WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 1796-1859 William Hickling Prescott was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1796. His father was a prominent and wealthy lawyer who almost idolized his handsome and talented son. He entered Harvard College in 1811, intending to study law on his graduation, but during his junior year met with an accident to one of his eyes that changed all his life plans. Oculists both in this country and abroad were consulted, but in spite of expert treatment he became practically blind. Under these depressing circumstances he took up the study of literature with a view to making it his life work. He began a year of study, with the aid of a reader and an amanuensis, desiring in this way to perfect himself in style and in general culture. Then, in 1826, he decided to take up the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella as his first subject of historical study and investigation. After three years and a half of preparation he began to write, but even then, so painstaking and thorough was his work that at the end of sixteen months only three hundred pages were completed. Ten years passed before the volumes were issued from the press. To the astonishment of author and publisher alike, copies could not be printed fast enough to meet the demand, and Prescott found himself suddenly famous. He next devoted six years to his "History of the Conquest of Mexico," which was brought out in 1843. Four years later "The Conquest of Peru" was published, and the "History of Philip II" begun. The first two volumes of the latter work came from the press in 1855, and a third volume was issued in 1858. Prescott, however, did not live to complete this volume. He died at his residence on Beacon Street in Boston in 1859. Prescott has a twofold interest for the American student. Not only was he a great historian, but his writings have a distinct literary as well as historical value. Indeed, so brilliant is his literary method that some critics have questioned his historical accuracy, but later scholarship has borne him out in this respect, except, perhaps, in passages of "Mexico and "Peru," where his Spanish authorities have since been found untrustworthy. Aside from his historical writings we have comparatively little from Prescott's pen. A number of articles were published in the "North American Review," chiefly historical and biographical, while a few are on purely literary topics. His essays on Italian poetry give proof of Prescott's literary culture and acumen as a critic, as does his admirable essay on “Sir Walter Scott." These, however, stand almost alone, and it is on his writings as an historian that Prescott's fame rests. That his reputation will be an enduring one there can be no doubt. His works still remain an authority and are as widely read as ever; they have lost none of their fascination, their vividness and power, in spite of the somewhat changed literary taste and the method of scientific investigation of our day. Prescott's literary style, as Hallam declared, "appears to be nearly perfect." It is clear, vivid, full of movement, and abounds in dramatic passages of absorbing interest. TH SIR WALTER SCOTT HERE is no kind of writing which has truth and instruction for its main object so interesting and popular, on the whole, as biography. History, in its larger sense, has to deal with masses, which, while they divide the attention by the dazzling variety of objects, from their very generality are scarcely capable of touching the heart. The great objects on which it is employed have little relation to the daily occupations with which the reader is most intimate. A nation, like a corporation, seems to have no soul; and its checkered vicissitudes may be contemplated rather with curiosity for the lessons they convey than with personal sympathy. How different are the feelings excited by the fortunes of an individual-one of the mighty mass, who in the page of history is swept along the current, unnoticed and unknown! Instead of a mere abstraction, at once we see a being like ourselves, "fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer" as we are. We place ourselves in his position, and see the passing current of events with the same eyes. We become a party to all his little schemes, share in his triumphs, or mourn with him in the disappointment of defeat. His friends become our friends. We learn to take an interest in their characters, from their relation to him. As they pass away from the stage, one after another, and as the clouds of misfortune, perhaps, or of disease, settle around the evening of his own day, we feel the same sadness that steals over us on a retrospect of earlier and happier hours. And, when at last we have followed him to the tomb, we close the volume, and feel that we have turned over another chapter in the history of life. On the same principles, probably, we are more moved by the exhibition of those characters whose days have been passed in |