IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL
The turn to Washington Irving and his chief associates in New
York--James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen Bryant--is a turn from
colonial to national America and from the eighteenth to the nineteenth
century. This is not to say that what they wrote was utterly and
dramatically different from what had been written in the colonial
period; yet there are many points of clear distinction to be marked.
With them, for one thing, New York City first assumed the literary
leadership of the country. It was not a permanent conquest, but it was
notable as marking the fact that the new country had a dominating city.
As a rule the intellectual and artistic life of a country centers about
its capital. Athens, Rome, Paris, London, are places through which
the voices of Greece, Italy, France, and England have uttered their
messages. These cities have held their preëminence, moreover, because,
in addition to being the seats of government, they have been the great
commercial centers and usually the great ports of their countries.
In the United States, then, the final adoption of Washington in the
District of Columbia as the national capital was a compromise step;
this could not result in bringing to it the additional distinction
which natural conditions gave to New York. Washington has never been
more than the city where the national business of government is carried
on; locating the center for art and literature has been beyond the
control of legislative action. For the first third of the nineteenth
century New York was the favored city. Here Irving was born, and here
Cooper and Bryant came as young men, rather than to the Philadelphia of
Franklin and his contemporaries.
For these men of New York, America was an accomplished fact--a nation
slowly and awkwardly taking its place among the nations of the world.
To be sure, the place that Americans wanted to take, following the
advice of George Washington, was one of withdrawal from the turmoil of
the Old World and of safety from "entangling alliances" which could
ever again bring it into the warfare from which it was so glad to be
escaping. The Atlantic was immensely broader in those days than now,
for its real breadth is to be measured not in miles but in the number
of days that it takes to cross it. When Irving went abroad for the
first time in 1803 he was fifty-nine days in passage. To-day one can
go round the world in considerably less time, and the average fast
Atlantic steamship passage is one tenth of that, while the aëroplane
flight has divided the time by ten again. So the early Americans
rejoiced in their "magnificent isolation" and wanted to grow up as
dignified, respected, but very distant neighbors of the Old World.
It was an unhappy fact, however, that America--or the United
States--was not notable for its dignity in the early years of the
nineteenth century; for the finest dignity, like charity, "is not
puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly," whereas the new nation
was very self-conscious; quickly irritated at foreign criticism,
and uncomfortably aware of its own crudities in manner and defects
in character. As far as foreign criticism was concerned, there were
ample reasons for annoyance in America. Even as early as 1775 John
Trumbull[4] had felt that it was hopeless to expect fair treatment at
the hands of English reviewers, warning his friends Dwight and Barlow,
Such men to charm could Homer's muse avail,
Who read to cavil, and who write to rail;
When ardent genius pours the bold sublime,
Carp at the style, or nibble at the rhyme;
and the mother country, after the Revolution and the War of 1812, was
less inclined than before to deal in compliment. Man after man came
over,
Like Fearon, Ashe, and others we could mention;
Who paid us friendly visits to abuse
Our country, and find food for the reviews.[5]
[4] Lines addressed to Messrs. Dwight and Barlow.
[5] Fitzgreene Halleck, "Fanny," stanza lviii.
Moreover, all the time that England was criticizing her runaway child,
she was maddeningly complacent as to her own virtues. Americans could
not strike back with any effect, because they could not make the
English feel their blows. So they fretted and fumed for half a century,
their discomfort finding its clearest expression in Lowell's lines[6]:
She _is_ some punkins, thet I wun't deny
(For ain't she some related to you 'n' I?)
But there's a few small intrists here below
Outside the counter o' John Bull an' Co,
An' though they can't conceit how't should be so,
I guess the Lord druv down Creation's spiles
'thout no _gret_ helpin' from the British Isles,
An' could contrive to keep things pooty stiff
Ef they withdrawed from business in a miff;
I ha'n't no patience with sech swellin' fellers ez
Think God can't forge 'thout them to blow the bellerses.
[6] Mason and Slidell, ll. 155-165.
A further reason for uneasiness in the face of foreign comment was
that honest Americans were aware that their country suffered from the
crudities of youth. It is unpleasant enough for "Seventeen" to be
nagged by an unsympathetic maiden aunt, but it is intolerable if she
has some ground for her naggings. In small matters as well as great
"conscience doth make cowards of us all." In a period of such rapid
expansion as prevailed in the young manhood of Irving, Cooper, and
Bryant it was unavoidable that most of the population were drawn into
business undertakings that were usually eager and hurried and that were
often slipshod or even shady. The American colleges and their graduates
were not as distinguished as they had been in the earlier colonial
days, and the new influence of European culture from the Old World
universities was yet to come. In the cities, and notably in New York,
the vulgar possessors of mushroom fortunes multiplied rapidly, bringing
up vapid daughters like Halleck's "Fanny,"[7] who in all the modern
languages was
Exceedingly well-versed; and had devoted
To their attainment, far more time than has,
By the best teachers, lately been allotted;
For she had taken lessons, twice a week,
For a full month in each; and she could speak
French and Italian, equally as well
As Chinese, Portuguese, or German; and,
What is still more surprising, she could spell
Most of our longest English words off-hand;
Was quite familiar in Low Dutch and Spanish,
And thought of studying modern Greek and Danish;
and whose father, a man of newly affected silence that spoke
"unutterable things," was established in a mortgaged house filled
with servants and "whatever is necessary for a 'genteel liver'" and
buttressed with a coach and half a dozen unpaid-for horses. At the
same time the countryside was developing a native but not altogether
admirable Yankee type. At their best, Halleck[8] wrote,
The people of today
Appear good, honest, quiet men enough
And hospitable too--for ready pay;
With manners like their roads, a little rough,
And hands whose grasp is warm and welcoming, though tough.
