PRESCOTT'S return to his home brought him face to face with the perplexing question of his future. During his two years of absence this question must often have been forced upon his mind, especially during those weary weeks when the darkness of his sick-room and the lack of any mental diversion threw him in upon himself and left him often with his own thoughts for company. Even to his optimistic temperament the future may well have seemed a gloomy one. Half-blind and always dreading the return of a painful malady, what was it possible for him to do in the world whose stir and movement and boundless opportunity had so much attracted him? Must he spend his years as a recluse, shut out from any real share in the active duties of life? Little as he was wont to dwell upon his own anxieties, he could not remain wholly silent concerning a subject so vital to his happiness. In a letter to his father, written from St. Michael's not long before he set out for London, he broached very briefly a subject that must have been very often in his thoughts.

Apparently at this time he still cherished the hope of entering upon some sort of a professional career, even though the practice of the law were closed to him. But after the discouraging verdict of the London specialists had been made known, he took a more despondent view. He wrote:—

It was in this uncertain state of mind that he returned home in the late summer of 1817. The warmth of the welcome which he received renewed his buoyant spirits, even though he soon found himself again prostrated by a recurrence of his now familiar trouble. His father had leased a delightful house in the country for his occupancy; but the shade-trees that surrounded it created a dampness which was unfavourable to a rheumatic subject, and so Prescott soon returned to Boston. Here he spent the winter in retirement, yet not in idleness. His love of books and of good literature became the more intense in proportion as physical activity was impossible; and he managed to get through a good many books, thanks to the kindness of his sister and of his former school companion, William Gardiner, both of whom devoted a part of each day to reading aloud to Prescott,—Gardiner the classics, and Miss Prescott the standard English authors in history, poetry, and belles-lettres in general. These readings often occupied many consecutive hours, extending at times far into the night; and they relieved Prescott's seclusion of much of its irksomeness, while they stored his mind with interesting topics of thought. It was, in reality, the continuation of a system of vicarious reading which he had begun two years before in St. Michael's, where he had managed, by the aid of another's eyes, to enjoy the romances of Scott, which were then beginning to appear, and to renew his acquaintance with Shakespeare, Homer, and the Greek and Roman historians.

From reading literature, it was a short step to attempting its production. Pledging his sister to secrecy, Prescott composed and dictated to her an essay which was sent anonymously to the North American Review, then a literary fledgling of two years, but already making its way to a position of authority. This little ballon d'essai met the fate of many such, for the manuscript was returned within a fortnight. Prescott's only comment was, "There! I was a fool to send it!" Yet the instinct to write was strong within him, and before very long was again to urge him with compelling force to test his gift. But meanwhile, finding that his life of quiet and seclusion did very little for his eyes, he made up his mind that he might just as well go out into the world more freely and mingle with the friends whose society he missed so much. After a little cautious experimenting, which apparently did no harm, he resumed the old life from which, for three years, he had been self-banished. The effect upon him mentally was admirable, and he was now safe from any possible danger of becoming morbidly introspective from the narrowness of his environment. He went about freely all through the year 1818, indulging in social pleasures with the keenest zest. His bent for literature, however, asserted itself in the foundation of a little society or club, whose members gathered informally, from time to time, for the reading of papers and for genial yet frank criticism of one another's productions. This club never numbered more than twenty-four persons, but they were all cultivated men, appreciative and yet discriminating, and the list of them contains some names, such as those of Franklin Dexter, Theophilus Parsons, John Ware, and Jared Sparks, which, like Prescott's own, belong to the record of American letters. For their own amusement, they subsequently brought out a little periodical called The Club-Room, of which four numbers in all were published,[5] and to which Prescott, who acted as its editor, made three contributions, one of them a sort of humorous editorial article, very local in its interest, another a sentimental tale called "The Vale of Allerid," and the third a ghost story called "Calais." They were like thousands of such trifles which are written every year by amateurs, and they exhibit no literary qualities which raise them above the level of the commonplace. The sole importance of The Club-Room's brief existence lies in the fact that it possibly did something to lure Prescott along the path that led to serious literary productiveness.

One very important result of his return to social life was found in his marriage, in 1820, to Miss Susan Amory, the daughter of Mr. Thomas C. Amory, a leading merchant of Boston.[6] The bride was a very charming girl, to whom her young husband was passionately devoted, and who filled his life with a radiant happiness which delighted all who knew and loved him. His naturally buoyant spirits rose to exuberance after his engagement. He forgot his affliction. He let his reading go by the board. He was, in fact, too happy for anything but happiness, and this delight even inspired him to make a pun that is worth recording. Prescott was an inveterate punster, and his puns were almost invariably bad; but when his bachelor friends reproached him for his desertion of them, he laughed and answered them with the Vergilian line,—

"Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus Amori"—

a play upon words which Thackeray independently chanced upon many years later in writing Pendennis, and À propos of a very different Miss Amory. It is of interest to recall the description given by Mr. Ticknor of Prescott as he appeared at the time of his marriage (May 4, 1820) and, indeed, very much as he remained down to the hour of his death.

