Excerpt from The Conquest of Mexico After a Short stay in England he returned to Boston, and desired, in spite of his failing sight, to lead a life of literary occupation. It may seem strange that one, who in his college days had only the ambition of learning as much literature as a gentleman ought to know, and who had never been able to accustom himself to habits Of industry, should now consecrate his energies to literary pursuits but the last six years of his life had been years of stem discipline, and during the long days spent in the dark room, graver thoughts and a nobler ambition had filled his mind. The difficulties before him were great. His classical studies, it is true, had never been neglected, but his deficiencies in modern literature were considerable. Of English he had had as much perhaps read to him as most people Of his age had read to themselves. Of French literature he knew nothing; and of Spanish and Italian he had merely a schoolboy's knowledge. Moreover, he had constantly to fight against a tendency to waste his time, while the necessity of forming fixed habits of work was a task of no little difficulty. He determined to begin from the very elements, and, wisely too, to begin with English. He studied as if he were a schoolboy, beginning with Lindley Murray's grammar, and Johnson's dictionary, and then reading carefully the best authors, from Ascham and Bacon to those of his own time. Thus a year passed Then, hav1ng finished this course, he turned to French literature, going, as he says, deeper and wider than he had done in English. Italian came next, and then Spanish. German, however, he was compelled, owing to his weak sight, to abandon. He now felt competent to begin the real task of writing a history, and searched for a subject. After some hesitation he decided on a history of the times of Ferdinand and Isabella. To enable him to attempt the work, a secretary, Mr. English, was engaged to read to him for five or Six hours every day. Prescott was in no hurry. For the next three and a half years he was Collecting materials, and then only commenced the actual composition so that it was not till the year 1837 (or thirteen years after the time at which he decided on his subject) that Ferdinand and Isabella was fairly delivered to the world. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.