Born, in New York, 3 April 1783. Educated at private schools, 1787–99. In a lawyer’s office, 1801–04. Contrib. to “Morning Chronicle,” under pseud. of “Jonathan Oldstyle,” 1802. Travelled in Europe, 1804–06. Edited “Salmagundi,” with his brother, William, and J. K. Paulding, Jan. to Oct. 1807. Partner with his brothers in a mercantile house, 1810–17. Assistant Editor of “Analectic Mag.,” 1813–14. In England, 1815–20. Travelled on Continent, 1820–25. Attaché to the U.S.A. Legation at Madrid, 1826–29. Sec. to U.S.A. Legation in London, 1829–32. Medal of Roy. Soc. of Lit., 1830. Hon. LL.D., Oxford, 1831. Returned to New York, 1832; settled at Sunnyside. Contrib. to “Knickerbocker Mag.,” 1839–40. U.S.A. Ambassador to Spain, 1842–46. Returned to America, April 1846. Unmarried. Died, at Sunnyside, 28 Nov. 1859. Works: “A History of New York” (under pseud. of “Diedrich Knickerbocker”), 1809; “The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon,” 1819; “Bracebridge Hall” (by “Geoffrey Crayon,” 2 vols.), 1822; “Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle,” 1824 (3rd edn. same year); “Tales of a Traveller” by (“Geoffrey Crayon”), 1824; “A History of … Cristopher Columbus” (3 vols.), 1828; “A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada,” 1829; “Voyages … of the Companions of Columbus,” 1831; “The Alhambra” (by “Geoffrey Crayon”), 1832; “Complete Works” (pubd. in Paris), 1834; “Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey” (anon.), 1835; “Tour on the Prairies,” 1835; “Legends of the Conquest of Spain” (anon.), 1835; “The Crayon Miscellany” (anon.), 1835; “Astoria” (3 vols.), 1836; “The Adventures of Captain Bonneville,” 1837; “Biography and Poetical Remains of M. M. Davidson,” 1841; “The Life of Oliver Goldsmith,” 1844; “A Book of the Hudson” (edited by “Geoffrey Crayon”), 1849; “The Life of Mahomet,” 1850; “The Lives of Mahomet and his Successors,” 1850; “Chronicles of Wolfert’s Roost,” 1855; “Life of Washington,” vols. i, ii, 1855; vol. iii, 1856; vol. iv, 1857; vol. v, 1859; “Wolfert Webber,” 1856; “Works” (15 vols.), 1857. Posthumous: “Spanish Papers,” ed. by P. M. Irving, 1866; “Biographies and Miscellaneous Papers,” ed. by P. M. Irving, 1867. He translated: Navarette’s “Collection de los Viages, etc.,” 1825: and edited: Campbell’s “Poems,” 1810; Bonneville’s “Rocky Mountains,” 1843. Collected Works: in 1 vol., 1834; in 27 vols., 1880–83. Life: “Life and Letters,” by P. M. Irving, 1862–63.

Personal

  Poor Washington is dead three months ago! I almost shed a tear when I heard it: it was a dream of mine that we two should be friends.

  He is so sensible, sound, and straightforward in his way of seeing everything, and at the same time so full of hopefulness, so simple, unaffected, true, and good, that it is a privilege to converse with him, for which one is the wiser, the happier and the better.

  At Paris I had the happiness to know Washington Irving, whom I found as amiable as he is eminent.

  There is no man in the world who could have given me the heartfelt pleasure you have, by your kind note of the 13th of last month. There is no living writer, and there are very few among the dead, whose approbation I should feel so proud to earn. And with everything you have written upon my shelves, and in my thoughts, and in my heart of hearts, I may honestly and truly say so. If you could know how earnestly I write this, you would be glad to read it—as I hope you will be, faintly guessing at the warmth of the hand I autobiographically hold out to you over the broad Atlantic…. I have been so accustomed to associate you with my pleasantest and happiest thoughts and with my leisure hours, that I rush at once into full confidence with you, and fall, as it were naturally, and by the very laws of gravity, into your open arms.

  The mansion of this prosperous and valiant family, so often celebrated in his writings, is the residence of Washington Irving. It is approached by a sequestered road, which enhances the effect of its natural beauty. A more tranquil and protected abode, nestled in the lap of nature, never captivated a poet’s eye. Rising from the bank of the river, which a strip of woodland alone intercepts, it unites every rural charm to the most complete seclusion. From this interesting domain is visible the broad surface of the Tappan Zee; the grounds slope to the water’s edge, and are bordered by wooded ravines; a clear brook ripples near, and several neat paths lead to shadowy walks or fine points of river scenery. The house itself is a graceful combination of the English cottage and the Dutch farmhouse. The crow-stepped gables, and tiles in the hall, and the weather cocks, partake of the latter character; while the white walls gleaming through the trees, the smooth and verdant turf, and the mantling vines of ivy and clambering roses, suggest the former.

  He was in the habit of rising in the night, between twelve and four o’clock, and reading, or even writing for half an hour or an hour. He did not get, on the average, more than four hours’ sleep at night, but often took short naps in the afternoon and evening. This natural, or at least habitual, irregularity of sleep, became aggravated to extreme nervousness and restlessness after an attack of fever and ague in the autumn of 1858. He was still suffering from the effects of this when I saw him. But beneath all these disturbances lay a deeper difficulty, which was distinctly mentioned to me in his physician’s letter as “enlargement of the heart,” accompanied by “an obstructed circulation.” Under these influences, with growing age to weaken the power of resistance, his health gradually declined, until the flame of life, which had been getting paler and feebler, was blown out, as it were, by a single breath: a gentle end of a sweet and lovely life,—such an end as Nature prepares by slow and measured approaches and consummates with swift kindness when she grants the blessing of euthanasia to her favorite children.

  I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Irving in Spain; and found the author, whom I had loved, repeated in the man,—the same playful humor, the same touches of sentiment, the same poetic atmosphere, and what I admired still more, the entire absence of all literary jealousy, of all that mean avarice of fame, which counts what is given to another as so much taken from one’s self,—

  Great and varied as was the genius of Mr. Irving, there was one thing he shrunk with a comical terror from attempting; and that was a dinner-speech. A great dinner, however, was to be given to Mr. Dickens in New York, as one had already been given in Boston; and it was evident to all, that no man but Washington Irving could be thought of to preside. With all his dread of making a speech, he was obliged to obey the universal call, and to accept the painful pre-eminence…. Under the circumstances,—an invited guest, with no impending speech,—I sat calmly, and watched with interest the imposing scene. I had the honor to be placed next but one to Mr. Irving, and the great pleasure of sharing in his conversation. He had brought the manuscript of his speech, and laid it under his plate. “I shall certainly break down,” he repeated over and over again. At last, the moment arrived. Mr. Irving rose, and was received with deafening and long-continued applause, which by no means lessened his apprehension. He began in his pleasant voice; got through two or three sentences pretty easily, but in the next hesitated; and, after one or two attempts to go on, gave it up, with a graceful allusion to the tournament, and the troops of knights all armed and eager for the fray; ended with the toast, “Charles Dickens, the guest of the nation.” “There,” said he, as he resumed his seat under a repetition of the applause which had saluted his rising,—“there I told you I should break down; and I’ve done it.” There certainly never was made a shorter after-dinner speech: I doubt if there ever was a more successful one. The manuscript seemed to be a dozen or twenty pages long; but the printed speech was not as many lines.

  William Irving, the father of the great author, was a native of Scotland—one of a race in which the instinct of veneration is strong—and a Scottish woman was employed as a nurse in his household. It is related that one day while she was walking in the street with her little charge, then five years old, she saw General Washington in a shop, and entering, led up the boy, whom she presented as one to whom his name had been given. The general turned, laid his hand on the child’s head, and gave him his smile and his blessing, little thinking that they were bestowed upon his future biographer. The gentle pressure of that hand Irving always remembered, and that blessing, he believed, attended him through life. Who shall say what power that recollection may have had in keeping him true to high and generous aims?… From the time that he began the composition of his “Sketch Book,” his whole life was the life of an author. His habits of composition were, however, by no means regular. When he was in the vein, the periods would literally stream from his pen; at other times he would scarcely write anything. For two years after the failure of his brothers at Liverpool, he found it almost impossible to write a line. He was throughout life an early riser, and when in the mood, would write all the morning and till late in the day, wholly engrossed with his subject. In the evening he was ready for any cheerful pastime, in which he took part with an animation almost amounting to high spirits. These intervals of excitement and intense labor, sometimes lasting for weeks, were succeeded by languor, and at times by depression of spirits, and for months the pen would lie untouched; even to answer a letter at these times was an irksome task.

