Besides meeting many of the celebrities who flocked to see Mr. Prescott (Mr. Kirk enjoyed, for example, the experience of walking through Westminster Abbey with Mr. Prescott and Dean Milman, the latter acting the part of cicerone), he made not a few acquaintances on his own account, became intimate with James Hannay, was present at informal gatherings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood—above all, called on Carlyle, who, when the hour of talk was over, put on his hat and walked with his visitor to Hyde Park, then, shaking hands, invited him to come to tea that day week with himself and Mrs. Carlyle. The imperishable joy of hearing grand opera almost nightly, with Grisi, Mario, Sontag, and Lablache in the chief rôles, belonged to this date. Even a poor young man could afford the shilling, all that was necessary for a good seat in the gallery. In July he accompanied Mr. Prescott to the Continent, first to Paris, then on the historical tour” to Belgium and Holland. Later they went to Scotland, and in September sailed for home. Mr. Kirk’s acquaintance with Thackeray began two years later. He has told of meeting the novelist in Prescott’s library beneath the “crossed swords” commemorated in the “Virginians,” and of how at parting Thackeray called, “I say, young man, come and dine with me at two-thirty to-morrow.” The intimacy was resumed when Thackeray revisited Boston in 1855, and Mr. Kirk again saw the great novelist in London on the last occasion only a few days before his death.
Mr. Kirk had always supplemented his secretarial work for Mr. Prescott by critical and historical papers for the North American Review. Barante’s “Ducs de Bourgogne” had interested him in the career of Charles, and Mr. Prescott generously lent his aid in procuring the works required for a full investigation of the subject. Mr. Prescott’s lamented death in January, 1859, left Mr. Kirk free, and he devoted himself to the first two volumes of the “Life of Charles the Bold,” which were brought out in 1863 by J. B. Lippincott in this country and in England by John Murray.
Mr. Kirk was at this time in Europe, at first in London and afterwards on the Continent, finding it necessary, in order to complete his history, to consult French and Swiss archives relating to the war with Burgundy. Many months were spent in exploring hitherto untouched manuscript sources, the German and Latin letter-books of the Government of Berne, also the despatches of the Venetian and Milanese agents, finally, with the utmost minuteness, going over the different battle-fields and, indeed, studying almost inch by inch the scene of the tragical defeat of Charles when, unconscious of the strength of the greedy hordes of Swiss mercenaries let loose upon him by his cunning enemy at Paris, the great Duke met his tremendous overthrow.
The best critics, both in England and on the Continent, confessed the unsurpassed vividness and realism of the whole history, especially
