William Hickling Prescott

by Harry Thurston Peck

Although Ford's characterisation of Prescott's style had some basis of truth, it was, of course, grossly exaggerated. Throughout the whole of the Ferdinand and Isabella, one is conscious of a strong tendency toward simplicity of expression. Many passages are as easy and unaffected as any that we find in an historical writer of to-day. Reading the pages over now, one can see the true Prescott under all the starch and stiffness which at the time he mistakenly regarded as essential to the dignity of historical writing. In fact, as the work progressed, the author gained something of that ease which comes from practice, and wrote more and more simply and more after his own natural manner. What is really lacking is sharpness of outline. The narrative is somewhat too flowing. One misses, now and then, crispness of phrase and force of characterisation. Prescott never wrote a sentence that can be remembered. His strength lies in his ensemble, in the general effect, and in the agreeable manner in which he carries us along with him from the beginning to the end. This first book of his, from the point of view of style, is "pleasant reading." Its movement is that of an ambling palfrey, well broken to a lady's use. Nowhere have we the sensation of the rush and thunder of a war-horse.

Ford's strictures made Prescott wince, or, as Mr. Ticknor gently puts it, "disturbed his equanimity." They caused him to consider the question of his own style in the light of Ford's very slashing strictures. In making this self-examination Prescott was perfectly candid with himself, and he noted down the conclusions which he ultimately reached.

"It seems to me the first and sometimes the second volume afford examples of the use of words not so simple as might be; not objectionable in themselves, but unless something is gained in the way of strength or of colouring it is best to use the most simple, unnoticeable words to express ordinary things; e.g. 'to send' is better than 'to transmit'; 'crown descended' better than 'devolved'; 'guns fired' than 'guns discharged'; 'to name,' or 'call,' than 'to nominate'; 'to read' than 'peruse'; 'the term,' or 'name,' than 'appellation,' and so forth. It is better also not to encumber the sentence with long, lumbering nouns; as,'the relinquishment of,' instead of 'relinquishing'; 'the embellishment and fortification of,' instead of 'embellishing and fortifying'; and so forth. I can discern no other warrant for Master Ford's criticism than the occasional use of these and similar words on such commonplace matters as would make the simpler forms of expression preferable. In my third volume, I do not find the language open to much censure."

He also came to the following sensible decision which very materially improved his subsequent writing:—

"I will not hereafter vex myself with anxious thoughts about my style when composing. It is formed. And if there be any ground for the imputation that it is too formal, it will only be made worse in this respect by extra solicitude. It is not the defect to which I am predisposed. The best security against it is to write with less elaboration—a pleasant recipe which conforms to my previous views. This determination will save me trouble and time. Hereafter what I print shall undergo no ordeal for the style's sake except only the grammar."

Some other remarks of his may be here recorded, though they really amount to nothing more than the discovery of the old truth, le style c'est l'homme.

"A man's style to be worth anything should be the natural expression of his mental character.... The best undoubtedly for every writer is the form of expression best suited to his peculiar turn of thinking, even at some hazard of violating the conventional tone of the most chaste and careful writers. It is this alone which can give full force to his thoughts. Franklin's style would have borne more ornament—Washington Irving could have done with less—Johnson and Gibbon might have had much less formality, and Hume and Goldsmith have occasionally pointed their sentences with more effect. But, if they had abandoned the natural suggestions of their genius and aimed at the contrary, would they not in mending a hole, as Scott says, have very likely made two?... Originality—the originality of nature—compensates for a thousand minor blemishes.... The best rule is to dispense with all rules except those of grammar, and to consult the natural bent of one's genius."

Thereafter Prescott held to his resolution so far as concerned the first draft of what he wrote. He always, however, before publication, asked his friends to read and criticise what he had written, and he used also to employ readers to go over his pages with great minuteness, making notes which he afterwards passed upon, rejecting most of the suggestions, but nevertheless adopting a good many.