  I had always too much earnest respect for Mr. Irving ever to claim familiar intimacy with him. He was a man who would unconsciously and quietly command deferential regard and consideration; for in all his ways and words there was the atmosphere of true refinement. He was emphatically a gentleman, in the best sense of that word. Never forbidding nor morose, he was at times (indeed always, when quite well) full of genial humour,—sometimes overflowing with fun…. Mr. Irving was never a systematic collector of books, and his little library at Sunnyside might have disappointed those who would expect to see there rich shelves of choice editions, and a full array of all the favorite authors among whom such a writer would delight to revel. Some rather antiquated tomes in Spanish,—different sets of Calderon and Cervantes, and of some modern French and German authors,—a presentation-set of Cadell’s “Waverley,” as well as that more recent and elegant emanation from the classic press of Houghton,—a moderate amount of home-tools for the “Life of Washington,” (rare materials were consulted in the town-libraries and at Washington)—and the remainder of his books were evidently a haphazard collection, many coming from the authors, with their respects, and thus sometimes costing the recipient their full (intrinsic) value in writing a letter of acknowledgment…. One rather curious characteristic of Mr. Irving was excessive, unaffected modesty and distrust of himself and of his own writings. Considering how many a débutant in letters, not yet out of his teens, is so demonstratively self-confident as to the prospective effect of his genius on an expecting and admiring world, it was always remarkable to hear a veteran, whose fame for half a century had been cosmopolitan, expressing the most timid doubts as to his latest compositions, and fearing that they were unequal to their position,—so unwilling, too, to occupy an inch of ground to which any other writer might properly lay claim.

  The first ambassador whom the New World of Letters sent to the Old. He was born almost with the republic; the pater patriæ had laid his hand on the child’s head. He bore Washington’s name: he came amongst us bringing the kindest sympathy, the most artless, smiling good will. His new country (which some people here might be disposed to regard rather superciliously) could send us, as he showed in his own person, a gentleman, who, though himself born in no very high sphere, was most finished, polished, easy, witty, quiet; and, socially, the equal of the most refined Europeans. If Irving’s welcome in England was a kind one, was it not also gratefully remembered? If he ate our salt, did he not pay us with a thankful heart? Who can calculate the amount of friendliness and good feeling for our country which this writer’s generous and untiring regard for us disseminated in his own? His books are read by millions of his countrymen, whom he has taught to love England, and why to love her…. Was Irving not good, and, of his works, was not his life the best part? In his family, gentle, generous, good-humoured, affectionate, self-denying: in society, a delightful example of complete gentlemanhood; quite unspoiled by prosperity; never obsequious to the great (or, worse still, to the base and mean, as some public men are forced to be in his and other countries); eager to acknowledge every contemporary’s merit; always kind and affable to the young members of his calling; in his professional bargains and mercantile dealings delicately honest and grateful; one of the most charming masters of our lighter literature; the constant friend to us and our nation; to men of letters doubly dear, not for his wit and genius merely, but as an example of goodness, probity, and pure life.

  On retiring for the night, at half past ten, his niece Sarah, who always took charge of his medicines, went into his room to place them, as usual, within easy reach. “Well,” he exclaimed, “I must arrange my pillows for another weary night!” and then, as if half to himself, “If this could only end!” or “When will this end!” she could not tell which; for, at the instant, he gave a slight exclamation, as if of pain, pressing his hand on his left side, repeated the exclamation and the pressure, caught at the footboard of the bed, and fell backward to the floor. The sound of his fall and the screams of Sarah brought the whole family in an instant to his room. I raised his head in my arms. Every means was resorted to to recall animation, and continued until a physician—Dr. Caruthers, from a distance of two miles—arrived, who pronounced life entirely extinct. He had passed away instantaneously. The end for which he had just been sighing—the end, which to him had no terrors—had come. His departure was sudden; but so he was willing it should be. In the fulness of years, with unclouded intellect, crowned with the warmest affections of his countrymen, and with an assured hope of a happy immortality, he had gone down, according to his own pathetic aspiration, “with all sail set.” Who that loved him would have wished to recall him!

  It was only a quiet old gentleman of six-and-seventy who was buried awhile ago from his home upon the Hudson: yet the village shops were all closed; the streets, the houses, the station, were hung in black; thousands from the city thirty miles away thronged the high-road leading to the little church where prayers were to be said. How shall we explain this? The author is dead, indeed, whose writings were admired by all; but there is something worthier to be said than this:—At the little church lay the body of the man whom all men loved.

  Washington Irving—the least American of Americans I ever encountered. He was not brilliant in conversation; but good sense, as well as good nature, made him a most agreeable companion.

  It is not necessary to dwell upon the small scandal about Irving’s un-American feeling. If there was ever a man who loved his country and was proud of it; whose broad, deep, and strong patriotism did not need the saliency of ignorant partisanship, it was Washington Irving. He was like his namesake an American, and with the same pure loyalty and unpartisan candor.

  Washington Irving, when I knew him, was past the zenith both of his life and his fame. He was inclined to rest and be thankful, to wear placidly the crown of bays that his intellectual activity had woven for him, in earlier years; and so I found him, as others found him, sleepy in a double sense—physically and mentally.

  “Sunnyside” and its neighborhood is already classic soil. As each season recurs uncounted pilgrims visit its delightful precincts. The winding lane, shaded by magnificent elms and chestnuts, through whose foliage the sunlight at intervals finds its way; the tumbling brooklet chasing along grassy slopes, under steep banks and down the rocky ravine; the noble Hudson, sweeping in grandeur past bold promontories and thriving villages, bearing on its bosom the commerce of a thriving country; the quaint little ivy-covered cottage itself, with white walls and antique weather-vanes—all these combine to please the taste and to feed the imagination; and, far more than the simple marble slab that marks his last resting place on the slope of Sleepy Hollow, form the enduring monument of the man who introduced American letters and literature to the notice of the world.

  In the evening of life, surrounded by those that were near and dear—with “troops of friends,”—good health—an income derived from his literary labours more than sufficient for the modest wants of his household—with a name honoured wherever our language is spoken, and without a single hostile voice being raised against him, he certainly presented a beautiful picture of a serene and happy old age. The traditionary recollection of his early life is burdened with no stain of any sort, and his whole career was marked by undeviating integrity and purity, insomuch that no scandalous whisper was ever circulated against him. Along with great simplicity of manners, he was characterized by perfect uprightness, and was invariably kind and gracious to all. It was impossible to detect from his conversation that he grounded the slightest title to consideration upon his literary fame.

  The stone that marks his grave is a plain slab of white marble on which are engraved his name and date alone, without any memorial inscription. The path that leads to the entrance gate of the plot is so worn by the feet of visitors that a stranger hardly needs to ask his way to the place. I confess I heard not without a secret pleasure that the relic-hunters so chip and hammer the stone that marks Irving’s grave as to make its frequent renewal necessary. It did not seem to me a grievous wrong, nor in any true sense a profanation of the grave, but rather a testimony to the lovableness of Irving’s character, and an evidence of the wide extent of his fame, that, from filling the circle of the educated and refined among his countrymen, has now come to include that lower stratum of our common humanity which has only instinctive and, so to speak, mechanical ways of expressing its feelings. Who is so insensible to the good opinion of his kind as not to think such a trodden path as this that leads to Irving’s grave better than any written line of praise, and the very destruction of his monument, by this reprehensible clipping and chipping, a more enduring testimony to his work than any monument of brass!

  When he died an old man, a lock to which he himself had always kept the key was found to guard a braid of hair and a beautiful miniature, with a slip of paper marked in his own handwriting, “Matilda Hoffman.” No less faithfully had he kept her Bible and Prayer-Book throughout his life. Of the miniature his publisher George P. Putman, told the story of having once had it retouched and remounted for its possessor, forty years after Miss Hoffman’s death. “When I returned it to him in a suitable velvet case,” said Mr. Putman, “he took it to a quiet corner and looked intently on the face for some minutes, apparently unobserved, his tears falling freely on the glass as he gazed.” Who shall say that the cherishing of such a memory as this did not find its direct expression in the gentle chivalry with which he bore himself, as a writer and as a man, towards all women.

