William Hickling Prescott Part 1

William Hickling Prescott.

by Harry Thurston Peck.

CHAPTER I

THE NEW ENGLAND HISTORIANS

Throughout the first few decades of the nineteenth century, the United States, though forming a political ent.i.ty, 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.

In the Southern States, just as in the Southern colonies out of which they grew, the population was h.o.m.ogeneous and of English stock. Almost the sole occupation of the people was agriculture, while the tone of society was markedly aristocratic, as was to be expected from a community dominated by great landowners who were also the masters of many slaves. These landowners, living on their estates rather than in towns and cities, caring nothing for commerce or for manufactures, separated from one another by great distances, and cherishing the intensely conservative traditions of that England which saw the last of the reigning Stuarts, were inevitably destined to intellectual stagnation. The management of their plantations, the pleasures of the chase, and the exercise of a splendid though half-barbaric hospitality, satisfied the ideals which they had inherited from their Tory ancestors.

Horses and hounds, a full-blooded conviviality, and the exercise of a semi-feudal power, occupied their minds and sufficiently diverted them.

Such an atmosphere was distinctly unfavourable to the development of a love of letters and of learning. The Southern gentleman regarded the general diffusion of education as a menace to his cla.s.s; while for himself he thought it more or less unnecessary. He gained a practical knowledge of affairs by virtue of his position. As for culture, he had upon the shelves of his library, where also were displayed his weapons and the trophies of the chase, a few hundred volumes of the standard essayists, poets, and dramatists of a century before. If he seldom read them and never added to them, they at least implied a recognition of polite learning and such a degree of literary taste as befitted a Virginian or Carolinian gentleman. But, practically, English literature had for him come to an end with Addison and Steele and Pope and their contemporaries. The South stood still in the domain of letters and education. Not that there were lacking men who cherished the ambition to make for themselves a name in literature. There were many such, among whom Gayarre, Beverly, and Byrd deserve an honourable remembrance; but their surroundings were unfavourable, and denied to them that intelligent appreciation which inspires the man of letters to press on to fresh achievement. An interesting example is found in the abortive history of Virginia undertaken by Dr. William St.i.th, who was President of William and Mary College, and who possessed not only scholarship but the gift of literary expression. The work which he began, however, was left unfinished, because of an utter lack of interest on the part of the public for whom it had been undertaken. Dr. St.i.th's own quaint comment throws a light upon contemporary conditions. He had laboured diligently in collecting doc.u.ments which represented original sources of information; yet, when he came to publish the first and only volume of his history, he omitted many of them, giving as his reason:--

"I perceive, to my no small Surprise and Mortification, that some of my Countrymen (and those too, Persons of high Fortune and Distinction) seemed to be much alarmed, and to grudge, that a complete History of their own Country would run to more than one Volume, and cost them above half a Pistole. I was, therefore, obliged to restrain my Hand, ... for fear of enhancing the Price, to the immense Charge and irreparable Damage of such generous and publick-spirited Gentlemen."[1]

The Southern universities were meagrely attended; and though the sons of wealthy planters might sometimes be sent to Oxford or, more usually, to Princeton or to Yale, the discipline thus acquired made no general impression upon the cla.s.s to which they belonged. In fact, the intellectual energy of the South found its only continuous and powerful expression in the field of politics. To government and statesmanship its leading minds gave much attention, for only thus could they retain in national affairs the supremacy which they arrogated to themselves and which was necessary to preserve their peculiar inst.i.tution. Hence, there were to be found among the leaders of the Southern people a few political philosophers like Jefferson, a larger number of political casuists like Calhoun, and a swarm of political rhetoricians like Patrick Henry, Hayne, Legare, and Yancey. But beyond the limits of political life the South was intellectually sterile. So narrowing and so hostile to liberal culture were its social conditions that even to this day it has not produced a single man of letters who can be truthfully described as eminent, unless the name of Edgar Allan Poe be cited as an exception whose very brilliance serves only to prove and emphasise the rule.

In the Middle States, on the other hand, a very different condition of things existed. Here the population was never h.o.m.ogeneous. The English Royalists and the Dutch in New York, the English Quakers and the Germans in Pennsylvania and the Swedes in Delaware, made inevitable, from the very first, a cosmopolitanism that favoured variety of interests, with a resulting breadth of view and liberality of thought. Manufactures flourished and foreign commerce was extensively pursued, insuring diversity of occupation. The two chief cities of the nation were here, and not far distant from each other. Wealth was not unevenly distributed, and though the patroon system had created in New York a landed gentry, this cla.s.s was small, and its influence was only one of many. Comfort was general, religious freedom was unchallenged, education was widely and generally diffused. The large urban population created an atmosphere of urbanity. Even in colonial times, New York and Philadelphia were the least provincial of American towns. They attracted to themselves, not only the most interesting people from the other sections, but also many a European wanderer, who found there most of the essential graces of life, with little or none of that combined austerity and rawness which elsewhere either disgusted or amused him. We need not wonder, then, if it was in the Middle States that American literature really found its birth, or if the forms which it there a.s.sumed were those which are touched by wit and grace and imagination. Franklin, frozen and repelled by what he thought the bigotry of Boston, sought very early in his life the more congenial atmosphere of Philadelphia, where he found a public for his copious writings, which, if not precisely literature, were, at any rate, examples of strong, idiomatic English, conveying the shrewd philosophy of an original mind. Charles Brockden Brown first blazed the way in American fiction with six novels, amid whose turgid sentences and strange imaginings one may here and there detect a touch of genuine power and a striving after form.

