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.
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