PRESCOTT 703 sky. His writing apparatus a noctograph lay before him, and he kept his ivory style in his hand to jot down notes as the reading progressed. In accordance with his general method these notes were in turn read over to him until he had completely mastered them, when they were worked up in his memory to their final shape. So pro ficient did he become that he was able to retain the equiva lent of sixty pages of printed matter in his memory, turn ing and returning them as he walked or drove. The rate of progress in preparation was therefore necessarily slow, apart from any liability to interruption by other under takings and failures in bodily health. He still continued his yearly experimental contributions to the North Ameri can Review, elaborating them with a view as much to ultimate historical proficiency as to immediate literary effect, the essays on Scottish Song (1826), Novel -Writing (1827), Moliere (1828), and Irving s Granada (1829) belonging to this preparatory period. The death of his eldest daughter in 1828 also led him aside to the study afterwards renewed in the interval between the Ferdinand and Isabella and the Congest of Mexico of Christian evidences, with the result that he convinced himself of the fundamental truth of Christianity, though he did not accept all the tenets of orthodoxy. On the 6th of October 1829 he began the actual work of composition, which was continued without more serious interruptions than those occasioned by the essays on Asylums for the Blind (1830), Poetry and Romance of the Italians (1831), and English Literature of the 19th Century (1832), until 25th June 1836, when the concluding note was written. Another year, during which his essay on Cervantes appeared, was spent in the final revision of the History for the press, in which the author was ably assisted by two friends, of whom Gardiner, the son of his old schoolmaster, criticized the style and Folsom verified the facts. Its success upon its publica tion in Boston was immediate, the five years contract being discharged in a few months. Arrangements were speedily made for its publication in England, and there its success was not less marked. From the position of an ob scure reviewer Prescott suddenly found himself elevated to the first rank of contemporary historians. Daniel Webster spoke of him as a comet which had suddenly blazed out upon the world in full splendour, and American, British, and Continental reviewers were equally laudatory. Its re ception determined the nature of all his subsequent work. Hitherto he had still inclined towards the history of literature rather than to that of polity and action, on the ground that the former was more consonant with his previous studies and a more suitable sphere for the display of his special powers. A close examination of his work in the department of literary criticism does not, however, bear out this estimate of his own genius, and the popular voice in approving his narrative faculty gave him the re quired impetus in the right direction. After coquetting for a short time with the project of a life of Moliere he decided to follow in the track of his first work with a History of the Conquest of Mexico. Washington Irving, who had already made preparations to occupy the same field, generously withdrew in his favour ; and in May 1838 Prescott began his first reading in the subject. The work was completed in August 1843, the five years labour having been broken by the composition of reviews of Lockhart s Life of Scott (1838), Kenyon s Poems (1839), Chateaulriand (1839), Bancroft s United States (1841), Mariotti s Italy (1842), and Madame Calderon s Life in Mexico (1843), and by the preparation of an abridgment of his Ferdinand and Isabella in anticipation of its threatened abridgment by another hand. On 6th December 1843 the Conquest of Mexico was published with a success pro portionate to the wide reputation won by his previous work, the contracted number being sold off in four months and London and Paris editions meeting with a similar reception. The careful methods of work which he had adopted from the outset had borne admirable fruit. While the consultation of authorities had been no less thorough, his style had become more free and less self-conscious; and the epic qualities of the theme were such as to call forth in the highest degree his powers of picturesque narra tion. It was only a step from the conquest of 5lexico to that of Peru, and scarcely three months elapsed before he began to break ground on the latter subject, though the actual composition was not commenced until the autumn of 1844. While the work was in progress and before the close of the year his father died, a heavy blow to him, inasmuch as the elder and younger members of the family had continued to share the same home upon almost patri archal terms, and the breach was therefore in a chain of constant association extending over a period of forty-eight years. In February 1845 he received the announcement of his election as corresponding member of the French Institute in place of the Spanish historian Navarrete, and also of the Royal Society of Berlin. The winter found him arranging for the publication in England of the selection from his articles and reviews which appeared in 1845 under the title of Critical and Historical Essays, and which was issued almost contemporaneously at New York under the title of Biographical and Critical Miscellanies. After some minor interruptions his removal from the old mansion-house in Bedford Street to the house in Beacon Street, visits to friends, and a renewed failure of sight the Conquest of Peru was completed in November 1846 and published in March following. His misgivings as to its reception were at once set at rest, and it was speedily issued in translations into French, Spanish, Ger man, and Dutch, in addition to the English editions of New York, London, and Paris. He was now over fifty and his sight showed serious symptoms of enfeeblement. Although during the composition of the Ferdinand and Isabella it had been of very intermittent service to him, it had by his careful regimen so far improved that he could read with a certain amount of regularity during the writing of the Conquest of Mexico, and also, though in a less degree, during the years devoted to the Conquest of Peru. Now, however, the use of his remaining eye had been reduced to an hour a day, divided into portions at wide intervals, and he was driven to the conclusion that whatever plans he made for future work must be formed on the same calculations as those of a blind man. He had been for many years collecting materials for a history of Philip II., but he hesi tated for some time to attempt a work of such magnitude, occupying himself in the meantime Avith the slighter labours of a memoir of Mr John Pickering for the Massa chusetts Historical Society and the revision of Ticknor s History of Spanish Literature. But in March 1848 he set himself with characteristic courage to the accomplishment of the larger project, though with the intention of writing memoirs rather than a history, as admitting a more ram bling style and less elaborate research. He had been for tunate in obtaining the aid of Don Pascual de Gayangos, then professor of Arabic literature at Madrid, by whose offices he was enabled to obtain material not only from the public archives of Spain but from the muniment rooms of the great Spanish families. With an exceptional range of information thus afforded him, he wrote the opening of his history at Nahant, his summer residence, in July 1849 ; but, finding himself still unsettled in his work, he decided in the spring of the following year to carry out a long projected visit to England. His reception there was of the most cordial and gratifying kind, and he returned re-
invigorated to his work. The idea of writing memoirs