Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

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‘ [454] of German philologists,’ then on a visit to Gottingen; and, during an eight weeks holiday trip across Germany, Gesenius and Goethe. For a full year he continued his classical studies without any notion that his field was to lie elsewhere. From Byron in London he had got hints for a tour in Greece, and he was preparing to make it, when late in 1816 Harvard offered him the College Professorship of the Belles Lettres and the Smith Professorship of the French and Spanish Languages and Literatures, then just established upon the death of its founder Abiel Smith. Accordingly Ticknor gave up his Greek tour, and after a few months in Gottingen began in the spring of 1817 an extensive course of travel and study in the Latin countries. In Paris he worked with great diligence at French and Italian. In Rome by November he studied Italian and archaeology. Leaving Rome late in March of 1818, he made his way slowly to Spain via Italy and southern France. In Madrid he at once settled into his habitual studious ways. During the summer and autumn of 1818 he made several excursions and a considerable journey in Spain and Portugal; whence in November he went via England to Paris again. Here he privately studied Spanish literature, Portuguese, and Provencal. In London in January, 1819, he dropped study for awhile, and was taken up by the great Whigs—Lord Holland, Sir James Mackintosh, Richard Heber, Hookham Frere, Lord John Russell, and Sydney Smith. He visited the Marquis of Salisbury at Hatfield House and the Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey; again touched classical studies in a sojourn at Cambridge; and before February reached Edinburgh. Picking out, as was usual with him, a specialist to help him in his studies, he read Scotch poetry. Here he frequented the Tory circle of Mrs. Grant of Laggan, and made the acquaintance of Scott, whom he visited at Abbotsford for a few days; proceeding thence to Southey at Keswick and to Wordsworth at Rydal Mount. At Hatton he saw old Dr. Parr once more, who condemned everything contemporary but gave Ticknor his blessing.

In London again, early in April, Ticknor went with Irving to the ‘damning of a play’ and afterwards to the Lord Mayor's ball, which he also damns in a series of contemptuous remarks about the ‘City crowd.’ Though he had already disparaged Godwin as the ‘notorious William Godwin,’ he dined at his