Washington Irving, with his genial humour and well-bred ease, was the very embodiment of the spirit of New York. Even Professor Barrett Wendell, whose critical bias is wholly in favour of New England, declares that Irving was the first of American men of letters, as he was certainly the first American writer to win a hearing outside of his own country. And to these we may add still others,--Freneau, from whom both Scott and Campbell borrowed; Cooper, with his stirring sea-tales and stories of Indian adventure; and Bryant, whose early verses were thought to be too good to have been written by an American. And there were also Drake and Halleck and Woodworth and Paine, some of whose poetry still continues to be read and quoted. The mention of them serves as a reminder that American literature in the nineteenth century, like English literature in the fourteenth, found its origin where wealth, prosperity, and a degree of social elegance made possible an appreciation of belles-lettres.

Far different was it in New England. There, as in the South, the population was h.o.m.ogeneous and English. But it was a Puritan population, of which the environment and the conditions of its life r.e.t.a.r.ded, and at the same time deeply influenced, the evolution of its literature. One perceives a striking parallel between the early history of the people of New England and that of the people of ancient Rome. Each was forced to wrest a living from a rugged soil. Each dwelt in constant danger from formidable enemies. The Roman was ready at every moment to draw his sword for battle with Faliscans, Samnites, or Etruscans. The New Englander carried his musket with him even to the house of prayer, fearing the attack of Pequots or Narragansetts. The exploits of such half-mythical Roman heroes as Camillus and Cincinnatus find their a.n.a.logue in the achievements credited to Miles Standish and the doughty Captain Church. Early Rome knew little of the older and more polished civilisation of Greece. New England was separated by vast distances from the richer life of Europe. In Rome, as in New England, religion was linked closely with all the forms of government; and it was a religion which appealed more strongly to men's sense of duty and to their fears, than to their softer feelings. The Roman G.o.ds needed as much propitiation as did the G.o.d of Jonathan Edwards. When a great calamity befell the Roman people, they saw in it the wrath of their divinities precisely as the true New Englander was taught to view it as a "providence." In both commonwealths, education of an elementary sort was deemed essential; but it was long before it reached the level of illumination.

Like influences yield like results. The Roman character, as moulded in the Republic's early years, was one of sternness and efficiency. It lacked gayety, warmth, and flexibility. And the New England character resembled it in all of these respects. The historic worthies of Old Rome would have been very much at ease in early Ma.s.sachusetts. Cato the Censor could have hobn.o.bbed with old Josiah Quincy, for they were temperamentally as like as two peas. It is only the Romans of the Empire who would have felt out of place in a New England environment. Horace might conceivably have found a smiling _angulus terrarum_ somewhere on the lower Hudson, but he would have pined away beside the Nashua; while to Ovid, Beacon Street would have seemed as ghastly as the frozen slopes of Tomi. And when we compare the native period of Roman literature with the early years of New England's literary history, the parallel becomes more striking still. In New England, as in Rome, beneath all the forms of a self-governing and republican State, there existed a genuine aristocracy whose prestige was based on public service of some sort; and in New England, as in Rome, public service had in it a theocratic element. In civil life, the most honourable occupation for a free citizen was to share in this public service. Hence, the disciplines which had a direct relation to government were the only civic disciplines to be held in high consideration. Such an att.i.tude profoundly affected the earliest attempts at literature. The two literary or semi-literary pursuits which have a close relation to statesmanship are oratory and history--oratory, which is the statesman's instrument, and history, which is in part the record of his achievements. Therefore, at Rome, a line of native orators arose before a native poet won a hearing, and therefore, too, the annalists and chroniclers precede the dramatists.

In New England it was much the same. Almost from the founding of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony, there were men among the colonists who wrote down with diffusive dulness the records of whatever they had seen and suffered. Governor William Bradford composed a history of New England; and Thomas Prince, minister of the Old South Church, compiled another work of like t.i.tle, described by its author as told "in the Form of Annals." Hutchinson prepared a history of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay; and many others had collected local traditions, which seemed to them of great moment, and had preserved them in books, or else in ma.n.u.scripts which were long afterwards to be published by zealous antiquarians. Cotton Mather's curious _Magnalia_, printed in 1700, was intended by its author to be history, though strictly speaking it is theological and is clogged with inappropriate learning,--Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The parallel between early Rome and early Ma.s.sachusetts breaks down, however, when we consider the natural temperament of the two peoples as distinct from that which external circ.u.mstances cultivated in them. Underneath the sternness and severity which were the fruits of Puritanism, there existed in the New England character a touch of spirituality, of idealism, and of imagination such as were always foreign to the Romans.

