a continuous but not uniform block. It is of brick, painted white, four stories high, and with one of those swelled fronts which are the characteristic of Boston. It has the usual proportion and distribution of drawing rooms, dining-room, and chambers, which are furnished with unpretending elegance and adorned with some portraits, copies of originals in Spain, illustrative of Mr. Prescott’s writings. The most striking portion of the interior consists of an ample library, added by Mr. Prescott to the rear of the house, and communicating with the drawing-rooms. It is an apartment of noble size and fine proportions, filled with a choice collection of books, mostly historical, which are disposed in cases of richly-veined and highly-polished oak. This room, which is much used in the social arrangements of the household, is not that in which Mr. Prescott does his hard literary work. A much smaller apartment, above the library and communicating with it, is the working study—an arrangement similar to that adopted by Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford.

  I have had the happiness to form and retain the friendship of many excellent men; no one has ever, considering the short personal intercourse which I enjoyed with him, and our but occasional correspondence, wakened such strong and lasting attachment. He found his way at once to the heart, and has there remained and ever will remain, during the brief period to which I can now look forward, as an object of the warmest esteem and affection. I think I should have loved the man if I had only known him as an author; his personal society only showed his cordial, liberal, gentle character in a more distinct and intimate form. That which was admiration became love. There is here but one feeling, among those who had not the good fortune to know him, as among those who knew him best,—deep regret for a man who did honor to the literature of our common language, and whose writings, from their intrinsic charm and excellence, were most popular, without any art or attempt to win popularity.

  Mr. Prescott’s personal appearance itself was singularly pleasing, and won for him everywhere, in advance, a welcome and favor. His countenance had something that brought to the mind “the beautiful disdain” that hovers on that of the Apollo. But, while he was high-spirited, he was tender, and gentle, and humane. His voice was like music; and one could never hear enough of it. His cheerfulness reached and animated all about him. He could indulge in playfulness, and could also speak earnestly and profoundly; but he knew not how to be ungracious or pedantic. In truth, the charms of his conversation were unequalled, he so united the rich stores of memory with the ease of one who is familiar with the world.

  Yes, it was your letter which first told me of Prescott’s death. The next day I read it in the Paris papers. Taillandier announced it at the opening of his lecture. The current of grief and praise is everywhere unbroken. Perhaps no man, so much in people’s mouths, was ever the subject of so little unkindness. How different his fate from that of others. Something of that immunity which he enjoyed in life must be referred to his beautiful nature, in which enmity could not live. This death touches me much. You remember that my relations with him had for years been of peculiar intimacy. Every return to Boston has always been consecrated by an evening with him. I am sad to think of my own personal loss.

  I know not in what words to speak of Prescott. He was my oldest friend,—the last friend of my boyhood. Our fathers were intimate friends, and their intimacy fell to us as an inheritance. His genial face, and that cordial manner which was but the transparent vesture of his constant kindness, I shall meet no more…. Nor need I add my testimony to the universal recognition of the ability, the industry, the accurate learning, the admirable judgment, and the perfect taste which have placed him at the head of our literature and made him our pride.

  Mr. Prescott was a true son of Boston; well-born, well-bred, of extremely dignified and agreeable manners, and with a delicate and nobly chiselled face. He was a perfect man of the world, fond of society, and with not the slightest touch of the pedant about him. I saw him frequently and intimately at his Nahant house and at the neighboring villa of his daughter, Mrs. Lawrence, who was an admirable hostess as well as a beautiful woman. Although he was past sixty when I first met him, he was still as attractive as a man of thirty in dress and manner, and with the added delight of his extremely cultivated mind. His infirmity of sight did not prevent his getting about alone and eating his dinner with the grace of a diplomatist. If he asked any one for the toast or the cream at one of his daughter’s delicious country teas, it was really a pleasantry and a compliment, and he could make his infirmity of sight a joke. If the cream-pitcher turned up under his hand, he would thank the finder and say, “If it had been a bear it would have bit me.” He asked my husband and myself to his “workshop,” as he called his library, and showed us the apparatus which is used by the blind—a wire-ruled machine for guiding the hand.