  One fact about him will perhaps bear emphasis; that with all his gentlenesses he was strong and firm and full of spirit. He was susceptible to advice, yet nobody ever forced him to do a thing that was against his mind or conscience. That he was amiable, congenial, companionable—we do not forget these traits of his; we should remember, too, that he never faced an emergency to which he did not prove himself equal. His personal hold upon his contemporaries was plainly due to the fact that their confidence in him as a man was as perfect as their delight in him as an artist. What he did was, after all, only a little part of what he was.

Salmagundi, 1807

  We have no hesitation in saying at the outset, that we consider the good papers of “Salmagundi,” and the greater part of the Knickerbocker, superior to the “Sketch-Book.”… It [“Salmagundi”] was exceedingly pleasant morning, or after-dinner reading, never taking up too much of a gentleman’s time from his business and pleasures, nor so exalted and spiritualized as to seem mystical to his far-seeing vision…. Though its wit is sometimes forced, and its serious style sometimes false, upon looking it over we have found it full of entertainment, with an infinite variety of characters and circumstances, and with that amiable, good-natured wit and pathos, which shows that the heart has not grown hard while making merry of the world.

  We all remember the success of “Salmagundi,” to which he was a large and distinguished contributor; with what rapidity and to what extent it circulated through America; how familiar it made us with the local pleasantry and the personal humours of New York, and what an abiding influence it has had in that city, by forming a sort of school of wit of a character somewhat marked and peculiar and superior to every thing our country has witnessed, except, perhaps that of the wits of the Anarchiad in Connecticut.

  The production of Paulding, Irving, Verplanck, and perhaps of others, in partnership:—the papers of Paulding are more sarcastic, ill-natured, acrimonious,—bitter,—than those of Irving: but quite as able. Those by Verplanck we do not know; we have only heard of him as one of the writers.

  The better pieces are written in Mr. Irving’s best manner. Take it altogether, it was certainly a production of extraordinary merit, and was instantaneously and universally recognised as such by the public. It wants of course the graver merits of the modern British collections of Essays; but for spirit, effect, and actual literary value, we doubt whether any publication of the class since “The Spectator,” upon which it is directly modelled, can fairly be put in competition with it.

  The little paper called “Salmagundi,” written by Washington and William Irving and James Kirke Paulding, was simply Addison’s great ghost, transferred to New York and transformed into a censor of Knickerbocker society. Its Launcelot Langstaff, William Wizard, and Anthony Evergreen, its essays on men and things of the day, and its occasional sharp thrusts of wit, made their little shivery sensations in provincial New York, and were duly and promptly forgotten.

A History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker, 1809

  I beg you to accept my best thanks for the uncommon degree of entertainment which I have received from the most excellent jocose of New York. I am sensible, that, as a stranger to American parties and politics, I must lose much of the concealed satire of the piece; but I must own, that, looking at the simple and obvious meaning only, I have never read anything so closely resembling the style of Dean Swift as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker. I have been employed these few evenings in reading them aloud to Mrs. S., and two ladies who are our guests; and our sides have been absolutely sore with laughing. I think, too, there are passages which indicate that the author possesses powers of a different kind, and has some touches which remind me much of Sterne.

  It is painful to see a mind as admirable for exquisite perception of the beautiful, as it is for its quick sense of the ridiculous, wasting the richness of its fancy on an ungrateful theme, and its exuberant humor in a coarse caricature.

  It has the same faults and same good qualities in its style, its wit and humour, and its characters are evidently by the same hand, as the leading ones in “Salmagundi,” though not copies from them. They are perfectly fresh and original, and suited to their situations. Too much of the first part of the first volume is laborious and uphill; and there are places, here and there, in the last part, to which there is the same objection. Our feelings seldom flag in the second.

  A work to be compared with anything of the kind in our language; a book of unwearying pleasantry, which, instead of flashing out, as English and American humour is wont, from time to time, with long and dull intervals, is kept up with a true French vivacity from beginning to end; a book which, if it have a fault, has only that of being too pleasant, too sustained a tissue of merriment and ridicule.

  Conceived, matured, and brought forth, in a bold, original temper—unaided—and alone—by Irving: more entirely the natural thought, language, humour, and feeling of the man himself—without imitation or plagiarism—far more—than either of his late works: It was written, too, in the fervour and flush of his popularity, at home—after he had got a name, such as no other man had, among his countrymen; after “Salmagundi” had been read, with pleasure, all over North America: In it, however, there is a world of rich allusion—a vein of sober caricature—the merit of which is little understood here…. By nine readers out of ten, perhaps, “Knickerbocker” is read, as a piece of generous drollery—nothing more. Be it so. It will wear the better. The design of Irving himself is not always clear: nor was he always undeviating, in his course. Truth or fable, fact or falsehood—it was all the same to him, if a bit of material came in his way. In a word, we look upon this volume of “Knickerbocker,” though it is tiresome, though there are some wretched failures in it; a little overdoing of the humorous—and a little confusion of purpose, throughout—as a work, honourable to English literature—manly—bold—and so altogether original, without being extravagant, as to stand alone, among the labours of men.

  At the first appearance of my work, its aim and drift were misapprehended by some of the descendants of the Dutch worthies; and I understand that now and then one may still be found to regard it with a captious eye. The far greater part, however, I have reason to flatter myself, receive my good-humoured picturings in the same temper in which they were executed; and when I find, after a lapse of forty years, the haphazard production of my youth still cherished among them,—when I find its very name become a “household word” and used to give the home stamp to everything recommended for popular acceptation, such as Knickerbocker societies, Knickerbocker insurance companies, Knickerbocker steamboats, Knickerbocker omnibuses, Knickerbocker bread, and Knickerbocker ice,—and when I find New Yorkers of Dutch descent priding themselves upon being “genuine Knickerbockers,”—I please myself with the persuasion that I have struck the right cord; that my dealings with the good old Dutch times, and the customs and usages derived from them, are in harmony with the feelings and humors of my townsmen; that I have opened a vein of pleasant associations and quaint characteristics peculiar to my native place, and which its inhabitants will not willingly suffer to pass away; and that, though other histories of New York may appear of higher claims to learned acceptation, and may take their dignified and appropriate rank in the family library, Knickerbocker’s history will still be received with good-humored indulgence, and be thumbed and chuckled over by the family fireside.

  The most remarkable instance of obtuseness to light letters that I ever met with occurred in another region. Goeller, a German editor of Thucydides, in annotating a passage of the Greek historian, describing the violence of the Athenian factions, gives two modern illustrations: one of the Guelf and Ghibelline parties in Italy; the other—he cites Washington Irving and his book very gravely in Latin—the factions of long pipes and short pipes in New York, under the administration of Peter Stuyvesant. Imagine this erudite and ponderous German poring over Knickerbocker as seriously as over Guicciardini’s “History of the Italian Republics.”

  The happy idea of a humorous description of his native town, under the old Dutch governors, was no sooner conceived than executed with inimitable wit and originality.

  In the class of compositions to which it belongs, I know of nothing happier than this work in our language. It has probably been read as widely, and with as keen a relish, as anything from Mr. Irving’s pen.

  Of all mock-heroic works, “Knickerbocker’s History of New York” is the gayest, the airiest, and the least tiresome.

  The work abounds in humor and drollery from beginning to end, and in this respect is excelled by few if any works of a similar character and aim that were ever published.

  After some preliminary essays in humorous literature his genius arrived at the age of indiscretion, and he produced at the age of twenty-six the most deliciously audacious work of humor in our literature, namely, “The History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker.”… It may be said of Irving that he not only caricatured, but had the courage of his caricatures. The persons whom he covered with ridicule were the ancestors of the leading families of New York, and these families prided themselves on their descent. After the publication of such a book he could hardly enter the “best society” of New York, to which he naturally belonged, without running the risk of being insulted, especially by the elderly women of fashion; but he conquered their prejudices by the same grace and geniality of manner by the same unmistakable tokens that he was an inborn gentleman, through which he afterward won his way into the first society of England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

  It tickled the very midriff of the country, from Maine to Georgia, and years afterward the echoes of the thing were still running up and down England and France. It was too funny, some of the good dames of Albany thought; and they were a long time in forgiving the author.

