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[256] objections to matters of style, or to special opinions, omissions, and statements; but all the articles which carried weight with them agreed in praise and respect.1

Private letters also flowed in, of course, and some of these are of a character suitable to be introduced here.2

From J. Lothrop Motley to G. Ticknor.

Chestnut Street, Boston, December 29, 1849.
My dear Sir,—At the risk of appearing somewhat impolite, I have delayed expressing my thanks to you for your kindness in sending me a copy of your ‘History of Spanish Literature,’ until I had read the whole work. This I have now done very carefully, and parts of it several times, and I am happy to express to you my sincere congratulations at the eminent success which you have attained. Your book is an honor to yourself and to American literature.

I felt sure, before reading it, that it would be thorough, accurate, learned, and that the subject would be entirely exhausted by your labors; but as histories of literature, with a few exceptions, have generally been rather arid and lifeless productions, occupying rather a place upon the library shelf as books of reference than upon the table as sources of entertainment and instruction at the same time, I must confess that I was not prepared for three volumes of so exceedingly interesting and picturesque a character as these which you have given to the world.

In this result, I think you may take the most credit to yourself for


1 The more important notices of Mr. Ticknor's work, at its first appearance, were the following: ‘London Quarterly’ (by Richard Ford); ‘North American,’ January, 1850 (by W. H. Prescott); ‘British Quarterly,’ February, 1850; ‘London Athenaeum,’ March, 1850; ‘Revue des Deux Mondes,’ 1850 (by Rossieuw de St. Hilaire); ‘El Heraldo,’ Madrid, March, 1850 (by Domingo del Monte); ‘London Morning Chronicle,’ May, 1850 (by Shirley Brooks, who wrote to Mr. Ticknor to inform him of the authorship); ‘Christian Examiner,’ Boston, April, 1850 (by G. S. Hillard); ‘Methodist Quarterly,’ New York (by C. C. Felton); ‘L'Opinion Publique,’ Paris, which had five articles in 1851 (by Count Adolphe de Circourt); ‘London Spectator,’ ‘Examiner,’ ‘Literary Gazette,’ and ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ 1850; ‘Journal des Debats,’ 1852 (by Philarete Chasles, who also paid a tribute to the work in his ‘Voyages d'un Critique en Espagne,’ 1868); ‘Blatter fur Literarische Unterhaltung,’ 1853 (by Ferdinand Wolf).

2 A delightful letter from Washington Irving has already been published in his Memoirs, which deprives us of the pleasure of producing it here.

Boston, J. R. Osgood and company, 1876.

Tufts University provided support for entering this text.

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