  His hours were so scrupulously laid out that when the appointed minute came for putting down a novel that was read aloud to the family circle, Prescott was inexorable, no matter where or how the hero and the heroine were to be left. If ten o’clock was his bed-time, he was capable, when the hour struck, of leaving a company of bachelor friends whom he was entertaining at dinner, telling them to call for whatever they desired, “and if you don’t go home till morning, I wish you a merry night of it.” In the morning when he was waked, he gave himself time to count twenty, and if he failed to jump out of bed when he had done so, he paid a fine of his own exaction to the servant who bad called him. His tailor marked his clothes with the number of ounces each garment weighed and being told exactly where the thermometer stood, he dressed himself accordingly. Every morning for a long period, even in the coldest weather, he rode on his horse from Boston to watch the sunrise from a particular spot in Jamaica Plain. In his library the blue window shades were so arranged that the light could be kept at a uniform dimness, even as successive clouds crossed the sun. He “reckoned time,” he said, “by eyesight, as distances on railroads are reckoned by hours.” The catalogue of his rigours with himself might be lengthened to such an extent as to make him seem quite without the charm that springs from impulse, but justice forbids one to leave unmentioned the gentler graces of his life—the tender devotion to his parents, wife, and children, the social gift which made the acquaintance think himself a friend, and the friend know himself to be fortunate beyond most men in the friendship with such a man.

The Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, 1838

  In every page we have been reminded of that untiring patience and careful discrimination which have given celebrity to the great, though not always impartial, historian of the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

  The spirit and sentiment of the work is admirable; there is enough of reflection, and not too much; the narrative is lively and flowing; and great judgment is shown in the proportions assigned to the various topics on which he treats. It is entertaining, with every mark of strict adherence to truth, and instructive without deep philosophy indeed, or sententiousness of remark; but by means of a pervading spirit of candour, good sense and liberality, the interest of the subject hurries one on, at first reading, too fast, I believe, for the credit of the writer; and I have little doubt that a second perusal would disclose many fresh merits of detail.

  By much the first historical work which British America has yet produced, and one that need hardly fear a comparison with any that has issued from the European press since this century began.

  We cannot but timidly flatter ourselves that, one day or another, our American aspirants for literary honors will get more into the way of spending some time in sowing and reaping their laurels, preparatory to tuning their voices for the Harvest Home. A very few examples, at all like the recent one of Mr. Prescott’s brilliant success, cannot fail of producing a decided effect of this kind; and whoever, by showing what a mind of high endowments owes to itself, and what it may achieve, if it have but fair play, disposes our young scholars to be content to wait for applause till they have time to deserve it, has done a service to his country worthy of all grateful commemoration.

  It has taken the rank of a classic in our language, and in the emulous favor with which it has been received on each side of the Atlantic may be read an assurance of the unbiased judgment of posterity.

  Mr. Prescott has proved himself in this work to be most indefatigable. His industry has been immense. His sources of information were widely scattered. To bring them together could be no common labour. For almost every statement, sometimes to the unimportant and even trivial, he is prepared with his corroboration. He has taken nothing upon report and general credulity. He works his way through mountains of conflicting testimony…. The principal fault of the publication is in its deficiency of philosophical generalization.

  Hardly nine years have passed since the publication of the “History of Ferdinand and Isabella” placed Mr. Prescott at once by universal consent both in England and America, in the front rank of English historians.

  As the period which Mr. Prescott selected was that in which the modern system of Europe may be said to have taken its rise, and was in an especial degree encumbered with falsehood and sophistry, it was a subject which seemed at once to tempt the historian by its importance and repel him by his difficulties…. His work accurately reflects the spirit of the age and the character of his prominent actors; and we have been especially struck with his felicity in developing character, not in an isolated analysis of qualities, but in the narration of the events which called them forth. He so blends character with events, that their mutual relation is distinctly seen.

  “Ferdinand and Isabella,”—in my opinion his best work.

  “The History of Ferdinand and Isabella” was published at the close of 1837, or the beginning of 1838; and, on my arrival in Europe in the summer of 1840, I found it extensively known and duly appreciated…. 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 Xenophon’s “Anabasis” in the original, I made some passing remark on the beauty of that work. “Here,” said he, holding up a volume of “Ferdinand and Isabella,” “is one far superior.” With the exception of the Nestor of our literature (Mr. Irving), no American writer appeared to me so widely known or so highly esteemed in England as Mr. Prescott; and when he visited that country, a few years later, the honours paid to him by all the cultivated classes of society, from the throne downward, were such as are seldom offered to the most distinguished visitant.