Under the repression of a grim theocracy, New England idealism still found its necessary outlet in more than one strange form. We can trace it in the hot religious eloquence of Edwards even better than in the imitative poetry of Mrs. Bradstreet. It is to be found even in such strange panics as that which shrieked for the slaying of the Salem "witches." Time alone was needed to bring tolerance and intellectual freedom, and with them a freer choice of literary themes and moods. The New England temper remained, and still remains, a serious one; yet ultimately it was to find expression in forms no longer harsh and rigid, but modelled upon the finer lines of truth and beauty.

The development was a gradual one. The New England spirit still exacted sober subjects of its writers. And so the first evolution of New England literature took place along the path of historical composition. The subjects were still local or, at the most, national; but there was a steady drift away from the annalistic method to one which partook of conscious art. In the writings of Jared Sparks there is seen imperfectly the scientific spirit, entirely self-developed and self-trained. His laborious collections of historical material, and his dry but accurate biographies, mark a distinct advance beyond his predecessors. Here, at least, are historical scholarship and, in the main, a conscientious scrupulosity in doc.u.mentation. It is true that Sparks was charged, and not quite unjustly, with garbling some of the material which he preserved; yet, on the whole, one sees in him the founder of a school of American historians. What he wrote was history, if it was not literature. George Bancroft, his contemporary, wrote history, and was believed for a time to have written it in literary form. To-day his six huge volumes, which occupied him fifty years in writing, and which bring the reader only to the inauguration of Washington, make but slight appeal to a cultivated taste. The work is at once too ponderous and too rhetorical. Still, in its way, it marks another step.

Up to this time, however, American historians were writing only for a restricted public. They had not won a hearing beyond the country whose early history they told. Their themes possessed as yet no interest for foreign nations, where the feeble American Republic was little known and little noticed. The republican experiment was still a doubtful one, and there was nothing in the somewhat paltry incidents of its early years to rivet the attention of the other hemisphere. "America" was a convenient term to denote an indefinite expanse of territory somewhere beyond seas.

A London bishop could write to a clergyman in New York and ask him for details about the work of a missionary in Newfoundland without suspecting the request to be absurd. The British War Office could believe the river Bronx a mighty stream, the crossing of which was full of strategic possibilities. As for the American people, they interested Europe about as much as did the Boers in the days of the early treks.

Even so acute an observer as Talleyrand, after visiting the United States, carried away with him only a general impression of rusticity and bad manners. When Napoleon asked him what he thought of the Americans, he summed up his opinion with a shrug: _Sire, ce sont des fiers cochons et des cochons fiers_. Tocqueville alone seems to have viewed the nascent nation with the eye of prescience. For the rest, petty skirmishes with Indians, a few farmers defending a rustic bridge, and a somewhat discordant gathering of planters, country lawyers, and drab-clad tradesmen held few suggestions of the picturesque and, to most minds, little that was significant to the student of politics and inst.i.tutional history.

There were, however, other themes, American in a larger sense, which contained within themselves all the elements of the romantic, while they closely linked the ambitions of old Europe with the fortunes and the future of the New World. The narration of these might well appeal to that interest which the more sober annals of England in America wholly failed to rouse. There was the story of New France, which had for its background a setting of savage nature, while in the foreground was fought out the struggle between Englishmen and Frenchmen, at grips in a feud perpetuated through the centuries. There was the story of Spanish conquest in the south,--a true romance of chivalry, which had not yet been told in all its richness of detail. To choose a subject of this sort, and to develop it in a fitting way, was to write at once for the Old World and the New. The task demanded scholarship, and presented formidable difficulties. The chief sources of information were to be found in foreign lands. To secure them needed wealth. To compare and a.n.a.lyse and sift them demanded critical judgment of a high order. And something more was needed,--a capacity for artistic presentation. When both these gifts were found united in a single mind, historical writing in New England had pa.s.sed beyond the confines of its early crudeness and had reached the stage where it claimed rank as lasting literature.

Rightly viewed, the name of William Hickling Prescott is something more than a mere landmark in the field of historical composition. It signalises the beginning of a richer growth in New England letters,--the coming of a time when the barriers of a Puritan scholasticism were broken down. Prescott is not merely the continuator of Sparks. He is the precursor of Hawthorne and Parkman and Lowell. He takes high rank among American historians; but he is enrolled as well in a still more ill.u.s.trious group by virtue of his literary fame.

