CHAPTER VI

WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT

Critics are generally agreed now to give Prescott the first place among our early American historians. Few of his predecessors in the realm of American history are readable. They are, almost to a man, of the dry-as-dust type of historian, and their musty, dust-covered tomes enjoy an unbroken sleep on the top shelves of our libraries. Who, it may very pertinently be asked, now thinks of reading such desiccated annals as those of Governor Hutchinson or Abiel Holmes? Yet these chronicles are trustworthy and accurately relate the events of our early history. But they are insufferably tedious and wearisome to the reader's spirit. Not so Prescott. He does not tire or fatigue us; on the contrary, he holds our interest and attention almost like a romancer. The reader is simply fascinated with his graphic and romantic page.

But Prescott is conspicuous among our early historians quite as much for his historic value as for his chaste, classical style. It is true, that the brilliant literary qualities which adorn the pages of his history so as, occasionally, to challenge comparison with Macaulay's rhetorical paragraphs have raised a question, in the minds of some, as to our author's conscientious adherence to fact. One is inclined to doubt whether such glowing pictures as embellish Prescott's history are not the product of an imagination untrammeled and more or less divorced from fact. To such a degree has the historian invested

the dry and uninviting annals with the warmth and glow of his poetic imagination and made the events of those romantic days again unfold themselves before our eyes under the touch of his brilliant pen. Yet subsequent investigators in this field have assured us that Prescott had a scrupulous regard for fact combined with his gift of a vivid imagination. By this happy union of his mental qualities he was enabled to make his pages exceedingly attractive, without distorting the facts of history. However, it may be presumed that Prescott did not paint with an absolute fidelity to fact, such as is exacted by the present-day standard of writing history. He colored his picture a little, perhaps, using the license of historical writing then in vogue. But he did not allow his love of rhetorical adornment materially to warp the truth. He was compelled in writing his narratives to rely upon documents highly colored and sometimes really misleading. He lacked those aids to arriving at the facts which archæological research has brought to light since his day. Perhaps, too, he lacked to some extent that rare analytical faculty for weighing evidence with tedious minuteness and for making nice distinctions which historians ever and anon are forced to put into requisition.

Prescott marks an epoch in American historical writing. His predecessors' works constitute a veritable valley of dry bones. But Prescott broke with the traditions which the bald chroniclers had followed, when he began to write his "Ferdinand and Isabella," and himself followed the lead of Washington Irving, who blazed out the path of romance in American letters. Moreover, Prescott left the beaten track in the selection of a subject for investigation and chose a period for his historical

writing which is by nature romantic and which, therefore, readily lends itself to imaginative treatment. The age of Ferdinand and Isabella is a period of history which appeals strongly to the imagination and the theme itself is naturally inspiring and invites attention. Though a foreign subject, it is more picturesque and attractive than any purely American theme which the author might have selected for his narrative powers. Besides, Prescott was especially fitted for this kind of work. It was his ambition from youth to lead a literary life, and he resolved to fashion that life after the model of Gibbon, the great English historian of the "Decline and Fall."

Prescott was born of a distinguished family in the quaint old New England town of Salem, in 1796. He was graduated at Harvard, where his father before him was graduated. Young Prescott inherited an ample fortune, so that he was relieved of the necessity of working for his bread. This is an important fact in his career. For only a man of considerable wealth could have carried out Prescott's ambition of writing an epoch-making history, which entailed so great a draft on his purse not only for collecting the necessary documents and data, but also for maintaining himself while he was engaged in writing his historical works. Prescott early conceived the idea of writing history and spared no pains or expense to equip himself thoroughly for his chosen field of labor. Unfortunately, while at college he sustained the irreparable loss of one eye, which proved a most serious handicap to him the remainder of his life, for the injury soon extended to the other eye, and he was rendered almost totally blind. Yet, despite this deplorable drawback, he resolutely followed out his life purpose; and by the

services of readers and secretaries whom he employed he was enabled to read through a vast collection of historical literature bearing on the period selected. By means of a "noctograph"-a blind man's writing machine he even wrote himself, thus facilitating the progress of his work.

After determining definitely upon the period of his historical investigation, Prescott not only collected all the authorities touching his theme, to be had in this country, but he even employed secretaries to make copies of all relevant historical documents to be found in the various European libraries. In this manner he acquired and brought to gether such a vast mass of historical data on his chosen theme as no other American historian before him had ever done on any subject. This material he studied most assiduously, pondering over it by day and by night, until he thoroughly mastered his subject.

The first fruit of Prescott's facile and graphic pen was his "History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic," published in three volumes, in 1837. This was the finished product of ten years of incessant toil and study. The author was happy in the choice of his theme and equally happy in its treatment. The subject, Spain in her palmiest days, was suggested to the author by the influence and power of that now decadent empire upon the New World. It was an unexplored domain to American historians and for this reason was invested with all the interest of novelty.

The history assuredly does not seem to be the work of a man practically blind. Nor does the author's blindness appear to have had any effect upon his clearness of intellectual vision, or upon his concise expression of thought. On the con

trary, Prescott's loss of sight seems to have contributed to make his faculty of observation all the keener and more accurate, just as the loss of one of the five senses is said to cause the remaining four to be more highly developed. He evidently possessed an inner light which was not in the least impaired by the loss of his physical sight. This history showed Prescott also to be in the possession of a marvelous power of assimilation of facts as well as of a strikingly imaginative cast of mind. It is not surprising, therefore, that this maiden effort of a patient and careful historian took rank at once with the best histories of the kind in the English tongue. The work was everywhere regarded a brilliant achievement and shed lustre upon American scholarship and research.

His "Ferdinand and Isabella" was no sooner issued from the press than Prescott set himself a similar task no less bold and arduous. This was his scholarly "History of the Conquest of Mexico," which appeared in 1843. This theme grew quite naturally out of the Ferdinand and Isabella age already treated. Just as the first work covered the period of Spanish history from 1469 to the time of Columbus, so this second work was designed to continue the story from the age of the famous discoverer down to the year 1519, which Cortez signalized by his conquest of Mexico. The period of Spanish history embraced in the life of Columbus, Washington Irving had already treated very fully in his "Columbus." Indeed, Irving was now industriously collecting material for a history of the conquest of Mexico, which he contemplated writing, when he learned of Prescott's intention of treating the same subject. Irving thereupon gracefully retired from the field in favor of Prescott, who, with