  Is one of the most comprehensive surveys of a great subject ever presented to the historical student. The condition and relations of the crown, the nobles, the clergy, the cities, and the commons, are painted with a masterly hand, and are presented in a picture at once clear, concise, and complete. The wily, able Ferdinand and the good Isabella, the model of womanly heroism, are portrayed with consummate skill and delicacy; and neither Robertson nor Irving has excelled in easy pace the narratives of the siege of Malaga and the crowning conquest of Granada.

  It at once established his reputation in the very first rank of living historians.

  No such comprehensive view of Spain at the zenith of her greatness has ever appeared in English. The proportion of its parts and the justice of its estimates are universally acknowledged, while hypercriticism of the style—graceful, correct, and sufficiently varied—can only point to the occasional possibility of greater condensation.

  Though this history was the first written by Prescott, it has scarcely been excelled in merit by any of its successors…. Prescott’s writings are conspicuous for thoroughness of research, keenness of insight, impartiality of judgment, picturesqueness of narration, exclusion of irrelevant matter, and correctness and elegance of style. He had not much of the passion of the politician or the imagination of the poet; and therefore he is never quite able to produce the highest dramatic effects in narration, or arouse the highest enthusiasm of the reader. But as an offset to this deficiency, if, indeed, it can be called such, he has the far more than counterbalancing merit of making his readers feel that they are listening to a wise and learned judge rather than to a skillful advocate. Prescott’s good qualities are so marked and so numerous that the best judges will hardly hesitate to place him at the head of American historians.

The Conquest of Mexico, 1843

  Mr. Prescott possesses high qualifications, and some peculiar advantages, for the execution of such a work…. In his disquisitions on the political state and the civilization of the Aztec kingdoms, he is full and copious, without being prolix and wearisome; his narrative is flowing and spirited, sometimes very picturesque; his style has dropped the few Americanisms which still jarred on our fastidious ear in his former work, and is, in general, pure and sound English. Above all, his judgments are unaffectedly candid and impartial…. We conclude with expressing our satisfaction that Mr. Prescott has given us an opportunity at this time of showing our deep sympathy, the sympathy of kindred and of blood, with Americans who, like himself, do honour to our common literature. Mr. Prescott may take his place among the really good English writers of history in modern times, and will be received, we are persuaded, into the small community, with every feeling of friendly and fraternal respect.

  It is a noble work; judiciously planned and admirably executed; rich with the spoils of learning easily and gracefully worn; imbued everywhere with a conscientious love of the truth, and controlled by that unerring good sense, without which genius leads astray with its false lights, and learning encumbers with its heavy panoply. It will win the literary voluptuary to its pages by the attractiveness of its subject and the flowing ease of its style; and the historical student will do honour to the extent and variety of the research which it displays, and to the thoroughness with which its investigations have been conducted. We can confidently predict for it an extensive and permanent popularity…. It will take its place among those enduring productions of the human mind which age cannot stale, and custom cannot wither.

  I doubt whether Mr. Prescott was aware of the extent of the sacrifice I made. This was a favorite subject, which had delighted my imagination ever since I was a boy. I had brought home books from Spain to aid me in it, and looked upon it as the pendant to my Columbus. When I gave it up to him, I in a manner gave him my bread, for I depended upon the profit of it to recruit my waning finances. I had no other subject at hand to supply its place. I was dismounted from my cheval de bataille, and have never been completely mounted since. Had I accomplished that work, my whole pecuniary situation would have been altered. When I made the sacrifice, it was not with a view to compliments or thanks, but from a warm and sudden impulse. I am not sorry for having made it. Mr. Prescott has justified the opinion I expressed at the time, that he would treat the subject with more close and ample research than I should probably do, and would produce a work more thoroughly worthy of the theme. He has produced a work that does honor to himself and his country, and I wish him the full enjoyment of his laurels.

  I wrote to Prescott about his book, with which I was perfectly charmed. I think his descriptions masterly, his style brilliant, his purpose manly and gallant always. The introductory account of Aztec civilization impressed me exactly as it impressed you. From beginning to end the whole history is enchanting and full of genius.

  Prescott is too much of an abstract, and perhaps of an eulogy, though generally very well and pleasingly written, which after all is the great point in such matters. But I must protest against the author’s extravagant and, in my mind, absurd and offensive defence of the cruelties and tyranny of Cortez.