[7] "Fanny," stanzas cxxi, cxxii.
[8] "Wyoming," stanza iv.
And at their worst Whittier[9] looked back a half century, to 1818, and
recalled them as
Shrill, querulous women, sour and sullen men,
Untidy, loveless, old before their time,
With scarce a human interest save their own
Monotonous round of small economies,
Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood;
* * * * *
Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers,
But grumbling over pulpit tax and pew-rent,
Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls
And winter pork, with the least possible outlay
Of salt and sanctity; in daily life
Showing as little actual comprehension
Of Christian charity and love and duty
As if the Sermon on the Mount had been
Outdated like a last year's almanac.
A natural consequence of such criticism from without, and such raw and
defective culture within the country, was that American writers of any
moment bided their time as patiently as they could, recognizing that
for the moment America must be a nation of workers who were
rearing the pedestal, broad-based and grand,
Whereon the fair shapes of the Artist shall stand,
And creating, through labors undaunted and long,
The theme for all Sculpture and Painting and Song.[10]
Finally, it is worth noting that the first three eminent writers in
nineteenth-century America were themselves not university products.
Bryant withdrew from Williams College at the end of the first year,
and Cooper from Yale toward the end of the second. The real education
of these two and of Irving, who did not even enter college, was in the
world of action rather than in the world of books, and their associates
were for the most part men of affairs.
[9] "Among the Hills" (Prelude, 71 ff.).
[10] Lowell, "Fable for Critics."
WASHINGTON IRVING
Many of the facts about the boyhood and youth of Washington Irving
(1783-1859) are typical of his place and his period as well as true
of himself. The first is that he was born (in New York City) of
British-American parents, his father a Scotch Presbyterian from the
Orkney Islands and his mother an Englishwoman. His father's rigid
religious views dominated in the upbringing of himself and his six
brothers and sisters. Two nearly inevitable results followed: one, that
as a boy he grew to believe that almost everything that was enjoyable
was wicked, and the other, that as he came toward manhood he was
particularly fond of the pleasures of life. A boy of his capacities in
Boston at this time would have been more than likely to go to Harvard
College, which was a dominating influence in eastern Massachusetts,
but King's College (Columbia) occupied no such position in New York.
Irving's higher education began in a law office, and then, when his
health seemed to be failing, was continued by travel abroad. The long
journey, or series of journeys, that he took from 1804 to 1806 were
of the greatest importance. They were important to Irving because he
was peculiarly fitted to get the greatest good from such informal
education. He was an attractive young fellow, so that it was easy for
him to make and to hold friends; and he was blessed with his father's
moral balance, so that he did not fall into bad habits. He was so far
inclined to laziness that it is doubtful if he would have achieved much
if he had gone to college, but he was wide-awake and receptive, so that
he absorbed information wherever he went. Furthermore, he had a mind as
well as a memory, and he came back to America stocked not merely with
a great lot of miscellaneous facts but with a real knowledge of human
nature and of human life.
From the day of his return to New York in 1806 to the day of his death,
in 1859, Washington Irving had an international point of view and
developed steadily into an international character. His first piece
of writing was that of a very young man, but a young man of promise.
Like the other Americans of his day he had read a good deal of English
literature written in the eighteenth century; and among the essayists
of that century who had attracted his attention one was Oliver
Goldsmith. New York supplied him with his subjects and Goldsmith with
his method of attack, for he wrote, in company with one of his brothers
and a mutual friend, a series of amusing criticisms on the ways of his
townsmen, modeling his _Salmagundi Papers_ after Goldsmith's _Citizen
of the World_. This was at once independent and imitative. The youthful
authors blithely announced in their introductory number that they
proposed to "instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, and
castigate the age." In the twenty-two papers that came out at irregular
intervals between January, 1807, and January, 1808, they criticized
everything that struck their attention, and they had their eyes wide
open. The American love of display, the inclination to indulge in
fruitless discussion which made the country a "logocracy" rather than
a democracy, the lack of both judgment and order which marked their
political elections, and their social and literary fashions make just
a beginning of the list of subjects held up to genial ridicule. Yet,
though the criticism was fair and to the point, it was an old-fashioned
kind of comment, the kind that England had been feeding on for the
better part of a century, ever since Addison and Steele had made it
popular in the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_. Moreover, it was done in
an old-fashioned way, for in making Mustapha Rub-a-Dub Keli Khan, the
Tripolitan, the foreign commentator on American life as he saw it with
a stranger's eyes, they were using a device that was old even before
it was employed by the Englishman from whom they borrowed it. The
_Salmagundis_ are interesting, however, as early representatives of a
longish succession of satires on the life of New York, all pleasant
and rather pleasantly superficial. Three years later Irving, this time
alone, followed up this initial success with his "Knickerbocker's
History of New York," not as serious a piece of work as its title at
first suggests, for it was a burlesque of a heavy and pretentious
history on the same subject which had appeared just before. Like the
_Salmagundis_ it was vivacious and impertinent, the very clever work of
a very young man.
