As for newspaper eulogies, he remarked: "I am certainly the cause of some wit and much folly in others." His latest work, however, brought him two new honours which he greatly prized,--an election to the Royal English Society of Literature, and the other an invitation to membership in the Royal Society of Antiquaries. The former honour he shared with only one of his fellow-countrymen, Bancroft; the latter had heretofore been given to no American. Prescott now indulged himself with a long period of "literary loafing," as he described it, broken in upon only by the preparation of a short memoir of John Pickering, the antiquarian and scholar, who had been one of Prescott's most devoted friends. This memoir was undertaken at the request of the Massachusetts Historical Society. It has no general interest now, but is worthy of note as having been the only one of Prescott's works which he dictated to an amanuensis. Prescott had an aversion to writing in this way, although he had before him the example of his blind contemporary, Thierry. Like Alphonse Daudet, he seems to have felt that what is written by hand comes more directly from the author's inner self, and that it represents most truly the tints and half-tones of his personality. That this is only a fancy is seen clearly enough from several striking instances which the history of literature records. Scott dictated to Lockhart the whole of _The Bride of Lammermoor_. Thackeray dictated a good part of _The Newcomes_ and all of _Pendennis_, and even _Henry Esmond_, of which the artificial style might well have made dictation difficult. Prescott, however, had his own opinion on the subject, and, with the single exception which has just been cited, he used his noctograph for composition down to the very end, dictating only his correspondence to his secretary. His days of "literary loafing" allowed him to enjoy the pleasures of friendship which during his periods of work were necessarily, to some extent, intermitted. No man ever had more cordially devoted friends than Prescott. He knew every one who was worth knowing, and every one was attracted by the spontaneous charm of his manner and his invincible kindliness. Never was a man more free from petulance or peevishness, though these defects at times might well have been excused in one whose health was such as his. He presented the anomaly of a dyspeptic who was still an optimist and always amiable. Mr. John Foster Kirk, who was one of his secretaries, wrote of him:--