  It is an elegant and eloquent production, rich and copious in expression, yet distinguished by a grace and simplicity worthy of any English historian. It is in clearness and beauty of his style, and his conscientious and careful analysis of authorities, that Mr. Prescott’s chief excellencies lie. We may travel with him confidently, and yield our faith without hesitation, whenever his conclusions are declared. We have reason to be proud of his production.

  We shall not pretend to have examined a narrative which has given us so much pleasure, with the keen scrutiny of a severe criticism; but we can conscientiously affirm, that we remember little or nothing in the manner of its execution which we could have wished otherwise. Mr. Prescott appears to us to possess almost every qualification for his task. He has a pure, simple, and eloquent style—a keen relish for the picturesque—a quick and discerning judgment of character—and a calm, generous, and enlightened spirit of philanthropy. There is no exaggeration in asserting, that his “Conquest of Mexico” combines—some allowance, where that is necessary, being made for the inferior extent and the importance of his subject—most of the valuable qualities which distinguish the most popular historical writers, in our own language, of the present day.

  Whatever may be the comparative merits of the four great histories he has already published, as intellectual efforts, there is little room to doubt that “The Conquest of Mexico” will continue to be the popular. It is justly remarked in the Edinburgh Review, that, considered merely as a work of amusement, it will bear a favourable comparison with the best romances in the language. The careful, judicious, and comprehensive essay on the Aztec civilization, with which it opens, is not inferior in interest to the wonderful drama to which it is an epilogue.

  Rarely has so splendid a theme been treated by an historian so fortunate at once in the possession of requisite materials and requisite capacity. Among the many characteristics of the work, that which will be most likely to strike and charm the general reader, is its picturesqueness of description, both as regards incidents and scenery. The freshness and vividness with which every thing is presented is a continual stimulant to attention; and there is a nerve in the movement of the style which gives to the narrative a continual vitality.

  We have heard some of his most extravagant admirers contend that the “Conquest of Mexico” is a magnificent poem. This is absurdity; we can, however, truly predicate that it possesses many of the chief ingredients. Till Mr. Prescott published his voluminous histories there was much vagueness in the knowledge possessed by the masses on the subjects of which he has treated; he seems suddenly to have illuminated the general world, and to have created a knowledge where before there was a darkness. This is seldom achieved without the possession of that peculiar power termed genius, and we consider ourselves within the bounds of demonstration when we say that in these respects we consider Mr. Prescott as deserving the rare distinction of having a genius for historical composition.

  Mr. Prescott’s rhetoric will never cease to charm, but the historical authority of this work has received a damaging shock from Mr. Wilson’s criticisms. And so great is Mr. Prescott’s reputation, and so long have the traditions which he narrates been told and credited, that comparatively little attention is paid to the critic, and so posterity will continue to believe, I suppose, that six hundred Spanish soldiers overran and conquered a country inhabited by some millions of people advanced in civilization and the arts.

The Conquest of Peru, 1847

  What a fine accomplishment there is about it! And yet there is something wanting to me in the moral nerve. History should teach men how to estimate characters. It should be a teacher of morals. And I think it should make us shudder at the names of Cortez and Pizarro. But Prescott’s does not. He seems to have a kind of sympathy with these inhuman and perfidious adventurers, as if they were his heroes. It is too bad to talk of them as the soldiers of Christ. If it were said of the Devil, they would have better fitted the character.

  In the “Conquest of Mexico” and the “Conquest of Peru,” and especially in the chapters on the civilization of the Aztecs and the Incas, Mr. Prescott displays great sagacity in assorting the scattered fragments of social edifices, which were destroyed before they could be intelligently delineated, and in recalling to their living forms the dry bones of the extinct races which inhabited them. He also appears to have shaken off the diffidence of a stranger in the historical field. His style betokens more self-confidence, and is bolder and more animated. His descriptions of scenery, in which he is always happy and never redundant, are more full and vivid, and are elaborated with the greater care which was required by the strangeness of unfamiliar lands. Mexico spreads her matchless valley, her lake, and her imperial city before our eyes; and we wander through the royal gardens, beneath the giant cedars, of Tezcuco; the golden halls of the Inca and the blazing temples of the sun unfold themselves before us; we follow the silver-shod cavalry of Pizarro through the flowery dales of the Cordilleras; or we ascend through the pastures of the Llama or the stern regions where the condor hovers in the tropical sun around the peaks of the Andes. The account of the triste noche, the rueful night in which, after the death of Montezuma, Cortez and his band retreated across the lake and along the broken causeway, cutting their way through a nation in arms, is one of the finest pictures of modern historical painting.

