After Prescott had been married for about a year, the old question of a life pursuit recurred and was considered by him seriously. Without any very definite aim, yet with a half-unconscious intuition, he resolved to store his mind with abundant reading, so that he might, at least in some way, be fitted for the career of a man of letters. Hitherto, in the desultory fashion of his boyhood, he had dipped into many authors, yet he really knew nothing thoroughly and well. In the classics he was perhaps best equipped; but of English literature his knowledge was superficial because he had read only here and there, and rather for the pleasure of the moment than for intellectual discipline. He had a slight smattering of French, sufficient for the purposes of a traveller, but nothing more. Of Italian, Spanish, and German he was wholly ignorant, and with the literatures of these three languages he had never made even the slightest acquaintance. Conning over in a reflective mood the sum total of his acquisitions and defects, he came to the conclusion that he would undertake what he called in a memorandum "a course of studies," including "the principles of grammar and correct writing" and the history of the North American Continent. He also resolved to devote one hour a day to the Latin classics. Some six months after this, his purpose had expanded, and he made a second resolution, which he recorded in the following words:-- "I am now twenty-six years of age, nearly. By the time I am thirty, God willing, I propose with what stock I have already on hand to be a very well read English scholar; to be acquainted with the classical and useful authors, prose and poetry, in Latin, French, and Italian, and especially in history--I do not mean a critical or profound acquaintance. The two following years I may hope to learn German, and to have read the classical German writers; and the translations, if my eye continues weak, of the Greek."