Now for ten years Washington Irving produced nothing as a writer. He
was engaged in business with his brothers, and proved himself the most
level-headed member of a pretty unbusinesslike combination. In 1815, in
connection with one of their many ambitious and unsuccessful schemes,
he went abroad, probably without the least suspicion that he would
be absent from his own country for seventeen years and that he would
return to it as a celebrated writer widely read in two continents.
The first step toward his wider reputation came in 1819 with the
publication in London of "The Sketch Book," the best known of all his
works. This was followed in 1822 by "Bracebridge Hall" and in 1824
by "Tales of a Traveller," both similar in tone and contents to "The
Sketch Book." With a reputation as a graceful writer of sketches and
stories now thoroughly established, he turned to a more substantial
and ambitious form of work in the composition of "The History of the
Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus," living and writing in
Madrid for the two years before its publication in 1828; and this book
he followed quickly, as in the case of "The Sketch Book," with two
other productions of the same kind--"The Conquest of Granada" in 1829
and "The Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus" in
1831. For three years before his return to America, Irving served as
Secretary of Legation to the court of St. James, London, and then came
back to enjoy at home a popularity which had been almost wholly earned
abroad. Out of his career thus far four main facts deserve attention.
First, that his literary work began with two pieces of social satire,
written in a boyish, jovial manner which he largely abandoned in later
years; second, that his fame was established on works of "The Sketch
Book" type, made up of short units, gracefully written, and full
of quiet humor and tender sentiment (now and again he continued in
this sort of composition up to the end of his life); third, that in
his maturer years he resorted to the writing of formal history, and
that he followed the first three studies, done in Spain, with "Oliver
Goldsmith" in 1849, "Mahomet and his Successors" in 1850, and "The Life
of Washington," completed in 1859, the year of his death. To these
literary facts should be added a fourth which is both literary and
political and of no small significance in history--the fact of Irving's
appointment to a post in the foreign diplomatic service. This was to
be followed in his own life by his four years as Minister to Spain in
1842-1846, under President Harrison, and in the next fifty years by a
distinguished list of other appointments to the consular and diplomatic
staffs. No single group has done more to bring honor to the United
States in the courts of Europe during the nineteenth century than
writers like Irving, Hawthorne, Motley, Howells, Bayard Taylor, Lowell,
Hay, and their successors down to Thomas Nelson Page and Brand Whitlock.
To return to "The Sketch Book." By 1818, three years after Irving had
gone abroad for the second time, the business in which he had been
engaged with his brothers had utterly failed, and he was forced to
regard writing not merely as an attractive way of diverting himself but
as a possible source of income. The new articles which he then wrote,
together with many which had been accumulating in the leisure of his
years in England, were soon ready for publication, but they found no
English publisher ready to risk putting them out. Even the powerful
influence of Sir Walter Scott, Irving's cordial friend, could not
prevail at first with John Murray, "the prince of publishers." In 1819
Sidney Smith's contemptuous and famous query, "Who reads an American
book?" was fairly representative of the English-reading public. Murray
was interested in Irving's manuscript, but did not see any prospect of
selling enough books to justify the risk of publication. Irving had
wanted the indorsement of Murray's imprint to offset the severity of
the kind of English criticism deplored years earlier by John Trumbull
(see p. 111). As soon, however, as the sketches were printed in New
York in a set of seven modest installments, the attention of English
readers was attracted to them, and Irving heard rumors that a "pirated"
English edition was to appear. There was no international copyright
in those days, and no adequate one until as late as 1899; so that a
book printed on one side of the Atlantic was fair game for anyone who
chose to steal it on the other. If an author wanted his works to appear
correctly and to get his full money return for them, it was necessary
for him to go through all the details of publishing independently
in both countries. After a great deal of difficulty, therefore,
Irving contrived to get out an English edition through an inefficient
publisher, but the success of it was so marked that Murray soon saw
the light and from then on was eager to get the English rights for
everything that Irving wrote and to pay him in advance five, ten, and,
in one case, as much as fifteen thousand dollars.
With the appearance of "The Sketch Book" England arrived at a new
answer for Sidney Smith's question. Irving was sought as a celebrity
by the many, in addition to being loved as a charming gentleman by his
older friends. Few tributes are more telling than that contained in a
letter written many years later by Charles Dickens in which he refers
to the delight he took in Irving's pages when he was "a small and not
over particularly well taken care of boy." Even the austere _Edinburgh
Review_ indorsed the American as a writer of "great purity and beauty
of diction." From the most feared critic in the English-speaking
world to the neglected boy whose father was in debtors' prison Irving
received enough applause quite to turn the head of a less modest man.
"The Sketch Book" includes over thirty papers of four or five
different kinds. About fifteen are definite observations on English
life and habits as seen in country towns and on country estates. Of
the remainder six are literary essays of various kinds; four are in
the nature of personal traveling reminiscences; three are the famous
short stories--"Rip Van Winkle," "Sleepy Hollow," and the "The Spectre
Bridegroom"; and five so far defy classification as to fall under the
convenient category of "miscellaneous."