  A sober and just eulogy of the early settlers of New York would never have conferred upon them the immortality which they enjoy in the “Knickerbocker,” nor embalmed them in such affectionate remembrance as we all hold them in. People are not proud to claim kinship with ancestors who are merely ridiculous, nor would it now be considered an honor to descend from Irving’s heroes, if his genius had not thrown about his amusing portraiture of them an atmosphere of fond regard—if we did not see in them certain qualities of human nature that touch our hearts. The humour that depicted them was poetic as well as playful, and they exist for us in that Indian-summer haze of content and comfortable innocence which fortunately hides the faults of all the dear departed out of this life.

  We need not speak of him at great length, for his strictly historical works were few, and his fame was mainly achieved in other walks of literature. Nor did he have a great influence upon the development of historical writing among us, unless in the way of general influence upon American style. In fact, it is quite possible that no one of his mature and sober pieces of writing had as much real effect on the progress of American historiography as the admirable humorous composition with which he began, as far back as 1809,—the “History of New York” by Diedrich Knickerbocker. Aside from its striking success as a literary production, the book had a great effect in awakening interest in the early or Dutch period of New York history. Descendants rushed with sober indignation to the defense of ancestors at whom the genial humorist poked his fun, and very likely the great amount of work which the state government in the next generation did for the historical illustration of the Dutch period, through the researches of Mr. Brodhead in foreign archives, had this unhistorical little book for one of its principal causes. But, on the other hand, he made it permanently difficult for the American public to take a serious view of those early Dutch days. Oloffe the Dreamer and Walter the Doubter, Abraham with the ten breeches and Stuyvesant with the wooden leg, have become too thoroughly domesticated among us to admit of that.

The Sketch-Book, 1819

  Everywhere in it I find the marks of a mind of the utmost elegance and refinement, a thing as you know that I was not exactly prepared to look for in an American…. Each of the essays is entitled to its appropriate praise, and the whole is such as I scarcely know an Englishman that could have written it. The author powerfully conciliates to himself our kindness and affection. But the Essay on Rural Life in England is incomparably the best. It is, I believe, all true; and one wonders, while reading, that nobody ever said this before. There is wonderful sweetness in it.

  We believe that the public law of literature has entirely exempted periodical publications from the jurisdiction of the ordinary critical tribunals; and we therefore notice the first number of this work without any intention of formal criticism, but simply for the purpose of announcing its appearance, and of congratulating the American public that one of their choicest favorites has, after a long interval, again resumed his pen. It will be needless to inform any that have read the book, that it is from the pen of Mr. Irving. His rich, and sometimes extravagant humor, his gay and graceful fancy, his peculiar choice and felicity of original expression, as well as the pure and fine moral feeling which imperceptibly pervades every thought and image, without being anywhere ostentatious or dogmatic, betray the author in every page; even without the aid of those minor peculiarities of style, taste, and local allusions, which at once identify the travelled Geoffrey Crayon with the venerable Knickerbocker.

  But though it is primarily for its style and composition that we are induced to notice this book, it would be quite unjust to the author not to add, that he deserves very high commendation for its more substantial qualities; and that we have seldom seen a work that gave us a more pleasing impression of the writer’s character, or a more favorite one of his judgment and taste…. It seemed fair and courteous not to stint a stranger on his first introduction to our pages: but what we have quoted, we are persuaded, will justify all that we have said in its favour…. We have found the book in the hands of most of those to whom we have the thought of mentioning it.

  Few recent publications have been so well received in England as “The Sketch-Book.” Several of the Waverley novels have passed through fewer editions than this agreeable work, and the journals of the most consequence have paid the highest compliments to its merit. We are nevertheless free to confess that we think “The Sketch-Book” as a whole, inferior to the author’s earlier writings.

  Of the merit of his “Knickerbocker” and New York stories, we cannot pretend to judge. But in his “Sketch-Book” and “Bracebridge Hall” he gives us very good American copies of our British Essayists and Novelists, which may be very well on the other side of the water, or as proofs of the capabilities of the national genius, but which might be dispensed with here, where we have to boast of the originals. Not only Mr. Irving’s language is with great taste and felicity modelled on that of Addison, Goldsmith, Sterne, or Mackenzie; but the thoughts and sentiments are taken at the rebound, and as they are brought forward at the present period, want both freshness and probability. Mr. Irving’s writings are literary anachronisms. He comes to England for the first [the second] time; and, being on the spot, fancies himself in the midst of those characters and manners which he had read in the Spectator and other approved authors, and which were the only idea he had hitherto formed of the parent-country. Instead of looking round to see what we are, he sets to work to describe us as we were—at second-hand.

  The “Sketch-Book” is a timid, beautiful work; with some childish pathos in it; some rich, pure, bold poetry: a little squeamish, pulling, lady-like sentimentality: some courageous writing, some wit, and a world of humour, so happy, so natural, so altogether unlike that of any other man, dead or alive, that we would rather have been the writer of it, fifty times over, than of every thing else that he has ever written.

  Every reader has his first book: I mean to say, one book, among all others, which, in early youth, first fascinates his imagination, and at once excites and satisfies the desires of his mind. To me, this first book was the “Sketch-Book” of Washington Irving. I was a school-boy when it was published, and read each succeeding number with ever-increasing wonder and delight,—spellbound by its pleasant humor, its melancholy tenderness, its atmosphere of revery; nay, even by its gray-brown covers, the shaded letters of the titles, and the fair, clear type,—which seemed an outward symbol of the style. How many delightful books the same author has given us, written before and since,—volumes of history and of fiction, most of which illustrate his native land, and some of which illuminate it, and make the Hudson, I will not say as classic, but as romantic as the Rhine! Yet still the charm of the “Sketch-Book” remains unbroken; the old fascination still lingers about it; and whenever I open its pages, I open also that mysterious door which leads back into the haunted chambers of youth.

  The style of the sketches is everywhere his own—pure, chaste, easy, flowing; often elegant, and always appropriate to the theme in hand; rich, yet not extravagant with varied and pertinent imagery—pleasant flowers of speech intermingling themselves with his graceful and facile style, presenting themselves not in gorgeous superabundance as in some artificial garden of beauty, but constantly occurring in a sort of natural order and variety, like the floral adornments that greet us as we glance along some cultivated and beautiful landscape.

  Pathos is the great touchstone of humor, and Irving’s pathos is always a lamentable failure. Is it not very significant, that he should have made so little of the story of Rip Van Winkle? In his sketch which has won so wide a fame and given a lasting association to the Kaatskills, there is not a suspicion of the immense pathos which the skill of an industrious playwright and the genius of that rare actor, Mr. Jefferson, have since developed from the tale. The Dame Van Winkle that we know now is the creation of Mr. Boucicault; to him it is we owe that vigorous character,—a scold, a tyrant to her husband, but nevertheless full of relentful womanliness, and by the justice of her cause exciting our sympathy almost as much as Rip himself does…. Certainly we should, as the case stands, have missed the whole immortal figment, had not Irving given it to us in germ; the fact that our playwright and our master comedian have made it so much greater and more beautiful does not annul that primary service; but, looking at the matter historically, we must admit that Irving’s share in the credit is that of the first projector of a scientific improvement, and the latter sort of person always has to forego a great part of his fame in favor of the one who consummates the discovery. I am willing to believe that there was a peculiar advantage in Irving’s treatment; namely, that he secured for his story a quicker and more general acceptance than might have been granted to something more profound; but this does not alter the critical judgment that we have to pass upon it. If Irving had grasped the tragic sphere at all, he would have shone more splendidly in the comic. But the literary part of him, at least, never passed into the shade: it somehow contrived to be always on that side of the earth which was towards the sun.

  His stories of “Rip Van Winkle” and the “Sleepy Hollow” are among the finest pieces of original fictitious writing that this century has produced.

  One of those strokes of genius [“Rip Van Winkle”] that recreate the world and clothe it with unfading hues of romance; the theme was an old-world echo, transformed by genius into a primal story that will endure as long as the Hudson flows through its mountains to the sea. A great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas.

  Every reader of Washington Irving knows the story of Rip Van Winkle’s adventure of the Kaatskill Mountains,—that delightful, romantic idyl, in which character, humor, and fancy are so delicately blended. Under the spell of Jefferson’s acting we are transported into the past, and made to see, as with bodily eyes, the old-fashioned Dutch civilization as it crept up the borders of the Hudson: the quaint and quiet villages; the stout Hollanders, with their pipes and schnapps; the loves and troubles of an elder generation.