  While it was passing through the press, or just as the stereotyping was fairly begun, he made a contract with the Messrs. Harper to pay for seven thousand five hundred copies on the day of publication at the rate of one dollar per copy, to be sold within two years, and to continue to publish at the same rate afterwards, or to surrender the contract to the author at his pleasure; terms, I suppose, more liberal than had been offered for a work of grave history on this side of the Atlantic. In London it was published by Mr. Bentley, who purchased the copyright for eight hundred pounds, under the kind auspices of Colonel Aspinwall; again a large sum, as it was already doubtful whether an exclusive privilege could be legally maintained in Great Britain by a foreigner…. In five months five thousand copies of the American edition had been sold. At about the same time, an edition of half that number had been exhausted in England. It had been republished in the original in Paris, and translations were going on into French, German, Spanish and Dutch. A more complete success in relation to an historical work of so much consequence could, I suppose, hardly have been asked by any author, however much he might previously have been favored by the public.

  Boys read his “Mexico” and “Peru” as they read the “Arabian Nights;” critics can point to few flaws in the accuracy of his judgment.

The Reign of Philip II, 1855–58

  I finished Prescott’s “Philip the Second.” What strikes me most about him is that, though he has had new materials, and tells his story well, he does not put anything in a light very different from that in which I had before seen it; and I have never studied that part of history deeply.

  Of the merits of this particular work, we have only to say, that they equal those of its predecessors. The style is, if anything, more easy and fluent, and all the parts show the same thorough preparation and uniform polish and finish…. The chapters on the Knights Hospitallers of St. John and the Siege of Malta are particularly interesting, and, like many other portions of these volumes, will undoubtedly always be ranked among the finest passages of modern history.

  The author’s task was arduous in the highest degree…. Suffice it to say, for the present, that the difficulty of the achievement is but the measure of the genius and industry manifested in its successful accomplishment, and that expectations founded on the author’s previous works are, if possible, more than realized in this.

  To this merit of a well-arranged history Mr. Prescott adds that of an easy, unaffected, though somewhat frigid, power of narration. He belongs to the historical school of Robertson, judicious rather than profound in its general views, and more remarkable for simplicity than for descriptive power. The pictures Mr. Prescott has given us are never wanting in truth, but they are sometimes wanting in life. History only becomes dramatic on two conditions; it must either have the passion of the politician or the imagination of the poet. Mr. Prescott has neither one nor the other; he is a calm and enlightened philosopher, an accomplished man of letters; he is well read in the history of Philip II, and he relates it with fidelity; but he has studied it after the lapse of three centuries in all the serenity of his own reflections and the tranquility of a New England study,—faithfully therefore, as these events and these personages are described by him, he leaves them where he finds them, in their tombs.

  Two volumes of Philip II were published in 1855, and the third appeared only a few months ago. To the grace and vivacity of the narratives of the rebellion of the Moriscos, and of the battle of Lepanto and to the undiminished fire and power displayed in this last installment of the work, our current magazines and reviews have borne, and are still bearing, testimony. It will be long indeed ere a historian is found worthy to take up the thread where it has been so suddenly and so unhappily broken.

  “Philip II,” Mr. Prescott’s latest and unfinished work—with less brilliancy of colouring, as becomes the more sombre theme—is rendered even more weighty by the solidity of its judgments.

  It is a monument of thorough study and research, of tolerant and dispassionate judgment, and a model of skill in narration.

Charles V, 1857

  My “Charles the Fifth,” or rather Robertson’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 and biggest part is somewhat of the oldest. But people who like a complete series will need it to fill up the gap betwixt “Ferdinand” and “Philip.”

  It bears all the characteristics of style and manner, all the tokens of elaborate research and philosophic vision, which it has been, and will, we trust, yet be our frequent privilege to record.

  A sequel in which he related, in his usual agreeable style, the true history of the emperor’s retirement and death; events upon which recently-discovered documents have thrown so much light.

