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ART. IV. History of the Conquest of Peru, with a Preliminary View of the Civilization of the Incas. By W. H. PRESCOTT. London: Bentley, 1847. 2 vols. 8vo.

MR. PRESCOTT is now so well known as an historian, that any general criticism on his merits and qualifications would be quite superfluous. The present volumes will not, we think, add to his just fame, but they have merit enough of their own not to depend on the borrowed lustre of his previous works. It will be obvious, however, even to an idle reader, that The History of the Conquest of Peru' has been more carelessly and hastily put together than its predecessor and fellow, The Conquest of Mexico,' and is as inferior to that work as that was to The History of Ferdinand and Isabella.'

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Success in writing often brings an accession of vigour and confidence of stroke, but, on the other hand, induces carelessness, impatience, and a verbal fluency which hides from the writer himself his own deficiency of substance. Of all species of writing, the historical is that which suffers most from such a course. In fiction, or invention of any kind, boldness and rapidity are useful stimulants, and, indeed, are the best secondary aids to what is the chief instrument of such composition-the imagination; our natural sense and taste, and previously acquired knowledge of things, being all that is required to correct the vagaries of fancy. But, in writing history, where the inventive faculty is only an inferior agent, where it cannot begin to work till a new and special material has been supplied to it by reading, and where it must be continually checked and refreshed by painful collation and minute observation,-in proportion as the latter process has been strikingly and superficially performed will the effect of the whole be impaired. True, that the most common failing of writers who undertake to narrate is the want, not of labour, but of those powers of imagination which can alone direct labour profitably. But there are still some, who, not being defective in imagination, have neglected or despised the slow and servile toil of sufficiently preparing their materials. It is not so much want of research, and of extensive collections, we are reviewing, as want of elaboration of what is within reach The historian of a century ago, content with shining periods and neat observation, disdained research, and repeated the story as he found it in the first book that happened to stand on his shelves. Our method is to surround ourselves with heaps of record and document, too often to an extent beyond our

management. Want of time, distracting occupations, and indo·lent habits, keep us at the threshold of our subject.

This appears to be the case with Mr. Prescott in the present instance. Those who have read his Ferdinand and Isabella' will be ready to acquit him of want of power over a subject on which he has expended sufficient pains, but there is a feebleness and languor throughout the present sketch which betrays a mind not fully present to the place, time, and characters with which it is dealing. The touch is feebler and the colours fainter, though it is the same hand and art with which we are familiar. Whatever other causes of this decline there may be, one melancholy one Mr. Prescott informs us of himself. Had we not the example of Auguste Thierry before us, we should have considered the composition of a work of research an impossibility to one who is labouring under an almost total loss of eyesight. Such is the case with Mr. Prescott. An injury deprived him of the sight of one, in early youth. The other has been ever since so enfeebled as to prevent his using it for purposes of reading and writing for several years together.

'During one of these periods I received from Madrid the materials for the "History of Ferdinand and Isabella ;" and in my disabled condition, with these treasures lying around me, I was like one pining from hunger in the midst of abundance. In this state I resolved to make the ear, if possible, do the work of the eye. I procured the services of a secretary, who read to me the various authorities; and in time I became so familiar with the sounds of the different foreign languages, that I could comprehend his reading without much difficulty. As the reader proceeded I dictated copious notes, and when these had swelled to a considerable amount, they were read to me repeatedly till I had mastered their contents sufficiently for the purposes of composition.

'Still another difficulty occurred in the mechanical labour of writing, which I found a severe trial to the eye. This was remedied by means of a writing case, such as is used by the blind, which enabled me to commit my thoughts to paper without the aid of sight, serving me equally well in the dark as in the light. The characters thus formed måde a near approach to hieroglyphics; but my secretary became expert in the art of deciphering, and a fair copy, with a liberal allowance for unavoidable blunders, was transcribed for the use of the printer. I have described the process with more minuteness, as some curiosity has been expressed in reference to my modus operandi under my privations, and the knowledge of it may be some assistance to others in similar circumstances.

'My sight was at length so far restored that I could read for several hours of the day, though my labours in this way necessarily terminated with the daylight. This was the improved state of my health during the preparation of the Conquest of Mexico,' and satisfied with being raised so nearly to a level with the rest of my species, I scarcely envied the superior good fortune of those who could prolong their studies into the evening, and the later hours of the night. But a change has again taken place during the last two years. The sight of my eye has become gradually dimmed, while the sensibility of the nerve has been so far increased, that for several weeks of the last year I have not opened a volume, and through

the whole time I have not had the use of it on an average for more than an hour a day. Nor can I cheer myself with the delusive expectation that, impaired as the organ has become from having been tasked, probably, beyond its strength, it can ever renew its youth, or be of much service to me hereafter in my literary researches. Whether I shall have the heart to enter, as I had proposed, on a new and more extensive field of historical labour with these impediments, I cannot say.'-Preface, p. xvi.

Mr. Prescott may certainly be added to those instances of admirable energy, where the impediment has only served to stimulate exertion, and to be the direct occasion of a signal triumph of mind over nature.

Under this disadvantage the author had to encounter a body of materials of the most full and minute description, far more so than those existing for the Conquest of Mexico,' and, unlike those, untouched hitherto. For nothing on the Conquest of Peru' like the Historias de los Conquistas de Mexico,' by Solis, has been attempted by any Spanish author. These manuscript papers consist chiefly in royal grants, and ordinances, instructions of the Court, letters and despatches to the Governors from home, personal diaries and memoranda, but, above all, a mass of private correspondence of the principal actors. So that there is scarcely a nook or corner so obscure in the path of the adventurers that some light has not been thrown upon it by the written correspondence of the period.