  The best example of his powers is the “Sketch-Book,” mild, cheerful, fanciful, thoughtful, humourous. “The Wife,” “The Pride of the Village,” and “The Broken Heart,” are gems of sentiment and description. “Rip Van Winkle,” and “Sleepy Hollow” are among the finest pieces of fiction to be found in any literature. As we read, we are all drawn to beauty, gentleness, sunshine, elevating seriousness, or chastening sorrow. It is fundamentally the fascination of the man. We are captivated by the poetic graces of his fancy and the liquid music of his style; but behind all, under all, pervading all, is the deeper charm of the genial and sensitive soul in sympathy with the human heart.

  It is in the “Sketch-Book” that Irving first appeals to us as a torch-bearer in the great procession of English prose-writers. In “Knickerbocker” he had been dancing or skipping in the lightness of his heart to a delicious measure of his own; in “Salmagundi” he had waked up to a sense of literary responsibility, without quite knowing in what direction his new-found sense of style would lead him. In the “Sketch-Book” he is a finished and classic writer, bowing to the great tradition of English prose, and knowing precisely what it is that he would do, and how to do it…. If the mark of any modern writer is to be found on the early style of Washington Irving, it appears to me to be rather that of Cobbett than of any other…. It has taken its place in literature, and there is hardly a page in it which does not appeal to us with the salutary lesson that “there was a noble way, in former times, of saying things simply, and yet saying them proudly.”

  The best that ever came from his pen, one of the ten or twelve choicest books produced by an American: “The Sketch-Book.”

  In ten minutes I had gone to the house and returned to the barn with “The Sketch-Book.” I had not read the story since I was a boy. I was disappointed in it; not as a story, of course, but the tale was purely a narrative. The theme was interesting, but not dramatic. The silver Hudson stretches out before you as you read; the quaint red roofs and queer gables of the old Dutch cottages stand out against the mist upon the mountains; but all this is descriptive. The character of Rip does not speak ten lines. What could be done dramatically with so simple a sketch? How could it be turned into an effective play? Three or four bad dramatisations of the story had already been acted, but without marked success. Yates, of London, had given one in which the hero dies; one had been acted by my father, one by Hackett, and another by Burke. Some of these versions I had remembered when I was a boy, and I should say that Burke’s play and the performance were the best; but nothing that I remembered gave me the slightest encouragement that I could get a good play out of any of the existing materials…. I got together three old printed versions of the drama and the story itself. The plays were all in two acts. I thought it would be an improvement in the drama to arrange it in three, making the scene with the spectre crew an act by itself. This would separate the poetical from the domestic side of the story. But by far the most important alteration was in the interview with the spirits. In the old versions, they spoke and sang. I remember that the effects of this ghastly dialogue was dreadfully human, so I arranged that no voice but Rip’s should be heard. This was entirely my own invention…. In the seclusion of the barn, I studied and rehearsed the part; and by the end of the summer, I was prepared to transplant it from the rustic realms of an old farm-house to a cosmopolitan audience, in the city of Washington, where I opened at Carusi’s Hall, under the management of John T. Raymond…. To be brief, the play was acted with a result that was, to me, both satisfactory and disappointing. I was quite sure that the character was what I had been seeking, and I was equally satisfied that the play was not. The action had neither the body nor the strength to carry the hero; the spiritual quality was there, but the human interest was wanting. This defect was not remedied until five years later, when I met Dion Boucicault, in London. Then, he agreed to rewrite the drama for a consideration agreed upon between us. He never seemed to think much of his labour in this play; but I did, and do still, with good reason. His version was still cast in three acts. Later, I divided the first act into two, making the end of the dance the end of an act, rather than the end of a scene, and enlarged and strengthened it in various ways suggested by my experience. It will thus be seen that the play is by no means the work of one mind, but both as to its narrative and dramatic form, has been often moulded, and by many hands.

Bracebridge Hall, 1822

  We have no hesitation in pronouncing “Bracebridge” quite equal to any thing which the present age of English literature has produced in this department. In saying this, we class it in the branch of essay-writing…. Besides the episodical tales, he has given us admirable sketches of life and manners, highly curious in themselves, and rendered almost important by the good-natured mock gravity, the ironical reverence, and lively wit, with which they are described. We can scarce express the delight with which we turn to the definite images such work excites, from the vagueness and generality of ordinary story-writing, where personages without prototypes in any society on earth speak a language learned out of books, without a trait of nature, life, or truth.

  We have received so much pleasure from this book, that we think ourselves bound in gratitude, as well as justice, to make a public acknowledgment of it,—and seek to repay, by a little kind notice, the great obligations we shall ever feel to the author…. The great charm and peculiarity of this work consists now, as on former occasions, in the singular sweetness of the composition, and the mildness of the sentiments,—sicklied over perhaps a little, now and then, with that cloying heaviness into which unvaried sweetness is too apt to subside. The rhythm and melody of the sentences are certainly excessive: As it not only gives an air of mannerism, from its uniformity, but raises too strong an impression of the labour that must have been bestowed, and the importance which must have been attached to that which is, after all, but a secondary attribute to good writing. It is very ill-natured in us, however, to object to what has given us so much pleasure; for we happen to be very intense and sensitive admirers of those soft harmonies of studied speech in which this author is so apt to indulge himself; and have caught ourselves, oftener than we shall confess, neglecting his excellent matter, to lap ourselves in the liquid music of his periods—and letting ourselves float passively down the mellow falls and windings of his soft-flowing sentences, with a delight not inferior to that which we derive from fine versification.

  “Stout Gentleman”—very good; and a pretty fair account of a real occurrence; “Student of Salamanca”: beneath contempt: Irving has no idea of genuine romance; or love—or anything else, we believe, that ever seriously troubles the blood of men:—“Rookery”—struck off in a few hours; contrary to what has been said: Irving does not labour as people suppose—he is too indolent—given, too much, we know, to revery; “Dolph Heyliger;” “The Haunted House;” “Storm Ship”—all in the fashion of his early time: perhaps—we are greatly inclined so to believe—perhaps the remains of what was meant for “Salmagundi,” or “Knickerbocker”:—the rest of the two volumes quite unworthy of Irving’s reputation.

  In by-gone times, when Irving left that Hall, he left sitting in an old oak chair, in a small parlor of the Boar’s Head, a little man with a red nose and an oil-skin hat. When I came away he was sitting there still!—not a man like him, but the same man—with the nose of immortal redness and the hat of an undying blaze!

  As a genial chronicle of upper-class English life and character, nothing better could be asked for. Irving’s mannerism had now become inveterate, but it was a mannerism in which well-balanced sentences, genuine humour, faithful descriptions, and hearty morality always had a place. His refinement of style was sometimes excessive, and his readers never completely lose sight of the rhetorician manipulating the printed words.

A History of Christopher Columbus, 1828

  This is, on the whole, an excellent book; and we venture to anticipate that it will be an enduring one. Neither do we hazard this prediction lightly, or without a full consciousness of all that it implies…. For we mean, not merely that the book will be familiarly known and referred to some twenty or thirty years hence, and will pass into solid binding into every considerable collection; but that it will supersede all former works on the same subject, and never be itself superseded.

  This is one of those works, which are at the same time the delight of readers and the despair of critics. It is as nearly perfect in its kind, as any work well can be; and there is therefore little or nothing left for the reviewer, but to write at the bottom of every page, as Voltaire said he should he obliged to do if he published a commentary on Racine, Pulchre! bene! optime!

  I esteem it the first of American classics, and can never be affected enough to join in the clamour against his crystal flow of purest English.

  Having access to original and fresh documents relating to the life of Christopher Columbus, he was encouraged and enabled to undertake and execute a great historical work, and on a subject the most rich in details, and the most magnificent in its results, of any that ever employed the pen of the historian. He brought to the task all his great and diversified powers. His materials were selected with judgment, studied with diligence, arranged with skill, exhibited with fidelity, polished with taste and recommended by finished specimens of a graceful, flowing, and dignified composition. The discovery of America was essentially a domestic theme. Though the enterprise was begun in Europe, it was consummated on this side of the Atlantic. The settlement of this New World seems to be a theme peculiarly appropriate to the pen of an American writer, who would naturally feel and appreciate, most deeply and justly, the inestimable value of the discovery, and the mighty consequences of the establishment of great nations on this continent, with their language and institutions, their freedom and religion, their arts and sciences spreading themselves over its surface. The choice was most propitious, and the “History of the Life and Voyages of Columbus” will probably become the standard work on that subject through all succeeding ages. It equals the most distinguished historical compositions, not only in the dignity of the subject, but in the judgment, skill, spirit, and felicity of its execution.