As a document in literary history the sixth paper deserves far more
notice than is usually conceded to it, for as a rule it is totally
neglected. This is entitled "British Writers on America." The tone of
English literary criticism has already been referred to. Irving called
attention to the fact that all English writings on America and the
Americans were equally ill-natured. He pointed out that ordinarily
English readers demanded strictest accuracy from author-travelers;
that if a man who wrote a book on the regions of the Upper Nile or the
unknown islands of the Yellow Sea was caught in error at a few minor
points, he was held up to scorn as careless and unreliable, and another
English traveler who could convict him of mistakes or misstatements
could completely discredit him. But in marked contrast to this, no such
scrupulousness was demanded of visitors to the United States. Books on
the new nation in the Western World were written and read to satisfy
unfriendly prejudice rather than to supply exact information and honest
opinion. Against a continuation of such a practice Irving gave warning,
not merely because it was uncharitable but because in time it would
estrange the two peoples and lose for England a friend with whom she
could not afford to be at loggerheads.
Is all this to be at end? Is this golden band of kindred sympathies,
so rare between nations, to be broken forever? Perhaps it may be
for the best. It may dispel an illusion which might have kept us in
mental vassalage; which might have interfered occasionally with our
true interests, and prevented the growth of proper national pride.
But it is hard to give up the kindred tie! and there are feelings
dearer than interest--closer to the heart than pride--that will make
us cast back a look of regret as we wander farther and farther from
the paternal roof, and lament the waywardness of the parent that
would repel the affections of the child.
There were probably many other Americans capable of making the warning
prophecy so notably fulfilled nearly a hundred years later, though few,
perhaps, who would have put it in such temperate language; but Irving
went further in following with a warning to his fellow-countrymen:
Shortsighted and injudicious, however, as the conduct of England
may be in this system of aspersion, recrimination on our part would
be equally ill-judged.... Let us guard particularly against such a
temper, for it would double the evil instead of redressing the wrong.
Nothing is so easy and inviting as the retort of abuse and sarcasm,
but it is a paltry and unprofitable contest.... The members of a
republic, above all other men, should be candid and dispassionate.
They are, individually, portions of the sovereign mind and sovereign
will, and should be enabled to come to all questions of national
concern with calm and unbiased judgments.... Let it be the pride of
our writers, therefore, discarding all feelings of irritation, and
disdaining to retaliate the illiberality of British authors, to speak
of the English nation without prejudice and with determined candor.
If there is any justification for calling an American essay "The
American Declaration of Literary Independence" the title should be
conferred on this neglected number in "The Sketch Book." It was long
before either English or American writers were wise enough to follow
Irving's counsels, but he himself was always as tactful as he was
honest.
"The Sketch Book" as a whole, then, can best be understood as an
American's comments on English life and custom, made at a time when
"the retort of abuse and sarcasm" would have been quite natural.
In the opening paper, as well as in the sixth, there is a gentle
reminder that the literary east wind had felt rather sharp and nipping
in New York. Irving is describing himself after the fashion of the
eighteenth-century essayists at the introduction of a series, and at
the end indulges in this little nudge of irony:
A great man of Europe, thought I, must ... be as superior to a great
man of America, as a peak of the Alps to a highland of the Hudson;
and in this idea I was confirmed by observing the comparative
importance and swelling magnitude of many English travelers among us,
who, I was assured, were very little people in their own country. I
will visit this land of wonders, thought I, and see the gigantic race
from which I am degenerated.
His summarized impressions of the typical Englishman are contained
in the thirtieth paper, on "John Bull." This keen analysis will bear
the closest reading and study, and the more one knows of English
history the more interesting it becomes. In this respect it is like
"Gulliver's Travels," for it is full of double meanings. To the
inattentive or the immature it is simply a picture of a bluff, hearty,
quick-tempered, over-conservative average English country gentleman,
but to the intelligent and attentive reader this gentleman turns out
to be the embodiment of the English government and the British Empire.
The character of Parliament, the relation between Church and State, the
condition of the national treasury, the attitude of the rulers toward
reform legislation and toward the colonies, dependencies, and dominions
are all treated with kindly humor by the visiting critic. The picture
is by no means a flattering one, but it was Irving's happy gift to be
able to indulge in really biting satire and yet to do so in such a
courteous and friendly way that his words carried little sting. Part of
the concluding paragraph to this essay will illustrate his method of
combining justice with mercy:
Though there may be something rather whimsical in all this, yet I
confess I cannot look upon John's situation without strong feelings
of interest. With all his odd humors and obstinate prejudices, he is
a sterling-hearted old blade. He may not be so wonderfully fine a
fellow as he thinks himself, but he is at least twice as good as his
neighbors represent him. His virtues are all his own; all plain,
home-bred, and unaffected. His very faults smack of the raciness of
his good qualities. His extravagance savors of his generosity; his
quarrelsomeness of his courage; his credulity of his open faith; his
vanity of his pride; and his bluntness of his sincerity. They are all
the redundancies of a rich and liberal character.
In this spirit Irving wrote the other sketches of John Bull as he
appears in "Rural Life," "The Country Church," "The Inn Kitchen," and
the group of five Christmas pictures.
To judge from these eight scenes of English country life, Irving, a
visitor from a new and unsettled land, was chiefly fascinated by the
evidences of old age and tradition on every side. For this reason, if
for no other, he delighted in the customs of the country squires who
had not been swept out of their ancient order by the tide of modern
trade. Even the English scenery was in his mind "associated with ideas
of order, of quiet, of sober, well-established principles, of hoary
usage and reverend custom. Everything seems to be the growth of ages
of regular and peaceful existence." As Irving observed it, it was
still the "Merrie England" of song and story, an England, therefore,
beautifully typified in the celebration of the Christmas festivities.
