Before closing these remarks, I may be permitted to add a few of
a personal nature. In several foreign notices of my writings,
the author has been said to be blind; and more than once I have
had the credit of having lost my sight in the composition of my
first history. When I have met with such erroneous accounts, I
have hastened to correct them. But the present occasion affords
me the best means of doing so; and I am the more desirous of
this, as I fear some of my own remarks, in the Prefaces to my
former histories, have led to the mistake.
While at the University, I received an injury in one of my eyes,
which deprived me of the sight of it. The other, soon after, was
attacked by inflammation so severely, that, for some time, I lost
the sight of that also; and though it was subsequently restored,
the organ was so much disordered as to remain permanently
debilitated, while twice in my life, since, I have been deprived
of the use of it for all purposes of reading and writing, for
several years together. It was during one of these periods that
I received from Madrid the materials for the "History of
Ferdinand and Isabella," and in my disabled condition, with my
Transatlantic treasures lying around me, I was like one pining
from hunger in the midst of abundance. In this state, I resolved
to make the ear, if possible, do the work of the eye. I procured
the services of a secretary, who read to me the various
authorities; and in time I became so far familiar with the sounds
of the different foreign languages (to some of which indeed, I
had been previously accustomed by a residence abroad), that I
could comprehend his reading without much difficulty.
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