  Since I have been here, I have contrived (by reading a half-hour in the night and a half-hour in the morning) to peruse the whole of Irving’s “Life of Columbus,” in three volumes. It is quite an interesting work, though I think too much spread out by repetition of the same thoughts and descriptions. It is, in all respects, however, reputable to the literature of our country.

  It is open to the charge of too much rhetorical color here and there, and it is at times too diffuse; but its substantial accuracy is not questioned, and the glow of the narrative springs legitimately from the romance of the theme. Irving understood, what our later historians have fully appreciated, the advantage of vivid individual portraiture in historical narrative. His conception of the character and mission of Columbus is largely outlined, but firmly and most carefully executed, and is one of the noblest in literature.

  The short time in which it was prepared, not more at any rate than two years, shows that it cannot have been a work of original research carried out absolutely after the modern manner. It was in fact based on the documentary publications of Don Martin Fernandez de Navarrete, though with much use of the libraries of Obadiah Rich, then our consul at Madrid, of Navarrete himself, of the Duke of Veragua, and of the Council of the Indies, and of other libraries at Madrid and Seville. The result was an excellent piece of historical work, as well as a literary production which it would be superfluous to praise.

The Conquest of Granada, 1829

  Mr. Irving has seldom selected a subject better suited to his peculiar powers than the conquest of Granada. Indeed, it would hardly have been possible for one of his warm sensibilities to linger so long among the remains of Moorish magnificence with which Spain is covered, without being interested in the fortunes of a people whose memory has almost passed into oblivion, but who once preserved the “sacred flame” when it had become extinct in every corner of Christendom, and whose influence is still visible on the intellectual culture of modern Europe.

  One of the most important and one of the most charming of Irving’s historical works.

  It was long after my acquaintance with his work that I came to a due sense of Irving as an artist, and perhaps I have come to feel a full sense of it only now, when I perceive that he worked willingly only when he worked inventively. At last I can do justice to the exquisite conception of his “Conquest of Granada,” a study of history which, in unique measure, conveys not only the pathos, but the humor of one of the most splendid and impressive situations in the experience of the race. Very possibly something of the severer truth might have been sacrificed to the effect of the pleasing and touching tale, but I do not understand that this was really done.

The Alhambra, 1832

  On the whole, we consider the work before us as equal in literary value to any of the others of the same class, with the exception of “The Sketch-Book;” and we should not be surprised if it were read as extensively as even that very popular production. We hope to have it in our power, at no remote period, to announce a continuation of the series, which we are satisfied will bear, in the booksellers’ phrase, several more volumes.

  Go to the Moorish fountains, sparkling full in the moonlight—go among the water-carriers and the village gossips, living still as in days of old—and who has travelled among them before you, and peopled the Alhambra and made eloquent its shadows? Who wakes there a voice from every hill and in every cavern, and bids legends, which for centuries had slept a dreamless sleep, or watched unwinkingly, start up and pass before you in all their life and glory?

  The book abounds in delightful legends, and yet these are all so touched with the author’s airy humor that our credulity is never overtaxed; we imbibe all the romantic interest of the place without for a moment losing our hold upon reality. The enchantments of this Moorish paradise become part of our mental possessions without the least shock to our common sense.

  To speak of Granada is to speak of the Alhambra, but one falters at describing the vastness and the delicacy of that last effort of the Spanish Moor; one falters at treading in Irving’s footsteps even in the humblest way, for he made the place and all its memories so thoroughly his own. The hotel beneath the walls bears his name; his “Tales” are sold by importunate venders; the guide shows the rooms in which he slept with an air of mysterious reverence, and wherever one turns one feels the presence of the American writer who, more than any man, has preserved the memory of the Moor.

Life of Oliver Goldsmith, 1844

  Everything combines to make this one of the most fascinating pieces of biography in the English language. Enough is known of the personal history and character of Goldsmith, to tempt us to recur to the subject with fresh interest; but he has not been so bandied about by life-writers and reviewers as to satiate curiosity. The simplicity, and even the weaknesses of his nature, call forth feelings of affection; and the charm of his writings, so unaffected, so naïve, so transparent in their crystal purity of expression, attracts us to more intimate acquaintance with the author. Mr. Irving was in possession of abundant materials to do justice to the subject. He had only to insert his exquisite magnetic needle into the mass, to give a choice and shapely form to all that was valuable in the labors of previous biographers. He has done this in a manner which leaves nothing to be desired.

  For my part, I know of nothing like it. I have read no biographical memoir which carries forward the reader so delightfully and with so little tediousness of recital or reflection. I never take it up without being tempted to wish that Irving had written more works of the kind; but this could hardly be; for where could he have found another Goldsmith?

  It is one of the best biographies in the whole range of English literature, just, full, brilliant. It forms a counterpart to Boswell’s “Johnson;” no one whose idea of Goldsmith has been formed by Boswell can afford to neglect Irving’s presentation of the Irish poet and novelist. In spirit and style this small book is worthy to stand on the shelf with its author’s choicest works.

Life of Washington, 1855–59

  Candor, good judgment that knows no bias, the felicity of selections, these are yours in common with the best historians. But, in addition, you have the peculiarity of writing from the heart, enchaining sympathy as well as commanding confidence; the happy magic that makes scenes, events, and personal anecdotes present themselves to you at your bidding, and fall into their natural places and take color and warmth from your own nature. The style, too, is masterly, clear, easy, and graceful; picturesque without mannerism, and ornamented without losing simplicity. Among men of letters, who do well, you must above all take the name of Felix, which so few of the great Roman generals could claim. You do everything rightly, as if by grace; and I am in no fear of offending your modesty, for I think you were elected and foreordained to excel your contemporaries.

  You have done with Washington just as I thought you would, and, instead of a cold, marble statue of demigod, you have made him a being of flesh and blood, like ourselves—one with whom we can have sympathy. The general sentiment of the country has been too decidedly expressed for you to doubt for a moment that this is the portrait of him which is to hold a permanent place in the national gallery.

  I referred to his last and chief work, the “Life of Washington” and asked if he felt on finishing it, any such sensation as Gibbon enjoyed over the last sheet of the “Decline and Fall.” He said that the work had engrossed his mind to such a degree that before he was aware, he had written himself into feeble health; that in the midst of his labor he feared he would break down before the end; that when at last the final pages were written, he gave the manuscript to his nephew to conduct it through the press, and threw himself back on his red-cushioned lounge with an indescribable feeling of relief. He explained that the chief fatigue of mind had resulted from care required in the construction and arrangement of materials, and not in the literary composition of the successive chapters.

  I confess, my admiration of this work becomes the greater the more I examine it. In the other writings of Irving are beauties which strike the reader at once. In this I recognize qualities which lie deeper, and which I was not sure of finding—a rare equity of judgment; a large grasp of the subject; a profound philosophy, independent of philosophical forms, and even instinctively rejecting them; the power of reducing an immense crowd of loose materials to clear and orderly arrangement; and forming them into one grand whole, as a skilful commander, from a rabble of raw recruits, forms a disciplined army, animated and moved by a single will.

  Precisely what was wanted Mr. Irving has given: such charming, faithful, truthful pictures of the great hero of our Revolution as should carry knowledge of him, of the battles he fought, of his large, self-denying, unswerving patriotism, of the purity of his life, into every household. No man could have done this work better; nor do we think that any other will ever do it as well.

  The work was regarded by the author as the most important of his productions, and as, in some sense, the crown of his literary career. It partakes of his well-known characteristics as a writer; and will probably acquire a permanent place in our literature as the standard life of Washington. For the purposes of an historical student, the last two volumes will probably be found the most important. The phases of political life which Irving saw, however, were not always the phases which the student will now desire to see; and, therefore, too high expectations must not be raised. Recourse must constantly be had to other sources of information.

  Although not a biography of the very highest rank, it is in every way worthy of its position as the standard life of a remarkable man and the crowning work of a brilliant literary career.

  There are passages in it that for incisiveness of characterization and for finish of form are the equal of anything that he produced in the days when his intellectual vigor was unimpaired; but the reader cannot escape the feeling that the author’s grasp of the materials relating to the subject was feeble, and that his heart was not in his work.

General

  I know Washington Irving well, and when he was here two or three years ago, he promised to me to contribute regularly. The last time I saw him in London he repeated his promises; but he said, when he looked at our “audaciously original Magazine,” he did not think he could give anything that could appear to advantage in it. These, of course, were mere phrases; but I do think he has perhaps been rather overestimated. He is a man of an amiably elegant mind, and what he does do is well conceived and finely polished, but I rather think he is not a person of great originality or strength.