There is a touch of autobiography in his comment on the good cheer that
prevailed at Bracebridge Hall,--a home that Squire Bracebridge tried
to make his children feel was the happiest place in the world,--it
was so utterly different from the suppressed family circle over which
his Presbyterian father had ruled. As a guest he enjoyed all the
picturesque and quaint merrymaking at the Hall, and re-conjured up
pictures like those which Addison had previously drawn at Sir Roger
de Coverley's. Yet all the while he was aware that the old English
gentleman was a costly luxury for England to maintain, that Squire
Bracebridge was after all nothing but John Bull, and that John Bull
was inclining to lag behind his age. As a student of Goldsmith, Irving
had read "The Deserted Village"; the thought of it seems to have come
back to him while writing "Rural Life"; for a moment the usurpation of
the land by the wealthy disquieted him, but then he consoled himself
with the comforting thought that abuses of this sort were "but casual
outbreaks in the general system." Irving was writing as an observer who
found much to admire in the external beauty of the old order of things,
but at the bottom of his American mind it is quite apparent that
there was a silent approval of gradual reform in "the good old ways."
Squire Bracebridge was delightful to Irving, but on the whole he was a
delightful old fogy.
Irving's papers on London--"The Boar's Head Tavern," "Westminster
Abbey," and "Little Britain"--are full of a similar reverence for old
age in the life of the community. In the same mood in which he laughed
at the pranks of the Christmas Lord of Misrule, he made his way to
Eastcheap, "that ancient region of wit and wassail, where the very
names of the streets relished of good cheer, as Pudding Lane bears
testimony even at the present day"; and he took much more evident
satisfaction in his recollection of Shakespearean revelries than in his
hours in Westminster, the "mingled picture of glory and decay." Once
again in "Little Britain" Irving was in more congenial surroundings,
for he preferred to smile at the echoes of dead laughter than to
shudder at the reminders of vanished greatness.
Little Britain may truly be called the heart's core of the city;
the strong-hold of true John Bullism. It is a fragment of London as
it was in its better days, with its antiquated folks and fashions.
Here flourish in great preservation many of the holiday games and
customs of yore. The inhabitants most religiously eat pancakes on
Shrove Tuesday, hot-cross-buns on Good Friday, and roast goose at
Michaelmas; they send love-letters on Valentine's Day, burn the
Pope on the fifth of November, and kiss all the girls under the
mistletoe at Christmas. Roast beef and plum-pudding are also held in
superstitious veneration, and port and sherry maintain their grounds
as the only true English wines.
In more than casual respect for such traditions Irving goes on to
introduce the rival oracles of Little Britain, to escort us to
Wagstaff's and the Roaring Lads, to act as personal conductor to
Bartholomew Fairs and a Lord Mayor's Day, and finally to lament the
baleful influence of the socially ambitious Misses Lamb and the decline
of the choice old games All-Fours, Pope Joan, and Tom-come-tickle-me.
It is no wonder that the youthful Dickens loved these papers, for the
same England appealed to both Irving and Dickens throughout their
lives. It was a rough, boisterous, jolly England, with a good deal of
vulgarity which they were ready to forgive and a good many vices which
they chose to overlook in favor of its chief virtues--a blunt honesty,
a hearty laugh, and a full stomach.
There is another side of old England that was dear to those two--that
John Bull could "easily be moved to a sudden tear" (see p. 109, first
topic). In the old days of even a hundred years ago men of Saxon stock
were much more ready to express themselves than they are to-day, for
the accepted manners of the present are comparatively reserved and
impassive. If a man was amused he laughed loud and long; if he was
angered he came up with "a word and a blow"; and if his deeper feelings
were touched he was not ashamed of a tear. In fact he seemed almost
to feel a certain pride in his "sensibility," as if his power to weep
proved that his nature was not destitute of finer feeling and made
up for his quickness to wrath and his fondness for a broad joke. In
perhaps unconscious recognition of this habit of mind the literature
of a century ago contained a great many frank appeals to the reader's
feeling for pathos, appeals which the modern reader would be likely to
condemn as unworthily sentimental.
In the history of literature a distinction is made between
"sentiment"--the ability to respond to the finer emotions, such as
love, sorrow, reverence, patriotism, worship--and "sentimentalism"--the
unrestricted expression of these emotions by eloquence, tears, and
feminine sighs, blushes, and swoonings. For this sentimentalism,
which was a literary fashion of his period, Irving found an outlet
in sketches like "The Wife," "The Broken Heart," "The Widow and her
Son," and "The Pride of the Village." The first is on "the fortitude
with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortune,"
a sketch in which the husband is the sentimentalist. He has lost his
money and is afraid to shock his wife with the revelation, but his
"altered looks and stifled sighs" half betray him. In "an agony of
tears" he tells a friend, and by him is persuaded to be honest with
her. Her latent heroism comes out in the face of his announcement; and
on her welcome to him at his first homecoming to the modest cottage
he is rendered speechless, and tears once more gush into his eyes.
The second is a direct attempt to shame "those who have outlived the
susceptibility of early feeling, or have been brought up ... to laugh
at all love stories." The third, on "The Widow and her Son," is more
convincing to the reader of to-day, for it is on the tragic picture of
a fond parent's bereavement. The fourth is the best example of all.
