the north american review

Books about books are to most readers comparatively dull. Criticism is a species of dissection, the graces of which are not fully appreciated but by a professional eye; but books about men who write books address a wider circle of interest, because they add the interest of humanity to the element of literature. Books like Boswell's Life of Johnson and Lockhart's Life of Scott are universally popular, because they glow with vital warmth, and are suffused with the hues of human feeling. We trace the careers of men like Johnson and Scott as we follow the adventures of the heroes of a novel. Scott's first and unsuccessful passion is as romantic an incident as the rejection by Flora McIvor of Waverley's proffered hand. Johnson's heroic struggles against poverty, loneliness, and a melancholy temperament are as pathetic as anything in "The Vanity of Human Wishes." In short, a well-written literary biography is read with pleasure by all men who have any taste for reading at all.

We have in the work before us a delightful addition to the class of literary biography, for which we venture to predict a wide and enduring popularity. It is the biography of one who was not only an eminent man of letters, but also, in his private character and personal relations, one of the most frank, amiable, warm-hearted, and open-hearted of human beings. It is VOL. XCVIII. - NO. 202.

written by a man who from early youth was his intimate friend, and knew and understood him as well as one man can know and understand another,- whom all the common friends of the two would have pointed out as the most proper person to do the work which he has done. And he has discharged the trust of friendship which was devolved upon him in a way that leaves nothing to be desired. The story of Mr. Prescott's life is told simply, affectionately, and truthfully; nothing is extenuated, and nothing is overstated; the friends of the historian will recognize the perfect fidelity of the likeness, and the stranger who knew him not will, from internal evidence, feel assured that in these pages he has seen him as he lived and was. The style is correct, flowing, and easy. The stream of the narrative is rarely broken by criticism or speculation, and such liberal use is made of Mr. Prescott's journals and correspondence, that the work has something of the charm of an autobiography. It has the sweetness and the sunshine which were so characteristic of the living man, and the qualities which made him so beloved shed their attractions over the pages which contain the story of his life. We shall best do justice both to the historian and his biographer by giving a brief abstract of the Life, with liberal extracts.

William Hickling Prescott was born in Salem on the 4th of May, 1796. There were few happier homes than that into which the child was born, and rarely did a human being begin the voyage of life under more favorable auspices. His father had every qualification of mind, character, and disposition needed for the due discharge of the paternal office. He was a man of mild wisdom, unaffected dignity of character, sweet temper, and gentle manners. His son held him in the highest veneration, and yet with that perfect love which casteth out fear. Between the two there was always the most unclouded confidence, and so long as the father lived, the son leaned upon him as upon a strong column of support. The historian's mother was a woman of great energy, warm benevolence of heart, and that cheerful temperament which brightened every scene in which she appeared. Mr. Prescott the elder, at the time of his son's birth, was a young but rapidly rising lawyer, so that his son never knew that burden of pov

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