  Through all the writings of our distinguished countryman, even in his earlier and sprightlier productions, we meet with occasional sentiments of high and grave import, the genuine growth of ardent feeling which go directly to the heart. Nothing can be more soothing and gratifying to meditative minds than such pensive, chaste, and mellowed reflections, arising from views of autumnal scenery, the ruins of ancient art, and the monuments of departed greatness.

  Mr. Irving has travelled much, has seen many vicissitudes, and has been so thoroughly satiated with fame as to grow slovenly in the performance of his literary tasks. This slovenliness has affected his handwriting…. Irving’s style is inimitable in its grace and delicacy, yet few of our practised writers are guilty of more frequent inadvertences of language. In what may be termed his mere English, he is surpassed by fifty whom we could name.

  I don’t go up-stairs to bed two nights out of the seven—as a very creditable witness near at hand can testify—I say I do not go to bed two nights out of the seven without taking Washington Irving under my arm; and, when I don’t take him, I take his own brother, Oliver Goldsmith.

  Washington Irving, one of the finest of modern humorous writers.

  Few, very few, can show a long succession of volumes, so pure, so graceful, and so varied as Mr. Irving. To my poor cottage, rich only in printed paper, people often come to borrow books for themselves or their children. Sometimes they make their own selection; sometimes, much against my will, they leave the choice to me; and in either case I know no works that are oftener lent than those that bear the pseudonym of Geoffrey Crayon.

  Grace is an electric light evolved by the action of successive parts of the subject on the mind. It is the source of that fresh and delightful fragrance which always exhales from Irving’s writings…. The pleasantness which he diffuses over subjects the most barren … arises chiefly from the instinctive quietness with which he seizes everything…. The art of this system consists in the gentleness and fineness of the rays…. Looking only at the style and manner of his works, we find a grace as inherent as that of childhood; a gentle gayety as variable yet as unfailing, as unfatiguing as the breezes of June; an indestructible presence of good taste, simplicity, and ease…. What renders the merit more singular in Irving is that, successful and inimitable as the charm is, it is obviously not spontaneous or unconscious.

  His English style, so pure, so delicate, so clear, so rhythmical,—the natural expression of a pure, beautiful, and harmonious soul, exquisitely attuned to all that is lovely, graceful, and noble in nature and life,—embodying a character painted in immortal colors by the genius of Plato; his imagination, so gentle, and so powerful, that brightened everything it touched, as the genial sunshine kindles the landscape into beauty; his ready and delightful wit and humour, that exhilarated us, not with tumultuous laughter, except, perhaps, in those sallies of the sportive genius of his youth…. But with a serene gladness of spirit; his pathos, so tender, so true, so full of feeling for every form of sorrow, toned with a sweet, lingering sadness from the unforgotten sorrow of his early days,—what a combination of attractive qualities, adorning his personal character, and clothing his literary works with an inexpressible charm!

  The books I have lately been reading are the works of Washington Irving. None of our present writers write such pure English; he reminds me of Addison, but has more genius and a richer invention. Perhaps on the whole he is more like Goldsmith.

  Perhaps, of all American writers, in Washington Irving the polite air of the man of the European world is the most seen; but then, of all American writers, Washington Irving is the one who most sedulously imitated, and most happily caught the spirit of European writers, formed under aristocratic as well as popular influences;—of all American writers he is thus the least American.

  In his “Knickerbocker” and other works, has given us the very choicest brand, all sparkling and stimulating. But Irving is too refined, sweet, and shy for general appreciation. Besides, Irving is not an American humorist. He is more English than American, more cosmopolitan than either.

  Irving might have walked arm-in-arm with Addison, and Addison would have run no risk of being discomposed by a trans-Atlantic twang in his companion’s accent. Irving, if he betrays his origin at all, betrays it somewhat in the same way as Longfellow, by his tender, satisfied repose in the venerable, chiefly the venerable in English society and manners, by his quiet delight in the implicit tradition of English civility, the scarcely-felt yet everywhere influential presence of a beautiful and grave Past, and the company of unseen beneficent associations.

  His humor is distinguished by its constituent of feeling. It is the genial coloring of his humorous conceptions, not their mechanism, that wins our interest. He hardly ever puns; for the pun is a logical fallacy, and Irving does not play with the forms of thought. His humor seldom becomes wit; for wit is the product of analytic insight, and his mind is neither analytic, nor specially gifted with insight. He often makes us smile, but seldom—especially in his later writings—elicits a broad guffaw; for his conceptions are charged with a feeling softened by culture, and tempered by geniality.

  Irving’s literature, walk round it and measure it by whatever critical instrument you will, is a beneficent literature. The author loved good women and little children and a pure life; he had faith in his fellow-men, a kindly sympathy with the lowest, without any subservience to the highest; he retained a belief in the possibility of chivalrous actions, and did not care to envelop them in a cynical suspicion; he was an author still capable of an enthusiasm. His books are wholesome, full of sweetness and charm, of humor without any sting, of amusement without any stain; and their more solid qualities are marred by neither pedantry nor pretension.

  No work of his is wanting in powerful passages; but his prevailing characteristics are versatility and grace. He belonged historically to both worlds, and was equally at home in each; he reflected the quiet philosophy of the “Tatler” and “Spectator,” adding to it the pathos which dims the eye of the reader over “The Wife,” “Widow and Son,” the “Broken Heart,” and “Pride of the Village.” He started the vein of burlesque which has run through his country’s literature, but under the restraints of temperance and culture that have unfortunately been discarded. The evenness of his manner leads the minor critics of an age delighting in outrages and violence, to do scant justice to the range of his always unaffected sympathy, and ever genuine passion.

  He is refreshingly deliberate; never in a hurry. Like Byron’s “gentleman,” he “never perspires.” He takes his time, and tells you his story in his own way. The most delightful of gossips, the most ingratiating of “Roundabouts.” There is a good deal of the “Guardian,” “Tatler,” “Spectator” and old coffee-house wit and wisdom about him. But though sometimes gossipy, he is never flimsy, like so many of our modern magazine writers of “padding.” He knows how to be solid, to choose his words, to look all around his thoughts, to have thoughts that will bear looking at. His wit is never forced; he is seldom on the broad grin. In him, indeed, are germs of an American humor since run to seed in buffoonery; but he is never outrageous—always within delicate bounds. His fun never goes mad, but is in excellent subordination to his narrative or discourse. His wit always plays about his subject like summer lightning. His laugh, or more often his grave smile, rises naturally, and is never affected; he is never strained or flashing, but often full of a deep and pathetic purpose; and his jokes, when they come, seem woven into the very texture of his style, instead of sticking up outside like a cocked hat! We have seldom the rollicking fun of Dickens, but often a touch of his tenderness. It is the satire of Swift, without his sour coarseness. The grace of Sterne, without his sham sentiment. The delicate flavour of Charles Lamb, without, however, the sly but severe bite of Lamb’s satire.

  The poet and romancer give back more than they borrow from the scenes which lend them their inspiration. What was this broad stream that runs by your walls before it was peopled by the creative touch of your story-teller’s imagination? It is no longer Hudson’s river,—it is Irving’s. The trumpet of Anthony Van Corlear still rings over the wide expanse of the Tappan Zee. The rolling balls of the old nine-pin-players are still heard by the voyager, thundering in the far-off Kaatskills. There is not a brook that tumbles into the river which does not babble the name of Irving, not a wave which does not murmur its remembrance. I walk through thronged thoroughfares, and all at once my fancy carries me back to the days and scenes of Irving’s New Amsterdam. The pavement becomes a great turf, a few scattered houses show their gables here and there. One stands apart, more lordly than the rest. What is this sound I hear from the stoop that stretches along its side? It is a strange sound to be heard through all this tumult, but I must be half dreaming. Hark! Abrupt, intermittent, rhythmical, resonant, emphatic; it must be,—it is,—the wooden leg of brave, peppery, pugnacious, irrepressible old Peter Stuyvesant,—Hard Koppig Piet,—the hard-headed, hot-hearted, one-legged but two-fisted Governor of this ancient Manhattan, already a flourishing settlement with burgarmeesters and schepens in place of aldermen and constables. Sagacious old Dutchmen, to fix on this tongue of land,—a tongue that laps up the cream of commerce of a continent.