General

  The style of Mr. Prescott’s works, as might be expected from his character, is manly, perspicuous, picturesque, lucid, equally removed from stateliness and levity, disdaining all tawdry ornaments and stimulated energy, and combining clearness and simplicity with glow.

  We consider Prescott the most unobjectionable representative of that school of history, the ideal of which is correct and tasteful narrative. In other respects, he seems to us vastly overrated. We look in vain for that earnestness of purpose, that high and uncompromising tone of sentiment, that genuine love of humanity, which should distinguish the historian of the nineteenth century. Prescott is a kind of elegant trimmer in literature.

  In history there has been nothing done to which the world at large has not been eager to award the full meed of its deserts. Mr. Prescott, for instance, has been greeted with as much warmth abroad as here. We are not supposed to undervalue his industry and power of clear and elegant arrangement. The richness and freshness of his materials are such that a sense of enchantment must be felt in their contemplation. We must regret, however, that they should have been first presented to the public by one who possesses nothing of the higher powers of the historian, great leading views, or discernment as to the motives of action and the spirit of an era. Considering the splendour of the materials the books are wonderfully tame, and every one must feel that having once passed through them and got the sketch in the mind, there is nothing else to which it will recur. The absence of thought, as to that great picture of Mexican life, with its heroisms, its terrible but deeply significant superstitions, its admirable civic refinement, seems to be quite unbroken. Mr. Bancroft is a far more vivid writer; he has great resources and great command of them, and leading thoughts by whose aid he groups his facts.

  Mr. Prescott was by far the first historian of America, and he may justly be assigned to a place beside the very greatest of modern Europe. To the indispensable requisites of such an author—industry, candour, and impartiality—he united ornamental qualities of the highest grade: a mind stored with various and elegant learning, a poetical temperament, and great, it may almost be said unrivalled, pictorial powers. These great qualities appeared not less strongly in his last production, the “History of the Reign of Philip the Second,” than in the earlier works—the “History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella,” the “History of the Conquest of Mexico,” and the “History of the Conquest of Peru,” which won for him his world-wide fame. The death of such a man, in the prime of life, and in the meridian of his powers, is a loss not to his country alone, but to the whole human race, to whom his beautiful writings will always prove a source of instruction and enjoyment.

  Few historians, indeed, have evinced such praiseworthy scrupulousness in the composition of their writings. Far from starting with a system laid down a priori, and making the facts he had to deal with bend to it, Mr. Prescott thought that the first duty of a historian was to assemble all its existing documents, classifying and purifying them by a severe criticism, and to employ all his efforts for the discovery of truth. Like Augustin Thierry, he surmounted, by the force of his will, obstacles which seemed almost invincible and to exclude him from the researches of the historian…. Of a just and upright spirit, he had a horror of paradox. He never allowed himself to be drawn away by it, and often condemned himself to long investigation to refute even the most audacious assertions. His criticism, full at once of good sense and acuteness, was never deceived in the choice of documents, and his discernment is as remarkable as his good faith. If he may be reproached with often hesitating, even after a long investigation, to pronounce a definite judgment, we must at least acknowledge that he omitted nothing to prepare the way for it, that the author, too timid perhaps to decide, always leaves his reader sufficiently instructed to need no other guide.

  I had as great a regard for Mr. Prescott as for any man of whom I knew so little, and I think very highly of his works.

  Truth was his first aim, as far as he could detect it in the conflicting records of events; and the next aim was to impress this truth, in its genuine colors, upon the reader. The characters and motives of men were weighed in the scales of justice, as they appeared to him after careful research and mature thought. In all these qualities of an accomplished historian, we may safely challenge for him a comparison with any other writer.

  Wherever the English language is spoken, over the whole earth—his name is perfectly familiar. We all of us know what his place was in America. But I can also say, that in eight years (1851–1859) passed abroad I never met a single educated person, of whatever nation, that was not well acquainted with his fame, and hardly one who had not read his works. No living American name is so widely spread over the whole world.

  It is a saying that “the style is the man;” and of no great author in the literature of the world is that saying more true than of him whose loss we mourn. For in the transparent simplicity and undimmed beauty and candour of his style were read the endearing qualities of his soul; so that his personal friends are found wherever literature is known, and the love for him is co-extensive with the world of letters,—not limited to those who speak our Anglo-Saxon mother-language, to the literature of which he has contributed such splendid works, but co-extensive with the civilized languages of the human race.