CHAPTER II

EARLY YEARS

To the native-born New Englander the name of Prescott has, for more than a century, possessed a.s.sociations that give to it the stamp of genuine distinction. Those who have borne it have belonged of right to the true patriciate of their Commonwealth. The Prescotts were from the first a fighting race, and their men were also men of mind; and, according to the times in which they lived, they displayed one or the other characteristic in a very marked degree. The pioneer among them on American soil was John Prescott, a burly Puritan soldier who had fought under Cromwell, and who loved danger for its own sake. He came from Lancashire to Ma.s.sachusetts about twenty years after the landing of the _Mayflower_, and at once pushed off into the unbroken wilderness to mark out a large plantation for himself in what is now the town of Lancaster.

A half-verified tradition describes him as having brought with him a coat of mail and a steel helmet, glittering in which he often terrified marauding Indians who ventured near his lands. His son and grandson and his three great-grandsons all served as officers in the military forces of Ma.s.sachusetts; and among the last was Colonel William Prescott, who commanded the American troops at Bunker Hill. Later, he served under the eye of Washington, who personally commended him after the battle of Long Island; and he took part in the defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga--a success which brought the arms of France to the support of the American cause.

In times of peace as well, the Prescotts were men of light and leading.

Their names are found upon the rolls of the Ma.s.sachusetts General Court, of the Governor's Council in colonial days, of the Continental Congress, and of the State judiciary. One of them, Oliver Prescott, a brother of the Revolutionary warrior, who had been bred as a physician, made some elaborate researches on the subject of that curious drug, ergot, and embodied his results in a paper of such value as to attract the notice of the profession in Europe. It was translated into French and German, and was included in the _Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales_--an unusual compliment for an American of those days to receive. Most eminent of all the Prescotts in civil life, however, before the historian won his fame, was William Prescott,--the family names were continually repeated,--whose career was remarkable for its distinction, and whose character is significant because of its influence upon his ill.u.s.trious son. William Prescott was born in 1762, and, after a most careful training, entered Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1783.

Admitted to the bar, he won high rank in his profession, twice receiving and twice declining an appointment to the Supreme Court of the State.

His widely recognised ability brought him wealth, so that he lived in liberal fashion, in a home whose generous appointments and cultivated ease created an atmosphere that was rare indeed in those early days, when narrow means and a crude provincialism combined to make New England life unlovely. Prescott was not only an able lawyer, the worthy compeer of Dexter, Otis, and Webster--he was a scholar by instinct, widely read, thoughtful, and liberal-minded in the best sense of the word. His intellectual conflicts with such professional antagonists as have just been named gave him mental flexibility and a delightful sanity; and though in temperament he was naturally of a serious turn, he had both pungency and humour at his command. No more ideal father could be imagined for a brilliant son; for he was affectionate, generous, and sympathetic, with a knowledge of the world, and a happy absence of Puritan austerity. He had, moreover, the very great good fortune to love and marry a woman dowered with every quality that can fill a house with sunshine. This was Catherine Hickling, the daughter of a prosperous Boston merchant, afterward American consul in the Azores. As a girl, and indeed all through her long and happy life, she was the very spirit of healthful, normal womanhood,--full of an irrepressible and infectious gayety, a miracle of buoyant life, charming in manner, unselfish, helpful, and showing in her every act and thought the promptings of a beautiful and spotless soul.

It was of this admirably mated pair that William Hickling Prescott, their second son, was born, at Salem, on the 4th of May, 1796. The elder Prescott had not yet acquired the ample fortune which he afterward possessed; yet even then his home was that of a man of easy circ.u.mstances,--one of those big, comfortable, New England houses, picturesquely situated amid historic surroundings.[2] Here young Prescott spent the first twelve years of his life under his mother's affectionate care, and here began his education, first at a sort of dame school, kept by a kindly maiden lady, Miss Mehitable Higginson, and then, from about the age of seven, under the more formal instruction of an excellent teacher, Mr. Jacob Newman Knapp, quaintly known as "Master Knapp." It was here that he began to reveal certain definite and very significant traits of character. The record of them is interesting, for it shows that, but for the accident which subsequently altered the whole tenor of his life, he might have grown up into a far from admirable man, even had he escaped moral shipwreck. Many of his natural traits, indeed, were of the kind that need restraint to make them safe to their possessor, and in these early years restraint was largely lacking in the life of the young Prescott, who, it may frankly be admitted, was badly spoiled. His father, preoccupied in his legal duties, left him in great part to his mother's care, and his mother, who adored him for his cleverness and good looks, could not bear to check him in the smallest of his caprices. He was, indeed, peculiarly her own, since from her he had inherited so much. By virtue of his natural gifts, he was, no doubt, a most attractive boy. Handsome, like his father, he had his mother's vivacity and high spirits almost in excess. Quick of mind, imaginative, full of eager curiosity, and with a tenacious memory, it is no wonder that her pride in him was great, and that her mothering heart went out to him in unconscious recognition of a kindred temperament. But his school companions, and even his elders, often found these ebullient spirits of his by no means so delightful. The easy-going indulgence which he met at home, and very likely also the recognised position of his father in that small community, combined to make young Prescott wilful and self-confident and something of an _enfant terrible_. He was allowed to say precisely what he thought, and he did invariably say it on all occasions and to persons of every age. In fact, he acquired a somewhat unenviable reputation for rudeness, while his high spirits prompted him to contrive all sorts of practical jokes--a form of humour which seldom tends to make one popular. Moreover, though well-grown for his age, he had a distaste for physical exertion, and took little or no part in active outdoor games. Naturally, therefore, he was not particularly liked by his school companions, while, on the other hand, he attained no special rank in the schoolroom. Although he was quick at learning, he contented himself with satisfying the minimum of what was required--a trait that remained very characteristic of him for a long time. Of course, there is no particular significance in the general statement that a boy of twelve was rude, mischievous, physically indolent, and averse to study. Yet in Prescott's case these qualities were somewhat later developed at a critical period of his life, and might have spoiled a naturally fine character had they not been ultimately checked and controlled by the memorable accident which befell him a few years afterward.