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:—

To this memorandum he adds the comment that such a course of study would be sufficient "for general discipline"—a remark which proves that he had not as yet any definite plan in undertaking his self-ordered task. For several years he devoted himself with great industry to the course which he had marked out. He went back to the pages of Blair's Rhetoric and to Lindley Murray's Grammar, and he read consecutively, making notes as he read, the older masters of English prose style from Roger Ascham, Sidney, Bacon, and Raleigh down to the authors of the eighteenth century, and even later. In Latin he reviewed Tacitus, Livy, and Cicero. His reading seems to have been directed less to the subject-matter than to the understanding and appreciation of style as a revelation of the writer's essential characteristics. It was, in fact, a study of psychology quite as much as a study of literature. Passing on to French, he found the literature of that language comparatively unsympathetic, and he contrasted it unfavourably with the English. He derived some pleasure from the prose of Montaigne and Bossuet, and from Corneille and MoliÈre; but, on the whole, French poetry always seemed to him too rigid in its formal classicism to be enjoyable. Side by side with his French reading, he made the acquaintance of the early English ballad-poetry and the old romances, and, in 1823, he took up Italian, which appealed to him intensely, so that he read an extraordinary amount and made the most voluminous notes upon every author that interested him, besides writing long criticisms and argumentative letters to his friend Ticknor, full of praises of Petrarch and Dante, and defending warmly the real existence of Laura and the genuineness of Dante's passion for Beatrice. For Dante, indeed, Prescott conceived a most enthusiastic admiration, which found expression in many a letter to his friend.

The immediate result of his Italian studies was the preparation of some articles which were published in the North American Review—the first on Italian narrative poetry (October, 1824). This was the beginning of a series; since, nearly every year thereafter, some paper from his pen appeared in that publication. One article on Italian poetry and romance was originally offered to the English Quarterly Review through Jared Sparks, and was accepted by the editor; but Prescott, growing impatient over the delay in its appearance, recalled the manuscript and gave it to the North American. These essays of Prescott were not rated very highly by their author, and we can accept his own estimate as, on the whole, a just one. They are written in an urbane and agreeable manner, but are wholly lacking in originality, insight, and vigour; while their bits of learning strike the more modern reader as old fashioned, even if not pedantic. This literary work, however, slight as may be its intrinsic merit, was at least an apprenticeship in letters, and gave to Prescott a useful training in the technique of composition.

In 1824, something of great moment happened in the course of Prescott's search for a life career. He had, in accordance with the resolution already mentioned, taken up the study of German; but he found it not only difficult but, to him, uninteresting. After several months he became discouraged; and though he read on, he did so, as he himself has recorded, with no method and with very little diligence or spirit. Just at this time Mr. George Ticknor, who had been delivering a course of lectures in Harvard on the subject of Spanish literature, read over some of these lectures to Prescott, merely to amuse him and to divert his mind. The immediate result was that Prescott resolved to give up his German studies and to substitute a course in Spanish. On the first day of December, 1824, he employed a teacher of that language, and commenced a course of study which was to prove wonderfully fruitful, and which ended only with his life. He seems to have begun the reading of Spanish from the very moment that he took up the study of its grammar, and there is an odd significance in a remark which he wrote down only a few days after: "I snatch a fraction of the morning from the interesting treatise of M. JossÉ on the Spanish language and from the Conquista de Mexico, which, notwithstanding the time I have been upon it, I am far from having conquered." The deadening effects of German upon his mind seem to have endured for a while, since at Christmas time he was still pursuing his studies with a certain listlessness; and he wrote to Bancroft, the historian, a letter which contained one remark that is very curious when we read it in the light of his subsequent career:—

Another month, however, found him filled with the joy of one who has at last laid his hand upon that for which he has long been groping. He expressed this feeling very vividly in a letter quoted by Mr. Ticknor:—

Spanish literature exercised upon his mind a peculiar charm, and he boldly dashed into the writing of Spanish even from the first. Ticknor's well-stored library supplied him with an abundance of books, and his own comments upon the Castilian authors in whom he revelled were now written not in English but in Spanish—naturally the Spanish of a beginner, yet with a feeling for idiom which greatly surprised Ticknor. Even in after years, Prescott never acquired a faultless Spanish diction; but he wrote with clearness and fluency, so that his Spanish was very individual, and, in this respect, not unlike the Latin of Politian or of Milton.