  So long as in ages far distant, and not only in countries now refined and polished, but in those not yet brought into the domain of civilization, the remarkable epoch which he has described shall attract the attention of men, so long as the consolidation of the Spanish monarchy, and the expulsion of the Moors, the mighty theme of the discovery of America, the sorrowful glories of Columbus, the mail-clad forms of Cortez and Pizarro and the other grim conquistadores, trampling new-found empires under the hoofs of their cavalry, shall be subject of literary interest; so long as the blood shall curdle at the cruelties of Alva, and the fierce struggle of the Moslem in the East,—so long will the writings of our friend be read.

  The excellence of his productions is, in part, transparent to every reader. Compare what he has written with the most of what others have left on the same subjects, and Prescott’s superiority beams upon you from the contrast. The easy flow of his language, and the faultless lucidity of his style, may make the reader forget the unremitting toil which the narrative has cost; but the critical inquirer sees everywhere the fruits of investigation rigidly and most perseveringly pursued, and an impartiality and soundness of judgment which give authority to every statement and weight to every conclusion.

  But there was one charm in Mr. Prescott’s style which, I think, was much felt, without being much understood by the great mass of his readers. He put not a little of his personal character into it; a great deal more, I think, than is common with writers of acknowledged eminence. The consequence was, that the multitudes who knew him in no way except as an author were yet insensibly drawn to him by the qualities that made him so dear to his friends as a man, and felt, in some degree, the attachment that is commonly the result only of personal intercourse. They seemed to know him more than they know other authors whom they have never seen; and, as most of us have favorite writers without always being able to explain why they are such, he became peculiarly so to many, who yet never stopped to inquire what was the cause of an interest so agreeable to them.

  How well historiography in its stricter forms has been cultivated in America is proved by her historians, whose great excellence will be acknowledged by the severest critic. William Hickling Prescott must be mentioned before all others; his “History of Ferdinand and Isabella,” and “History of Philip the Second,” treat the most important periods of Spanish history in a masterly manner; and his works on the two great romantic episodes of American history—“History of the Conquest of Mexico” and “History of the Conquest of Peru”—are of equal excellence and beauty.

  I have a notion that no one can reach the finest harmonies of style who has not a musical ear. Prescott had no music.

  Historical literature in America finds its most eminent representative in the brilliant and genial Prescott, who, surpassed by others in vigor and profundity, is rarely equalled in power to win the fancy and to touch the heart.

  In this field Prescott had been equalled only by Cooper and surpassed only by Parkman. The defects of his style are chiefly those of excess. The writer of graphic pictorial description must ever career upon the verge of a precipice, and Prescott, like Cooper, sometimes fell into the depths of bombast and fine writing. He delighted in battles and scenes of action, but he never, like Macaulay, sacrificed truth to rhetoric nor dragged in useless scenes to exhibit his mastery over them. His power was chiefly that of a skillful narrator. Stripped of their pictorial effects, his histories would still be valuable, but they would lose the greater part of their charm.

  A critical, rather than a creative, age has charged him with being more interesting than accurate. This is the old charge against Herodotus, and against Thucydides; it is the charge made against Prescott’s great English contemporary, Macaulay. What critic of either of these has won an equal place in literature?

  Prescott’s attention was fastened upon the spectacle of life. He filled his wide canvas with splendid masses of figures, scenes of court and camp and tropical forest, battle-fields and strange barbaric pomp. Yet there was unity to the great design, and beauty of detail. The methods of work enforced by his disability aided rather than hindered the pictorial conception. His secretaries, blundering sadly over the Spanish, would read to him day after day and week after week, until his mind was fully stored. Then from the lonely brooding of the blind would leap the vivid chapter.

  Possessed in a wonderful degree not only the patient spirit necessary for careful and painstaking research, but also the imaginative power to present the dry facts thus discovered in a picturesque and delightful narrative.

  Prescott’s work, then, is often mentioned as rather romantic than scholarly. In this view there is some justice. The scholarship of his day had not collected anything like the material now at the disposal of students; and Prescott’s infirmity of sight could not help limiting the range of his investigation. His style, too, always clear and readable, and often vivid, is somewhat florid and generally coloured by what seems a conviction that historical writers should maintain the dignity of history. For all this, his works so admirably combine substantial truth with literary spirit that they are more useful than many which are respected as authoritative. What he tells us is the result of thoughtful study.