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.
"My friend was one of the finest looking men I have ever seen; or, if this should be deemed in some respects a strong expression, I shall be fully justified ... in saying that he was one of the most attractive. He was tall, well formed, manly in his bearing but gentle, with light brown hair that was hardly changed or diminished by years, with a clear complexion and a ruddy flash on his cheek that kept for him to the last an appearance of comparative youth, but above all with a smile that was the most absolutely contagious I ever looked on.... Even in the last months of his life when he was in some other respects not a little changed, he appeared at least ten years younger than he really was. And as for the gracious sunny smile that seemed to grow sweeter as he grew older, it was not entirely obliterated even by the touch of 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:—
"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."
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.