In 1803, the elder Prescott suffered from a hemorrhage from the lungs which compelled him for a time to give up many of his professional activities. Five years after this he removed his home to Boston, where the practice of his profession would be less burdensome, and where, as it turned out, his income was very largely increased. The change was fortunate both for him and for his son; since, in a larger community, the boy came to be less impressed with his own importance, and also fell under an influence far more stimulating than could ever have been exerted by a village schoolmaster. The rector of Trinity Church in Boston, the Rev. Dr. John S. Gardiner, was a gentleman of exceptional cultivation. As a young man he had been well trained in England under the learned Dr. Samuel Parr, a Latinist of the Ciceronian school. He was, besides, a man possessing many genial and very human qualities, so that all who knew him felt his personal fascination to a rare degree. He had at one time been the master of a cla.s.sical school in Boston and had met with much success; but his clerical duties had obliged him to give up this occupation. Thereafter, he taught only a small number of boys, the sons of intimate friends in whom he took a special and personal interest. His methods with them were not at all those of a typical schoolmaster. He received his little cla.s.ses in the library of his home, and taught them, in a most informal fashion, English, Greek, and Latin.

He resembled, indeed, one of those ripe scholars of the Renaissance who taught for the pure love of imparting knowledge. Much of his instruction was conveyed orally rather than through the medium of text-books; and his easy talk, flowing from a full mind, gave interest and richness to his favourite subjects. Such teaching as this is always rare, and it was peculiarly so in that age of formalism. To the privilege of Dr.

Gardiner's instruction, young Prescott was admitted, and from it he derived not only a correct feeling for English style, but a genuine love of cla.s.sical study, which remained with him throughout his life. It may be said here that he never at any time felt an interest in mathematics or the natural sciences. His cast of mind was naturally humanistic; and now, through the influence of an accomplished teacher, he came to know the meaning and the beauty of the cla.s.sical tradition.

Under Gardiner, Prescott's indifference to study disappeared, and he applied himself so well that he was rapidly advanced from elementary reading to the study of authors so difficult as aeschylus. His biographer, Mr. Ticknor, who was his fellow-pupil at this time, has left us some interesting notes upon the subject of Prescott's literary preferences. It appears that he enjoyed Sophocles, while Horace "interested and excited him beyond his years." The pessimism of Juvenal he disliked, and the crabbed verse of Persius he utterly refused to read. Under private teachers he studied French, Italian, and Spanish,--a rather unusual thing for boys at that time,--and he reluctantly acquired what he regarded as the irreducible minimum of mathematics. It was decided that he should be fitted to enter the Soph.o.m.ore Cla.s.s in Harvard, and to this end he devoted his mental energies. Like most boys, he worked hardest upon those studies which related to his college examination, viewing others as more or less superfluous. He did, however, a good deal of miscellaneous reading, opportunities for which he found in the Boston Athenaeum. This inst.i.tution had been opened but a short time before, and its own collection of books, which to-day numbers more than two hundred thousand, was rather meagre; but in it had been deposited some ten thousand volumes, const.i.tuting the private library of John Quincy Adams, who was then holding the post of American Minister to Russia. At a time when book-shops were few, and when books were imported from England with much difficulty and expense, these ten thousand volumes seemed an enormous treasure-house of good reading.

Prescott browsed through the books after the fashion of a clever boy, picking out what took his fancy and neglecting everything that seemed at all uninteresting. Yet this omnivorous reading stimulated his love of letters and gave to him a larger range of vision than at that time he could probably have acquired in any other way. It is interesting to note the fact that his preference was for old romances--the more extravagant the better--and for tales of wild and lawless adventure. An especial favourite with him was the romance of _Amadis de Gaule_, which he found in Southey's somewhat pedestrian translation, and which appealed intensely to Prescott's imagination and his love of the fantastic.

