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

[467]

To Charles Frederic Bradford, Esq., Boston.

Park Street, April 1, 1864.

my dear Mr. Bradford,—I received this forenoon your Index to Clemencin's Notes on Don Quixote, a marvellous work, carefully prepared, beautifully written, tastefully bound. That you should have done this in any degree to please me, is a gratification such as a scholar seldom receives; that you should give me such a charming copy of it demands and receives my very cordial and sincere thanks. I have looked over several pages of it, and many separate heads, and find it accurate, as I expected it would be. Hereafter, I shall use it for the serious purposes of study, and do not doubt that I shall often be benefited by it.

When I see how much patient, faithful labor you have bestowed upon this Index, I am consoled by the thought that if it was kindly intended for me, it has, like other good works, not been without advantage to its author. You must have learnt a great deal about the history and criticism of Spanish literature, which you would be sorry to part with. Others, too, will use it and profit by it.¹

Your graceful and modest account of the imperfect advantages you have enjoyed for literary culture surprised me very much, as compared with the results you have reached. I knew from yourself, and in other ways, that your early opportunities had been small, but I had no idea that they had been so very inconsiderable. It makes me ashamed to think that, with all the means vouchsafed to me, I have yet done no more. I assure you, I feel this painfully at the moment I write it.

Please to give my kind regards to Mrs. Bradford, and tell her that I congratulate her on your release from this hard, long work. I cannot doubt that she must, sometimes, have thought that you were giving to it time to which she had a better claim. But it is done, and again I thank you for it, adding, that if, as you kindly say, I have in any way helped you in your studies, I shall feel bound to do it still more hereafter, in order partly to balance my present obligation.

Yours very faithfully,

Geo. Ticknor.