  Scott is not more identified with Scotland than Irving with the Hudson. He has touched it with imperishable charm and he rules the river as well as the city by the divinest right. On a still June morning the loiterer upon the ferry-boat from Staten Island looks with a smile toward the drowsy shore of Communipaw haply to catch a glimpse of the hardy voyagers launching bravely away for Hellgate and the Boiling Pot and the Hen and Chickens. The traveller hastening by rail to Albany strains his eyes beyond the vanishing gable of Sunnyside and, forgetting the political Brom Bones of to-day, listens for the tramp of the Headless Horseman, and looks wistfully for the flying Ichabod and the comely Katrina. As he winds and darts among the Highlands he hears far away the softened blast of Anthony’s nose, and, while the clouds gather and the river smooths itself to an oily calm, his ear catches the long roll of the distant game among the Catskill Mountains and he knows that Rip Van Winkle is tasting the ancient Hollands of the mysterious players at whom he gazes. The humane genius, the gentle and kindly fancy of Irving, have thrown upon the city and its neighborhood, upon the winding channels of the river, its meadows, and villages, and airy uplands, a soft radiance of romance, that glamor familiar in the lands of older civilization but unknown elsewhere upon this Continent; and it is doubtful which has given the stream and valley of the Hudson their most picturesque renown,—the voyage of the discoverer, or the story of the Revolution, or the genius of Irving.

  In whatever estimation Mr. Irving may be generally held as an historian, his proper rank is among the first of American historical scholars, however much it may be overshadowed by his brilliant reputation as an essayist who held the mirror up to nature, and showed the times its own form and features. Had he been born fifty years later the world might have gained a novelist; but it may be questioned whether, if it had lost the historian, its loss would not have been greater than its gain.

  If the Hudson is to us something more than a mere waterway and convenient natural agency for “moving the crops to tide-water;” if the Catskills are something more than a good place for establishing summer hotels, it is to Irving that the fact is due. If there is a touch of poetry, or romance, or human interest, about the background of New York, a mellow suggestion of myth and superstition, a legendary halo that soothes the sight tortured by the flaring, garish noon of our materialism, it is Irving who put it there.

  Of all authors, Irving was perfectly suited to the taste of the time, insomuch that the epoch included by the publication of his “Sketch-Book” and of his “Life of Margaret Miller Davidson” might well be called by his name; he was its essence. That his influence was not powerful every one admits; but it was certainly pervasive. In one word, he was systematic; and his sentiment was kept from declining into sentimentality by his playfulness and fine sense of humor, while it was preserved from evaporating in mere revery by benevolence and desire for approbation.

  He saw life through the literary atmosphere, and had no theories to ventilate, no reforms to advocate, no specific moral to enforce. His style was individual, lucid and musical. The moral beauty, integrity and generosity of his character shine through his books. The fact of his giving up, in favor of Prescott, the design, cherished for years, of writing the history of the conquest of Mexico—and never allowing Prescott to suspect the extent of his sacrifice is a characteristic trait of a man truly lovable and widely loved. His books do good to all who read them, and are likely to outlast many works of far greater intellectual force and acumen: their union of taste, simplicity and repose gives them a hold upon our inmost and least variable sympathies.

  Irving is in his way a skillful paragrapher. No matter how great the license of his subject, he always gives an impression of unity. He follows the loose order almost exclusively, keeping his statement of details closely within the limits prescribed by his opening sentence. His transitions are faultless, the number of connectives being greater, however, than the placing of words requires. About one-quarter of his sentences are shorter than 15 words, and nearly one-half (41 per cent.) are under 20 words. He adapts the short sentence to the smooth and graceful manner of Addison. He does not, indeed, ever succeed in flashing out a complex thought in a telling and emphatic way; but as a type of the urbane, leisurely, correct manner, he is exemplary.

  No later American writer has surpassed him in charm. Before Irving had discovered the beauty of the Hudson, the river was as lovely as it is to-day, but its legends were little known. He it was who peopled the green nooks of Sleepy Hollow and the rock crags of the Catskills. His genius was not stalwart or rugged, and it did not conquer admiration; it won its way softly, by the aid of sentiment and humor. “Knickerbocker’s History,” and the “Sketch-Book,” and the “Alhambra,” are his titles to fame; not the “Columbus” or the “Washington.” He had the conscience of the historian and he could color his narrative artistically and give it movement; but others could do this as well as he. But to call into being a civilization, to give to a legend the substance of truth, to present a fiction, so that it passes for fact and is accepted by the people and gets into common speech—this is a feat very few authors have ever accomplished. Irving did it, and his greatest work is not any one of his books—it is the Knickerbocker legend.

  Unluckily, something more than extreme amiability, even when combined with the soundest sense, is necessary to the attainment of greatness in literature; and it is a fact that Washington Irving went far to blast the rich promise of his natural parts, and to render his admirable equipment of no avail by his blind and obstinate devotion to an obsolete and exploded convention. He did well to study Addison, Goldsmith, and Sterne with profound attention. He did very ill to imitate them with a fidelity as servile as it is ridiculous. No excellence was too great, no mannerism too trivial for him to mimic. Types of character and tricks of style, modes of thought and turns of phrase, all are appropriated and reproduced with the most painful exactitude. And they suffer sadly in the process. Pleasing and pertinent reflections become chilly and colourless platitudes; while exquisite humour is transformed into a laboured archness…. One crowded hour of Sir Walter Scott’s careless and often slovenly prose is worth an age of Washington Irving’s insipidities; and a single “tow-row” of Mr. Stevenson’s thunder is infinitely more alarming than all the storms in which the clouds “roll in volumes over the mountain tops,” the rain “begins to patter down in broad and scattered drops,” the wind “freshens,” the lightning “leaps from cloud to cloud,” the peals “are echoed from mountain to mountain,” and, in short, all the elements go through their appropriate and stereotyped evolutions with the punctuality, precision, and tameness of clock-work. The bones of the skeleton, to employ a familiar metaphor, are adjusted with the utmost nicety and correctness, but they have lost the potentiality of life. On the other hand, it is to be said, that the close study of such writers as Washington Irving selected for his models could scarce be barren of all good result; that if he never rises to animation he never sinks below a tolerably high standard of elegance; and that he everywhere preserves a spotless purity of idiom.

  To Washington Irving belongs the title of the Founder of American Literature.

  When a writer has won the title of the Father of American Literature—a name conventionally given to Washington Irving—it becomes plain that he is very important as a figure in our native development in letters…. Viewed in relation to current production in history or to what had already been done, he is seen to have possessed the instinct and habit of the true historian, the modern workman. I mean that he went to the sources and spared neither time nor labor in getting together his materials. Witness the years spent in the libraries and other repositories of Spain, when he was working on his “Columbus” and other main books. The result is that, in spite of the enormous amount of research since expended upon the Italian whose name is associated with our country’s discovery, the Irving biography is confessedly a standard one to-day, and this quite aside from its literary merits…. His manner of writing as a whole, in its unobtrusive breeding and beauty, is admirable, and may well be put before us as a model of the kind of effect it aims for. It is especially valuable at the present time for its lack of strain, its avoidance of violence or bizarre effects, when our later writers incline to hunt for startling words and queer constructions; anything to excite and seem “original.” Irving’s style impresses one as a whole, rather than in particulars,—and that is the higher art.

  Irving was no trained scholar. He was far even from the critical habit of the New England historians, and further still from such learning as is now apt to make history something like exact science. It may be doubted whether Irving’s Goldsmith or his Washington can be accepted as the Goldsmith or the Washington who once trod the earth; yet his Goldsmith and Washington, and the other personages whom he introduced into their stories, are at least living human beings. His work is perhaps half-way between history and fiction; imaginative history is perhaps the best name for it. As usual, he was preoccupied almost as much with a desire to write charmingly as with a purpose to write truly; but in itself this desire was beautifully true. Throughout, one feels, Irving wrote as well as he could, and he knew how to write better than almost any contemporary Englishman.

  Irving was not a great original thinker, reformer, or masterful spirit in any field. He founded no definite school, though he has had a most helpful and genial influence on all literature since. He saw much beauty, and makes us see it, especially in the romantic past. Whether he created, or found ready to his hand, the best legendary lore of the Hudson Valley, is a problem still discussed. His effects always seem to be attained with as little effort as Raphael’s, but this, surely, is but evidence of perfect balance, sanity, instinctive self-knowledge.