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_ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS_

_PRESCOTT_

[Illustration: image of the book's cover]




_ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS_

WILLIAM HICKLING
PRESCOTT

BY
HARRY THURSTON PECK

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

1905

_All rights reserved_

COPYRIGHT, 1905,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1905.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.


To
WILLIAM ARCHIBALD DUNNING
_AMICITIAE CAUSA_




PREFATORY NOTE


For the purely biographical portion of this book an especial
acknowledgment of obligation is due to the valuable collection of
Prescott's letters and memoranda made by his friend George Ticknor, and
published in 1864 as part of Ticknor's _Life of W. H. Prescott_. All
other available sources, however, have been explored, and are
specifically mentioned either in the text or in the footnotes.

H. T. P.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,
March 1, 1905.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I

                                                                    PAGE

THE NEW ENGLAND HISTORIANS                                             1

CHAPTER II

EARLY YEARS                                                           13

CHAPTER III

THE CHOICE OF A CAREER                                                39

CHAPTER IV

SUCCESS                                                               54

CHAPTER V

IN MID CAREER                                                         72

CHAPTER VI

THE LAST TEN YEARS                                                    99

CHAPTER VII

"FERDINAND AND ISABELLA"--PRESCOTT'S STYLE                           121

CHAPTER VIII

"THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO" AS LITERATURE AND AS
HISTORY                                                              133

CHAPTER IX

"THE CONQUEST OF PERU"--"PHILIP II."                                 160

CHAPTER X

PRESCOTT'S RANK AS AN HISTORIAN                                      173

INDEX                                                                181




_PRESCOTT_




WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT




CHAPTER I

THE NEW ENGLAND HISTORIANS


Throughout the first few decades of the nineteenth century, the United
States, though forming a political entity, were in everything but name
divided into three separate nations, each one of which was quite unlike
the other two. This difference sprang partly from the character of the
population in each, partly from divergent tendencies in American
colonial development, and partly from conditions which were the result
of both these causes. The culture-history, therefore, of each of the
three sections exhibits, naturally enough, a distinct and definite phase
of intellectual activity, which is reflected very clearly in the records
of American literature.

In the Southern States, just as in the Southern colonies out of which
they grew, the population was homogeneous and of English stock. Almost
the sole occupation of the people was agriculture, while the tone of
society was markedly aristocratic, as was to be expected from a
community dominated by great landowners who were also the masters of
many slaves. These landowners, living on their estates rather than in
towns and cities, caring nothing for commerce or for manufactures,
separated from one another by great distances, and cherishing the
intensely conservative traditions of that England which saw the last of
the reigning Stuarts, were inevitably destined to intellectual
stagnation. The management of their plantations, the pleasures of the
chase, and the exercise of a splendid though half-barbaric hospitality,
satisfied the ideals which they had inherited from their Tory ancestors.
Horses and hounds, a full-blooded conviviality, and the exercise of a
semi-feudal power, occupied their minds and sufficiently diverted them.
Such an atmosphere was distinctly unfavourable to the development of a
love of letters and of learning. The Southern gentleman regarded the
general diffusion of education as a menace to his class; while for
himself he thought it more or less unnecessary. He gained a practical
knowledge of