The pride of the village is introduced as "blushing and smiling in all
the beautiful confusion of girlish diffidence and delight." She falls
in love with a gallant young soldier, who begs her to accompany him
when he is ordered to the front. Shocked at his perfidy she clasps
her hands in agony, then succumbs to "faintings and hysterics," and
then goes into a decline. After some time her lover returns to her and
rushes into the house. "She was too faint to rise--she attempted to
extend her trembling hand--her lips moved as if she spoke, but no word
was articulated--she looked down upon him with a smile of unutterable
tenderness--and closed her eyes forever!" If these sketches seem unreal
and even amusing to the student, it is partly because they are actually
overdrawn and partly because the present generation has repressed, if
it has not "outlived, the susceptibility of early feeling."
Two other types of work remain to be mentioned. The first is the
literary essay, in which the chief interest arises from Irving's
sympathetic appreciation of his English masters. From these
essays--there are five of distinct importance--it appears that he was
especially well-read in the writings of a much earlier period and that
he took pleasure in dwelling on passages which were characterized,
as his own work came to be, by "great purity and beauty of diction."
The other group is the most famous in "The Sketch Book," the three
stories of which "Rip Van Winkle" is the best known. This is extremely
interesting for several reasons. The first is that it is a good story,
which will long be read for its own sake, and as such it needs no
comment, for it is familiar to everyone. But it is also a milestone in
literary history. One reason for this is that it carries into practice
a principle that American authors had long been talking and writing
about--the principle of using native material. It is located in the
Catskill Mountains and in the years before and after the Revolutionary
War. It introduces real colonial and early American people. Although
it is a far-fetched romance in its theme, it makes use of homely,
realistic details. Jonathan Doolittle's hotel was just the sort of
shabby boarding house that marred the countryside during the slipshod
years after the Revolution and that survived into Irving's youth. "A
large rickety wooden building ... with great gaping windows, some of
them broken and mended with old hats and petticoats." The sign was
strangely changed from pre-Revolution days. "The red coat was changed
for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a
sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was
painted in large characters, GENERAL WASHINGTON." The fact that the
folk story about Hendrick Hudson and his crew had some basis in a
German superstition does not affect the fact that Irving completely
localized it and gave it its enduring fame as an American tale.
Another reason why this story stands out in literary history is that
it is one of the first really successful examples of the modern
short story, and that in this sense it represents America's chief
contribution to the types of literature. We are likely to take for
granted that all the popular forms of literature have existed since the
beginning of time. Yet prose stories of any kind were comparatively
modern a hundred years ago, and most of them were long narratives in
two or three and sometimes as many as six or seven volumes. What short
stories existed were merely condensed novels, not limited to any brief
period and not developed with any definite detail. "Rip Van Winkle" was
strikingly different from its vague and shapeless forerunners. After
the introduction it was limited to two short passages of time--the
few hours just before and the few hours just after Rip went to sleep
on the mountain. And the whole story was composed to lead up to the
main point,--the chief point of this history and of all history,--the
relentless way in which life moves on, regardless of the individual
who falls asleep and is left behind. All the details in the story help
to develop this idea. Rip, the ne'er-do-well, was the sort of man to
serve as the central character, for he was more anxious to escape life
than to take his part in it. His eager, querulous, sharp-tongued wife
reminded him of the burden of living only to make him avoid it the
more; her loss was the only one which he did not regret on his return.
His dog and gun, which he missed first and missed most keenly, were
the pride of the old-fashioned trapper out of place in the up-to-date
American village. The years bridging the Revolution were the most
natural and effective ones to mark the kind of change that is always
taking place; and Rip's experience in finding that loyalty to a
discarded monarchy was treason to a new republic was simply an emphatic
illustration of what will usually happen to a man who lives in the past
instead of in the present. It is not at all necessary to assume that
Irving chose the old folk-legend in order to expound this theme, or
even that he was conscious of the completeness with which he was doing
it. The fact remains that it was remarkable in its day for its clear
compactness, and that it meets one of the tests of enduring fiction in
telling a good story well and of building that story out of elements
that convey some truth about life.
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is comparable to "Rip Van Winkle" only
in its use of native American character, scenes, and tradition. It is
hardly a short story at all, but rather a prolonged sketch full of
"local atmosphere" and partly strung on a narrative thread. Ichabod
Crane and his townsmen, except for Brom Bones and his gang, are
like Rip in one respect, for they are representative citizens in a
town where "population, manners and customs remain fixed; while the
great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such
incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by
them unobserved." Ichabod was an interesting survival, too, because
his combination of learning and superstition had come to him from a
distinguished source, for he "was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's
history of New England witchcraft, in which, by the way, he most
firmly and potently believed. He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small
shrewdness and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvellous, and
his powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary, and both had
been increased by his residence in this spellbound region. No tale was
too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his
delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch
himself on the rich bed of clover, bordering the little brook that
whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather's direful
tales, until the gathering dusk of the evening made the printed page
a mere mist before his eyes." Ichabod, moreover, is a comic type in
American life in the early nineteenth century, who seems to have been
equally disliked by all the New Yorkers--the Puritan descendant
strayed from home. Cooper's David Gamut is one of the same crop. The
story of the Headless Horseman, like that of the Spectre Bridegroom,
is, of course, only a make-believe ghost story, neither important nor
well told. The real interest in the sketch lies in its picture of
simple country life. The whole scene at Baltus Van Tassel's house is
as clear and vivid as the contrasting scenes at Bracebridge Hall or as
Whittier's picture of another family scene in "Snow-Bound." The third
well-known story in "The Sketch Book," "The Spectre Bridegroom," is,
like "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," more of a sketch than a story, and
does not pretend to be laid on American soil.
