456 Scholars December, and in which he remained until May of 1837. He went north for the summer again, to Venice, Innsbruck, and Heidelberg, and to Paris for the winter, where he looked over the Spanish library of Ternaux-Compans and frequented the study of Augustin Thierry. By March, 1838, Ticknor was in Eng- land again, having long talks with Hallam. He once more visited Southey and Wordsworth at Keswick ; was disappointed in the Spanish collection at the Bodleian; met at breakfast "a Mr. Ruskin," who had a most beautiful collection "of sketches, made by himself, from nature, on the Continent"; and heard Carlyle lecture. Arriving at home in June, 1838, Ticknor settled down to research, to extensive correspondence with many friends, both European and American, to the collecting of Spanish books, and to the writing of his History of Spanish Literature, which was published in 1849 and was at once recognized as a work of international standing. He found time also to work hard for the Boston Public Library, of which he was a trustee ; doing for it what his friends Buckminster and Cogswell had done re- spectively for the Athensum and the Astor. Upon the third and last of his European tours, undertaken in 1856-57 for the sake of the library, he had little time for his own studies, but he was lionized— being now the author of a famous book — as never before, and moved in the most brilliant society. At home again from September, 1857, Ticknor took up once more his life of study and business, serving the library until 1866, revising the History of Spanish Literature for its third and its fourth editions, maintaining a voluminous correspondence, and, after the death of Prescott in 1859, writing his Life (1864) . At this time, too, Ticknor resumed his active interest in Harvard. He died in 1871. Ticknor's life, as recorded in his Life, Letters and Journals, is that of a great man of business, a great social talent, almost a grand seigneur, who stood before kings, or rather sat down with them, — and who was incidentally a scholar. It is neces- sary, in an account of his works, to distribute the emphasis in this way, partly because the Life, considered as one of them, depends decisively upon his social powers, which elicited characteristic attitudes and utterances from the persons he met, and partly because these powers gave a characteristic turn
