260 A Century of Science 



When the manuscripts had come into his hands, 

 an arduous labour was begun. All had to be read 

 to him and taken in slowly, bit by bit. The inca 

 pacity to keep steadily at work made it impossible 

 to employ regular assistants profitably; and for 

 readers he either depended upon members of his 

 own family or called in pupils from the public 

 schools. Once he speaks of having had a well- 

 trained young man, who was an excellent linguist ; 

 on another occasion it was a schoolgirl &quot; ignorant 

 of any tongue but her own,&quot; and &quot; the effect, though 

 highly amusing to bystanders, was far from being 

 so to the person endeavouring to follow the meaning 

 of this singular jargon.&quot; The larger part of the 

 documents used in preparing the earlier volumes 

 were in seventeenth-century French, which, though 

 far from being Old French, is enough unlike the 

 nineteenth-century speech to have troubled Park- 

 man s readers, and thus to have worried his ears. 



As Frothingham describes his method, when 

 the manuscripts were slowly read to him, &quot;first 

 the chief points were considered, then the details 

 of the story were gone over carefully and minutely. 

 As the reading went on he made notes, first of es 

 sential matters, then of non-essential. After this 

 he welded everything together, made the narrative 

 completely his own, infused into it his own fire, 