His other occupations were decidedly significant. His most intimate friend at this time was William Gardiner, his preceptor's son; and the two boys were absolutely at one in their tastes and amus.e.m.e.nts. Both of them were full of mischief, and both were irrepressibly boisterous, playing all sorts of tricks at evening in the streets, firing off pistols, and in general causing a good deal of annoyance to the sober citizens of Boston. In this they were like any other healthy boys,--full of animal spirits and looking for "fun" without any especial sense of responsibility. Something else, however, is recorded of them which seems to have a real importance, as revealing in Prescott, at least, some of those mental characteristics which in his after life were to find expression in his serious work.

The period was one when the thoughts of all men were turned to the Napoleonic wars. The French and English were at grips in Spain for the possession of the Peninsula. Wellington had landed in Portugal and, marching into Spain, had flung down the gage of battle, which was taken up by Soult, Ma.s.sena, and Victor, in the absence of their mighty chief.

The American newspapers were filled with long, though belated, accounts of the brilliant fighting at Ciudad Rodrigo, Almeida, and Badajoz; and these narratives fired the imagination of Prescott, whose eagerness his companion found infectious, so that the two began to play at battles; not after the usual fashion of boys, but in a manner recalling the _Kriegspiel_ of the military schools of modern Germany. Pieces of paper were carefully cut into shapes which would serve to designate the difference between cavalry, infantry, and artillery; and with these bits of paper the disposition and manoeuvring of armies were indicated, so as to make clear, in a rough way, the tactics of the opposing commanders. Not alone were the Napoleonic battles thus depicted, but also the great contests of which the boys had read or heard at school,--Thermopylae, Marathon, Leuctra, Cannae, and Pharsalus. Some pieces of old armour, unearthed among the rubbish of the Athenaeum, enabled the boys to mimic in their play the combats of Amadis and the knights with whom he fought.

Side by side with these amus.e.m.e.nts there was another which curiously supplemented it. As Prescott and his friend went through the streets on their way to school, they made a practice of inventing impromptu stories, which they told each other in alternation. If the story was unfinished when they arrived at school, it would be resumed on their way home and continued until it reached its end. It was here that Prescott's miscellaneous reading stood him in good stead. His mind was full of the romances and histories that he had read; and his quick invention and lively imagination enabled him to piece together the romantic bits which he remembered, and to give them some sort of consistency and form.

Ticknor attaches little importance either to Prescott's interest in the details of warfare or to this fondness of his for improvised narration.

Yet it is difficult not to see in both of them a definite bias; and we may fairly hold that the boy's taste for battles, coupled with his love of picturesque description, foreshadowed, even in these early years, the qualities which were to bring him lasting fame.

All these boyish amus.e.m.e.nts, however, came to an end when, in August, 1811, Prescott presented himself as a candidate for admission to Harvard. Harvard was then under the presidency of the Rev. Dr. John Thornton Kirkland, who had been installed in office the year before Prescott entered college. President Kirkland was the first of Harvard's really eminent presidents.[3] Under his rule there definitely began that slow but steady evolution, which was, in the end, to transform the small provincial college into a great and splendid university. Kirkland was an earlier Eliot, and some of his views seemed as radical to his colleagues as did those of Eliot in 1869. Lowell has said of him, somewhat unjustly: "He was a man of genius, but of genius that evaded utilisation." It is fairer to suppose that, if he did not accomplish all that he desired and attempted, this was because the time was not yet ripe for radical innovations. He did secure large benefactions to the University, the creation of new professorships on endowed foundations, and the establishment of three professional schools. President Kirkland, in reality, stood between the old order and the new, with his face set toward the future, but retaining still some of the best traditions of the small college of the past. It is told of him that he knew every student by name, and took a very genuine interest in all of them, helping them in many quiet, tactful ways, so that more than one distinguished man in later life declared that, but for the thoughtful and unsolicited kindness of Dr. Kirkland, he would have been forced to abandon his college life in debt and in despair. Kirkland was a man of striking personal presence, and could a.s.sume a bearing of such impressive dignity as to verge on the majestic, as when he officially received Lafayette in front of University Hall and presented the a.s.sembled students to the nation's guest. The faculty over which he presided contained at that time no teacher of enduring reputation,[4] so that whatever personal influence was exerted upon Prescott by his instructors must have come chiefly from such intercourse as he had with Dr. Kirkland.