From the point of view of historical accuracy, Ferdinand and Isabella is a solid piece of work. The original sources to which Prescott had access were numerous and valuable. Discrepancies and contradictions he sifted out with patience and true critical acumen. He overlooked nothing, not even those "still-born manuscripts" whose writers recorded their experiences for the pure pleasure of setting down the truth. Ford very justly said, regarding Prescott's notes: "Of the accuracy of his quotations and references we cannot speak too highly; they stamp a guarantee on his narrative; they enable us to give a reason for our faith; they furnish means of questioning and correcting the author himself; they enable readers to follow up any particular subject suited to their own idiosyncrasy." It is only in that part of the book which relates to the Arab domination in Spain that Prescott's work is unsatisfactory; and even there it represents a distinct advance upon his predecessors, both French and Spanish. At the time when he wrote, it would, indeed, have been impossible for him to secure greater accuracy; because the Arabic manuscripts contained in the Escurial had not been opened to the inspection of investigators; and, moreover, a knowledge of the language in which they were written would have been essential to their proper use. In default of these sources, Prescott gave too much credence to Casiri, and especially to Condé's history which had appeared not long before, but which had been hastily written, so that it contained some serious misstatements and inconsistencies. Condé, although he professed to have gone to the original records in Arabic, had in reality got most of his information at second hand from Cardonne and Marmol. Hence, Prescott's chapters on the Arabs in Spain, although they appear to the general reader to represent exact and solid knowledge, are in fact inaccurate in parts. In other respects, however, the most modern historical scholarship has detected no serious flaws in Ferdinand and Isabella. Such defects as the book possesses are negative rather than positive, and they are really due to the author's cast of mind. Prescott, was not, and he never became, a philosophical historian. His gift was for synthesis rather than for analysis. He was an industrious gatherer of facts, an impartial judge of evidence, a sympathetic and accurate narrator of events. He could not, however, firmly grasp the underlying causes of what he superficially, observed, nor penetrate the very heart of things. His power of generalisation was never strong. There is a certain lack also, especially in this first one of his historical compositions, of a due appreciation of character. He describes the great actors in his drama,—Ferdinand, Isabella, Columbus, Ximenes, and Gonsalvo de Cordova,—and what he says of them is eminently true; yet, somehow or other, he fails to make them live. They are stately figures that move in a majestic way across one's field of vision; yet it is their outward bearing and their visible acts that he makes us know, rather than the interplay of motive and temperament which impelled them. His taste, indeed, is decidedly for the splendid and the spectacular. Kings, princes, nobles, warriors, and statesmen crowd his pages. Perhaps they satisfied the starved imagination of the New Englander, whose own life was lived amid surroundings antithetically prosaic. Certain it is, that, in dwelling upon a memorable epoch, he omitted all consideration of a stratum of society which underlay the surface which alone he saw. A few more years, and the fifteenth-century picaro, the common man, the trader, and the peasant were destined to emerge from the humble position to which the usages of chivalry had consigned them. The invention of gunpowder and the use of it in war soon swept away the advantage which the knight in armour had possessed as against the humble foot-soldier who followed him. The discovery of America and the opening of new lands teeming with treasures for their conquerors roused and stimulated the consciousness of the lower orders. Before long, the man-at-arms, the musketeer, and the artilleryman attained a consequence which the ordinary fighting man had never had before. After these had gone forth as adventurers into the New World, they brought back with them not only riches wrested from the helpless natives whom they had subdued, but a spirit of freedom verging even upon lawlessness, which leavened the whole stagnant life of Europe. Then, for the first time, such as had been only pawns in the game of statesmanship and war became factors to be anxiously considered. Even literature then takes notice of them, and for the first time they begin to influence the course of modern history. A philosophical historian, therefore, would have looked beyond the ricos hombres, and would have revealed to us, at least in part, the existence and the mode of life of that great mass of swarming humanity with which the statesman and the feudal lord had soon to reckon.