Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Internet Archive.) _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 _AMICITIÆ 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.