It is a common experience of schoolboys and schoolgirls to feel on
reading Irving for the first time that his way of writing is stiff and
unnatural. Compared with the fashion of to-day the wording and sentence
structure of "The Sketch Book" deserve such a verdict. But to render it
against the writing of a hundred years ago, without comparing the book
in question with others of its own generation, is to ignore the very
point of "Rip Van Winkle"--that fashions change. Assuming, then, that
styles do change, and that Irving was no more formal than other authors
of his day, it is still worth while to see what some of the main points
of contrast are between 1819 and 1919. Here are two passages that
will serve as a basis for comparison. The first is from "Philip of
Pokanoket," one of the two "Sketch Book" essays written in America.
It is to be regretted that those early writers, who treated of
the discovery and settlement of America, have not given us more
particular and candid accounts of the remarkable characters that
flourished in savage life. The scanty anecdotes which have reached
us are full of peculiarity and interest; they furnish us with nearer
glimpses of human nature, and show what man is in a comparatively
primitive state, and what he owes to civilization. There is something
of the charm of discovery in lighting upon these wild and unexplored
tracts of human nature; in witnessing, as it were, the native growth
of moral sentiment, and perceiving those generous and romantic
qualities which have been artificially cultivated by society,
vegetating in spontaneous hardihood and rude magnificence.
The second is from G. S. Lee's "Crowds," Bk. I, chap, viii:
The future in America cannot be pictured. The only place it can be
seen is in people's faces. Go out into the street, in New York, in
Chicago, in San Francisco, in Seattle; look eagerly as you go into
the faces of the men who pass, and you feel hundreds of years--the
next hundred years--like a breath swept past. America, with all
its forty-story buildings, its little play Niagaras, its great
dumb Rockies, is the unseen country. It can only as yet be seen in
people's eyes. Some days, flowing sublime and silent through our
noisy streets, and through the vast panorama of our towers, I have
heard the footfalls of the unborn, like sunshine around me.
These passages have almost exactly the same number of words,--the
former one hundred and fifteen and the latter one hundred and
seventeen,--but a glance at the printed page shows that Irving's words
take up one fifth more space than Lee's do. The reason is that Irving
uses twenty-six words of more than two syllables, and Lee, aside
from place-names, only two. Although both passages are written in
analysis of American conditions, Irving, who is discussing the past,
employs abstract or general words--to use the nouns alone, words like
_discovery_, _anecdotes_, _peculiarity_, _civilisation_, _sentiment_,
_qualities_, _magnificence_; Lee, who is looking to the future, uses
definite and picturesque terms like _faces_, _street_, _buildings_,
_eyes_, _panorama_, _towers_, _footfalls_,--uses these words even
though he admits the idea he is dealing with cannot be pictured. Again,
Irving cast his one hundred and fifteen words into three sentences
averaging nearly forty words in length, and Lee put his into six,
averaging a fraction less than twenty. Finally, all Irving's sentences
are "loose," or so built that the reader may rest or even stop with
a completed sense before he comes to the end; but four out of six in
Lee's passage are "periodic," or so constructed that you must read to
the end or be left hanging in mid-air.
It would, of course, be forcing the issue absurdly far to insist or
even suggest that so broad a comparison would apply without exception
to the writers of a hundred years ago and of to-day, but in general
there is a fair deduction to be drawn. Irving belonged to a group who
were still addressing an eighteenth-century audience, an audience
made up of "gentle readers"--men who enjoyed the rhythmical flow of a
courtly and elegant style, who felt that there was a virtue in purity
and beauty of diction apart from any idea the diction was supposed to
express; but the modern reader esteems literature as a means rather
than an end. It must catch and hold his attention; it must be clear and
forcible first, and elegant as a secondary matter; and its words and
sentences must be chosen and put together as a challenge to a reader in
the midst of a restless, driving, twentieth-century world. With these
facts in mind one may say, if he will, that Washington Irving was stiff
and formal, but he should say this as marking a difference and not a
necessary inferiority in Irving.
Irving lived until 1859, but the richly fruitful part of his life was
from 1819, the year in which the serial publication of "The Sketch
Book" began, to 1832, the year of his return from abroad. In this
period he published ten books and all the best known of his works
but the lives of Goldsmith and Washington. When he came back after
seventeen years' absence he was known and admired in England, France,
and Germany, and the most popular of American authors. Irving was one
of the first to profit, American fashion, by a European reputation
reflected and redoubled at home. At the dinner of welcome tendered him
soon after his arrival he showed how absence had made the heart grow
fonder:
I come from gloomier climes to one of brilliant sunshine and
inspiring purity. I come from countries lowering with doubt and
danger, where the rich man trembles and the poor man frowns--where
all repine at the present and dread the future. I come from these
to a country where all is life and animation; where I hear on every
side the sound of exultation; where everyone speaks of the past
with triumph, the present with delight, the future with growing and
confident anticipation.