Out of this stock the author undertook to fill up the sketch which forms Book VI. of Robertson's History of America.' Each portion of the great drama of Spanish conquest, though only a portion of the whole, is capable of being separately treated, and none offer such brilliant passages of adventure as the careers of Cortes and Pizarro in Mexico and Peru. Each of these has its place in the correct but cold and spiritless outline of Robertson; an outline which it is Mr. Prescott's modest profession to have only designed to fill in. Those who are acquainted with Robertson's modernization of Herrera, will be most inclined to wonder that all the additional stores of document accumulated by Mr. Prescott have furnished so little of novelty, and that all the material parts of the story were touched in the succinct narrative of Robertson. We say those who are acquainted' with Robertson, for not only is he one of those standard writers whom nobody reads, but the subject is one of which even informed persons are generally ignorant. We should be the last to join in any wholesale declamation against our University education, but it will be readily admitted by all who are acquainted with the system, that without any radical alteration or reform, the sphere of knowledge communicated to the pupil might be very easily enlarged. A faint attempt at inculcating the rudiments of geography is made at school; but

generally ill taught, and worse remembered, and not being followed up at College, it comes to nothing. How much time and labour would be saved if elementary instruction in geography, physical and political, with some short notes of the actual condition of the various states and nations, were regularly given us from the first, instead of leaving us to pick up crude, imperfect, and erroneous ideas late in life, and as the occasion arises for which the information is wanted. It would be all the difference between starting right at first, and having to consume the precious hours of the matured mind in labouring to correct false conceptions. On all common topics, and subjects which daily life and society bring before us, and of which we are, therefore, under the necessity of forming some notions or other, not to have been rightly instructed is equivalent to having had incorrect notions instilled. If we have not been forearmed with the true facts, we are placed at the mercy of the first speaker or writer who may happen to make an impression upon us. And the most mortifying consideration, perhaps, is, that this might be done on a considerable number of common subjects with no more expenditure of time and trouble than we now give to the miserable curriculum of the Four Books and Aldrich.' A well-selected compendium of geography and statistics, for example, might be learned in a week, and being referred to from time to time afterwards during the course of any lecture that might be given on a period of modern history, would fix in the mind that indispensable elementary knowledge without which the course of modern politics and public events cannot be understood.

One consequence of the want of any accredited teaching on such subjects is, that writers on them know not how much previous information to assume in their readers; and are obliged in consequence to begin on every occasion ab oro, a mode of treating a reader, which is apt to weary and disgust all those to whom the subject is not entirely new. To this necessity we owe, probably, the Introductory Book of these volumes, in which the Peruvian institutions and the history, what little is known of it, previous to the Spanish invasion is sketched. The second Book relates the discovery of the country, and the first unsuccessful attempts to obtain a footing in it down to Pizarro's voyage to Spain. Books III. and IV. contain the History of the Conquest, and the rest of the volume is occupied with that necessary appendage to conquest, the quarrels of the Conquerors among themselves, and is brought down to the final settlement of the country, brought about by the wise and conciliating Pedro de la Gasca. We propose, in the present notice, to confine ourselves to the events of the Conquest, and shall avail ourselves of Mr. Prescott's second and third Books to lay before our readers

an outline of one of the most bloody tragedies ever acted on the face of the earth, to its closing scene in the cruel and coldblooded murder of the unhappy Atahualpa.

Though there is, it appears, no modern compilation on the Conquest of Peru, in Spanish literature, yet the subject and country is illustrated by a native historian who may justly rank among the small and select number of genuine and original chroniclers. The South American Herodotus, Garcilasso de la Vega, was born at Cuzco, the capital of old Peru, in 1540. He was a mestizo, that is, of mixed descent; his father, the same name with himself, being one of that illustrious family whose achievements in arms and letters shed such lustre over the proudest period of Castilian annals; and his mother being of the blood of the Incas, having escaped on account of her tender years from the general massacre of all the descendants of Huyana Capac, which was perpetrated by the last Inca, whom the Spaniards, as we shall see, dethroned. Garcilasso was not a little proud of this union of two noble races in his own person -the chivalry of Castile, and the blood royal of Peru,-always subscribing himself, Garcilasso Inca de la Vega. This singular fortune of his birth fitted him in a peculiar way to be the chronicler of the Conquest. He belonged to both parties, conquerors and conquered, sympathized in some measure with both, preserved the traditions of both, and represents their union. As a child he had treasured the traditions of the good old times of Inca rule, which, coloured by the fond regrets of the humbled natives, were not likely to lose anything as seen through the magnifying medium of the past. The comparison of him with any of the Spanish narrators of the same events will show in a few sentences the difference this fact of descent occasions; the lights and shadows of the picture disposed by his hand, present an effect very different from the fierce hatred or proud contempt breathed by a purely Spanish writer.

But Garcilasso was a Castilian as well as an Inca. And he wrote at Cordova, and late in life, after the story had been often told by Spanish writers. He naturally deferred much to men who enjoyed high credit both as writers and statesmen. His object, he professes, was not so much to add anything new of his own, as to correct their errors, and the misconceptions into which they had fallen, by their ignorance of the language and the manners of the native population. In another respect, also, he was completely the European, being a most devout Catholic, and abhorring the idolatry and superstition which the introduction of Catholicism overthrew.

But still more than this advantage of birth, is the character and imagination which makes his Commentarios Reales the