History of the conquest of Peru [antikvár]

Introduction The Conquest of Peru, by the very spaciousness of its sub-ject and the interest of its narrative, belongs to historical fe, : literature. And as literature it is a small miracle. Few historical |ff'j, pieces such as this have withstood the test of time so well, and , j » even less have such pioneer works withstood the assault of | , V archaeological discoveries—and historians. Although in this ' ' last century they have unearthed a mass of documents un- |i ', known to Prescott, still they have succeeded only in adding !j; ) illuminating details to his history. Posterity well knows its business. It makes no exceptions. It confirms that which is solid, it reduces to dust that which is not; and that which is purely sonorous vanishes. Time has a mysterious and implacable sense of final conclusions. A work becomes a masterpiece only with the aid of time; and time, which is the measurer of all things, has made The Conquest of Peru into a masterpiece. Prescott had the formula for writing a masterpiece: he wrote for himself. Since he did not have to write for his bread, he set his own theme and his own pace and so produced his masterwork under an inexorable fatality. ". . . My publishers," he wrote to a friend on June 27, 1847, "have today sent my Peruvian bantling into the world. . . ." With this droll understatement he told of the publication of The History of the Conquest of Peru—a book of 1,070 pages and one which had been particularly laborious: it had taken him precisely two years and nine months to finish it. Yet greater than his book, there stands the man himself. He wrote under conditions which would have appalled most, and before he could begin his career he had to make a conquest of his own. So, as someone put it, Prescott's conquests were not two, but three: the third, and perhaps the greatest, was his own life. William Prescott's personal drama began in 1811. It came out of a thrown crust of bread. As everyone of substance in Boston then did, Prescott entered Harvard College. At fifteen years of age he was preparing to read law and to echo the profession of his father. Judge Prescott. Anyone who saw the "charming, amusing son of the Judge, living in his ample house on Bedford Street" could then have given a précis of his future life. The Prescotts were among the earliest to arrive ix