Up to this time Prescott had been cultivating his mind and storing it with knowledge without having formed any clear conception of what he was to do with his intellectual accumulations. At first, when he formed a plan of systematic study, his object had been only the modest one of "general discipline," as he expressed it. As he went on, however, he seems to have had an instinctive feeling that even without intention he was moving toward a definite goal. Just what this was he did not know, but none the less he was not without faith that it would ultimately be revealed to him. Looking back over all the memoranda that he has left behind, it is easy now to see that his drift had always been toward historical investigation. His boyish tastes, already described, declared his interest in the lives of men of action. His maturer preferences pointed in the same direction. It has heretofore been noted that, in 1821, when he marked out for himself his first formal plan of study, he included "the compendious history of North America" as one of the subjects. While reading French he had dwelt especially upon the chroniclers and historians from Froissart down. In Spanish he had been greatly attracted by Mariana's Historia de EspaÑa, which is still one of the Castilian classics; and this work had led him to the perusal of Mably's acute and philosophical Étude de l'Histoire. He himself long afterward explained that still earlier than this he had been strongly attracted to historical writing, especially after reading Gibbon's Autobiography, which he came upon in 1820. Even then, he tells us, he had proposed to himself to become an historian "in the best sense of the term." About 1822 he jotted down the following in his private notes:—

Nevertheless, although his bent was so evidently for historical composition, he had as yet received no impulse toward any especial department of that field. In October, 1825, we find him making this confession of his perplexity: "I have been so hesitating and reflecting upon what I shall do, that I have in fact done nothing." And five days later, he set down the following: "I have passed the last fortnight in examination of a suitable subject for historical composition." In his case there was no need for haste. He realised that historical research demands maturity of mind. "I think," he said, "thirty-five years of age full soon enough to put pen to paper." And again: "I care not how long a time I take for it, provided I am diligent in all that time."

It is clear from one of the passages just quoted, that his first thought was to choose a distinctively American theme. This, however, he put aside without any very serious consideration, although he had looked into the material at hand and had commented upon its richness. His love of Italian literature and of Italy drew him strongly to an Italian theme, and for a while he thought of preparing a careful study of that great movement which transformed the republic of ancient Rome into an empire. Again, still with Italy in mind, he debated with himself the preparation of a work on Italian literature,—a work (to use his own words) "which, without giving a chronological and minute analysis of authors, should exhibit in masses the most important periods, revolutions, and characters in the history of Italian letters." Further reflection, however, led him to reject this, partly because it would involve so extensive and critical a knowledge of all periods of Italian literature, and also because the subject was not new, having in a way been lately treated by Sismondi. Prescott makes another and very characteristic remark, which shows him to have been then as always the man of letters as well as the historian, with a keen eye to what is interesting. "Literary history," he says, "is not so amusing as civil."

The choice of a Spanish subject had occurred to him in a casual way soon after he had taken up the study of the Spanish language. In a letter already quoted as having been written in December of 1825, he balances such a theme with his project for a Roman one:—

He also planned a collection of biographical sketches and criticisms, but presently rejected that, as he did, a year later, the Roman subject; and after having done so, the mists began to clear away and a great purpose to take shape before his mental vision. On January 8, 1826, he wrote a long memorandum which represents the focussing of his hitherto vague mental strivings.

Long afterward (in 1847) Prescott pencilled upon this memorandum the words: "This was the first germ of my conception of Ferdinand and Isabella." On January 19th, after some further wavering, he wrote down definitely: "I subscribe to the History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella." Opposite this note he made, in 1847, the brief but emphatic comment,—"A fortunate choice."

From this decision he never retreated, though at times he debated with himself the wisdom of his choice. His apparent vacillation was due to a return of the inflammation in his eye. For a little while this caused him to shrink back from the difficulties of his Spanish subject, involving as it did an immense amount of reading; and there came into his head the project of writing an historical survey of English literature. But on the whole he held fast to his original resolution, and soon entered upon that elaborate preparation which was to give to American literature a masterpiece. In his final selection of a theme we can, indeed, discern the blending of several currents of reflection and the combination of several of his earlier purposes. Though his book was to treat of two Spanish sovereigns, it nevertheless related to a reign whose greatest lustre was conferred upon it by an Italian and by the discovery of the Western World. Thus Prescott's early predilection for American history his love for Italy, and his new-born interest in Spain were all united to stimulate him in the task upon which he had now definitely entered.