It is of interest to note just how much of an ordeal an entrance examination at Harvard was at the time when Prescott came up as a candidate for admission. The subjects were very few in number, and would appear far from formidable to a modern Freshman. Dalzel's _Collectanea Groea Minora_, the Greek Testament, Vergil, Sall.u.s.t, and several selected orations of Cicero represented, with the Greek and Latin grammars, the cla.s.sical requirements which const.i.tuted, indeed, almost the entire test, since the only other subjects were arithmetic, "so for as the rule of three," and a general knowledge of geography. The curriculum of the College, while Prescott was a member of it, was meagre enough when compared with what is offered at the present time. The cla.s.sical languages occupied most of the students' attention. Sall.u.s.t, Livy, Horace, and one of Cicero's rhetorical treatises made up the princ.i.p.al work in Latin. Xenophon's _Anabasis_, Homer, and some desultory selections from other authors were supposed to give a sufficient knowledge of Greek literature. The Freshmen completed the study of arithmetic, and the Soph.o.m.ores did something in algebra and geometry. Other subjects of study were rhetoric, declamation, a modic.u.m of history, and also logic, metaphysics, and ethics. The ecclesiastical hold upon the College was seen in the inclusion of a lecture course on "some topic of positive or controversial divinity," in an examination on Doddridge's Lectures, in the reading of the Greek Testament, and in a two years' course in Hebrew for Soph.o.m.ores and Freshmen. Indeed, Hebrew was regarded as so important that a "Hebrew part" was included in every commencement programme until 1817--three years after Prescott's graduation. In place of this language, however, while Prescott was in college, students might subst.i.tute a course in French given by a tutor; for as yet no regular chair of modern languages had been founded in the University. The natural sciences received practically no attention, although, in 1805, a chair of natural history had been endowed by subscription. An old graduate of Harvard has recorded the fact that chemistry in those days was regarded very much as we now look upon alchemy; and that, on its practical side, it was held to be simply an adjunct to the apothecary's profession. A few years later, and the Harvard faculty contained such eminent men as Josiah Quincy, Judge Joseph Story, Benjamin Peirce, the mathematician, George Ticknor, and Edward Everett, and the opportunities for serious study were broadened out immensely. But while Prescott was an undergraduate, the curriculum had less variety and range than that of any well-equipped high school of the present day.

A letter written by Prescott on August 23d, the day after he had pa.s.sed through the ordeal of examination, is particularly interesting. It gives, in the first place, a notion of the quaint simplicity which then characterised the academic procedure of the oldest of American universities; and it also brings us into rather intimate touch with Prescott himself as a youth of fifteen. At that time a great deal of the eighteenth-century formality survived in the intercourse between fathers and their sons; and especially in the letters which pa.s.sed between them was there usually to be found a degree of stiffness and restraint both in feeling and expression. Yet this letter of Prescott's might have been written yesterday by an American youth of the present time, so easy and a.s.sured is it, and indeed, for the most part, so mature. It might have been written also to one of his own age, and there is something deliciously nave in its revelation of Prescott's approbativeness. The boy evidently thought very well of himself, and was not at all averse to fishing for a casual compliment from others. The letter is given in full by Ticknor, but what is here quoted contains all that is important:--

"BOSTON, August 23rd.

"DEAR FATHER:--I now write you a few lines to inform you of my fate. Yesterday at eight o'clock I was ordered to the President's and there, together with a Carolinian, Middleton, was examined for Soph.o.m.ore. When we were first ushered into their presence, they looked like so many judges of the Inquisition. We were ordered down into the parlour, almost frightened out of our wits, to be examined by each separately; but we soon found them quite a pleasant sort of chaps. The President sent us down a good dish of pears, and treated us very much like gentlemen. It was not ended in the morning; but we returned in the afternoon when Professor Ware [the Hollis Professor of Divinity] examined us in Grotius' _De Veritate_. We found him very good-natured; for I happened to ask him a question in theology, which made him laugh so that he was obliged to cover his face with his hand. At half past three our fate was decided and we were declared 'Soph.o.m.ores of Harvard University.'

"As you would like to know how I appeared, I will give you the conversation _verbatim_ with Mr. Frisbie when I went to see him after the examination. I asked him,'Did I appear well in my examination?' Answer. 'Yes.' Question. 'Did I appear _very_ well, sir?' Answer. 'Why are you so particular, young man? Yes, you did yourself a great deal of credit.' I feel today twenty pounds lighter than I did yesterday.... Love to mother, whose affectionate son I remain,

"WM. HICKLING PRESCOTT."

