George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[246] Madrid and in the Escorial. A young Spaniard named Pascual de Gayangos has helped me already somewhat, and has volunteered to procure the copies; but he lives in London, and is going with his nice, pretty English wife to Tunis as Spanish Consul, moved to it by his vast Arabic learning, which he hopes there to increase. He is an excellent, and, besides, an agreeable person, who was much liked at Holland House, and is well known and in good request in much of the best literary society of London; the author of the article on Prescott's ‘Ferdinand and Isabella’ in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ etc., etc. Now, I wish your permission to have him come and see you in London, which I will desire him to do, and let him give you a written memorandum of what he has ordered for me in Madrid, the person of whom he has ordered it, and the best mode of accomplishing there all I desire, which is really not much. . . . . Pray do not think me unreasonable, and pray refuse me plainly if you foresee more trouble in it than I do.

I am very sorry you are not coming to Boston to embark. We should have given you a hearty welcome, and, if good wishes could help, you should have been well sped on your passage. As it is, we can only hope that you may take us on your return. Meantime, allow me to write to you in Madrid, if I happen to get into any unexpected bother for want of a rare book or an unpublished manuscript.

Yours very faithfully,

G. Ticknor.

Almost simultaneously with the foregoing letter he wrote to Mr. de Gayangos, with whom he had already been in correspondence for some time, who gave him unremittingly the most valuable and faithful aid, in every possible way, for the furtherance of his work, and to whom he once wrote: ‘Nothing encourages and helps me in my study of Spanish literature like your contributions.’

To Don Pascual de Gayangos, London.

Boston, March 30, 1842.

my dear friend,—Since I wrote you, February 17–March 1, I have received both your kind letters of January 28 and March 2. They have gratified me very much. I am, indeed, sorry that you are unwilling to sell the books you have been so very good as to lend