Prescott entered upon his college life in the autumn of this same year (1811). We find that many of those traits which he had exhibited in his early school days were now accentuated rather sharply. He was fond of such studies as appealed to his instinctive tastes. English literature and the literatures of Greece and Rome he studied willingly because he liked them and not because he was ambitious to gain high rank in the University. To this he was more or less indifferent, and, therefore, gave as little attention as possible to such subjects as mathematics, logic, the natural sciences, philosophy, and metaphysics, without which, of course, he could not hope to win university honours. Nevertheless, he disliked to be rated below the average of his companions, and, therefore, he was careful not to fall beneath a certain rather moderate standard of excellence. He seems, indeed, to have adopted the Horatian _aurea mediocritas_ as his motto; and the easy-going, self-indulgent philosophy of Horace he made for the time his own. In fact, the ideal which he set before himself was the life of a gentleman in the traditional English meaning of that word; and it was a gentleman's education and nothing more which he desired to attain. To be socially agreeable, courteous, and imbued with a liberal culture, seemed to him a sufficient end for his ambition. His father was wealthy and generous. He was himself extremely fond of the good things of life. He made friends readily, and had a very large share of personal attractiveness. Under the circ.u.mstances, it is not to be wondered at if his college life was marked by a pleasant, well-bred hedonism rather than by the austerity of the true New England temperament. The Prescotts as a family had some time before slipped away from the clutch of Puritanism and had accepted the mild and elastic creed of Channing, which, in its tolerant view of life, had more than a pa.s.sing likeness to Episcopalianism. Prescott was still running over with youthful spirits, his position was an a.s.sured one, his means were ample, and his love of pleasure very much in evidence. We cannot wonder, then, if we find that in the early part of his university career he slipped into a sort of life which was probably less commendable than his cautious biographers are willing to admit. Mr.

Ticknor's very guarded intimations seem to imply in Prescott a considerable laxity of conduct; and it is not unfair to read between the lines of what he has written and there find unwilling but undeniable testimony. Thus Ticknor remarks that Prescott "was always able to stop short of what he deemed flagrant excesses and to keep within the limits, though rather loose ones, which he had prescribed to himself. His standard for the character of a gentleman varied, no doubt, at this period, and sometimes was not so high on the score of morals as it should have been." Prescott is also described as never having pa.s.sed the world's line of honour, but as having been willing to run exceedingly close to it. "He pardoned himself too easily for his manifold neglect and breaches of the compacts he had made with his conscience; but there was repentance at the bottom of all." It is rather grudgingly admitted also that "the early part of his college career, when for the first time he left the too gentle restraints of his father's house, ... was the most dangerous period of his life. Upon portions of it he afterwards looked back with regret." There is a good deal of significance, moreover, in some sentences which Prescott himself wrote, long afterwards, of the temptations which a.s.sail a youth during those years when he has attained to the independence of a man but while he is still swayed by the irresponsibility of a boy. There seems to be in these sentences a touch of personal reminiscence and regret:--

"The University, that little world of itself ... bounding the visible horizon of the student like the walls of a monastery, still leaves within him scope enough for all the sympathies and the pa.s.sions of manhood.... He meets with the same obstacles to success as in the world, the same temptations to idleness, the same gilded seductions, but without the same power of resistance. For in this morning of life his pa.s.sions are strongest; his animal nature is more sensible to enjoyment; his reasoning faculties less vigorous and mature. Happy the youth who in this stage of his existence is so strong in his principles that he can pa.s.s through the ordeal without faltering or failing, on whom the contact of bad companionship has left no stain for future tears to wash away."

Just how much is meant by this reluctant testimony can only be conjectured. It is not unfair, however, to a.s.sume that, for a time, Prescott's diversions were such as even a lenient moralist would think it necessary to condemn. The fondness for wine, which remained with him throughout his life, makes it likely that convival excess was one of his undergraduate follies; while the flutter of a petticoat may at times have stirred his senses. No doubt many a young man in his college days has plunged far deeper into dissipation than ever Prescott did and has emerged unscathed to lead a useful life. Yet in Prescott's case there existed a peculiar danger. His future did not call upon him to face the stern realities of a life of toil. He was a.s.sured of a fortune ample for his needs, and therefore his easy-going, pleasure-loving disposition, his boundless popularity, his handsome face, his exuberant spirits, and his very moderate ambition might easily have combined to lead him down the primrose path where intellect is enervated and moral fibre irremediably sapped.

One dwells upon this period of indolence and folly the more willingly, because, after all, it reveals to us in Prescott those pardonable human failings which only serve to make his character more comprehensible.

Prescott's eulogists have so studiously ignored his weaknesses as to leave us with no clear-cut impression of the actual man. They have unwisely smoothed away so much and have extenuated so much in their halting and ambiguous phrases, as to create a picture of which the outlines are far too faint. Apparently, they wish to draw the likeness of a perfect being, and to that extent they have made the subject of their encomiums appear unreal. One cannot understand how truly lovable the actual Prescott was, without reconstructing him in such a way as to let his faults appear beside his virtues. Moreover, an understanding of the perils which at first beset him is needed in order to make clear the profound importance of an incident which sharply called a halt to his excesses and, by curbing his wilful nature, set his finer qualities in the ascendant. It is only by remembering how far he might have fallen, that we can view as a blessing in disguise the blow which Fate was soon to deal him.