And here, he went on to say, he proposed to remain as long as he lived.
These last twenty-seven years were filled with honors. He had already
received the gold medal from the Royal Society of Literature and the
degree of Doctor of Laws from Oxford University. Now he was to have
the refusal of a whole succession of public offices and the leadership
of a whole "school" of writers. Diedrich Knickerbocker had become
a household word, which was applied to the Knickerbocker school of
Irving's followers and used in the christening of the _Knickerbocker
Magazine_ (1833-1865). Irving was in truth a connecting link between
the century of his birth and the century of his achievements. He
carried over the spirit and the manners of Addison and Goldsmith into
the New World and into the age of steam. With him it was a natural
mode of thought and way of expression, but with his imitators it was
affected and superficial--so much so that the Knickerbocker school
declined and the _Knickerbocker Magazine_ went out of existence shortly
after Irving's death.
* * * * *
The leading figure in the Knickerbocker school was Fitz-Greene Halleck,
who was born in Connecticut in 1790 but spent his active life in
New York. When he came up to the city, at the age of twenty-one, he
fell in with the literary people of the town and shared their eager
interest in the current English output. According to his biographer
they were absorbed in "The Lady of the Lake" and "Marmion," in
Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope," Rogers's "Pleasures of Memory,"
Moore's "Melodies," Miss Porter's "Scottish Chiefs" and "Thaddeus of
Warsaw," and, a little later, in "Waverley," "Guy Mannering," and "The
Antiquary"--works that in Halleck's opinion produced "a wide-spread
enthusiasm throughout Great Britain and this country which has probably
never been equalled in the history of literature."
Halleck (as already cited on page 113) was uncomfortably conscious of
the prosaic commercial drive of American life and disposed to lament
the wane of romance. His regret for the passage of "the good old days"
he frequently expressed in the poems he wrote between the ages of
twenty-five and thirty--"Alnwick Castle," "Red-Jacket," "A Sketch," "A
Poet's Daughter"; and in "Wyoming" he sometimes grieved for the old and
sometimes protested at the new. When in 1823 he wrote "Marco Bozzaris,"
he lived up to his own thesis, taking an heroic episode of immediate
interest--August 20, 1823--and putting it into a ballad for freedom
that has probably been declaimed as often as "The Charge of the Light
Brigade" or "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix."
In the meanwhile he had become the intimate of the talented young
Joseph Rodman Drake. Their friendship had sprung from a common love
of romantic poetry, but the joint work which they undertook was a
series of contemporary satires. These were printed in _The National
Advocate_ and the New York _Evening Post_ between March and July,
1819. Thirty-five of them appeared over the signature of "Croaker,"
from which they became known as the "Croaker Papers." They were both
pertinent and impertinent, aided by the mystery of their authorship
and accumulating in interest through the uncertainty as to when the
next would appear and whom it would assail. The more general in theme
had the same underlying good sense which belonged to the earlier
_Salmagundis_ (see p. 116), and in their simple and often brutal
directness they must have offered then, as they do now, a relief from
the fashionable echoes of secondary English poets. Later in 1819
Halleck resumed the same strain in "Fanny"--the account in about a
thousand lines of the rise and fall of Fanny and her father in New
York finance and society.[11] Among many efforts of the sort Stedman's
"Diamond Wedding" and Butler's "Nothing to Wear" have been the only
later approach, and all have been true not merely of New York but of
the same stage in most quick-growing American cities.
In 1820 Drake died at the age of twenty-five, leaving as his literary
bequest the inspiration for Halleck's memorial verses,
Green be the turf above thee
Friend of my better days!
as well as his share in the "Croaker Papers," and "The Culprit Fay,"
and certain shorter poems which give promise of things much greater
than this overrated attempt. The "Fay," according to a letter by
Halleck, was a three-day production of 1816, written to demonstrate
that the Hudson River scenery could be turned to literary account.
Whether or no the anecdote is true, Drake wrote to this point in his
"To a Friend," and in "Niagara" and "Bronx." Yet the fact is worth
remark that nothing in "The Culprit Fay" is any more explicitly true
of the Hudson region than of the Rhine country or the Norwegian
fiords. The poem reads like a pure fantasy, hurriedly and carelessly
written by an inexperienced hand. Nevertheless, when published it was
extravagantly praised. Halleck said, "It is certainly the best thing of
the kind in the English language, and is more strikingly original than
I had supposed it was possible for a modern poem to be."[12]
[11] An interesting tribute is paid this poem by Ezra Pound in
a footnote to "L'Homme Moyen Sensuel," in "Pavannes and
Divisions," p. 33. "I would give these rhymes now with
dedication 'To the Anonymous Compatriot Who Produced the Poem
"Fanny" Somewhere About 1820,' if this form of centennial homage
be permitted me. It was no small thing to have written, in
America, at that distant date, a poem of over forty pages which
one can still read without labor."
[12] It was reserved for Poe to write a genuinely critical estimate
of it. See _The Southern Literary Messenger_, Vol. II, pp. 326
ff. Reprinted in "The Literati," p. 374.
In Halleck's exclamatory surprise at originality in any modern poem
is to be found the vital difference between the two friends. Halleck
seemed to believe that the final canons for art had been fixed, and
could hardly conceive of originality in a nineteenth-century poet;
but Drake tried new things and rebelled at the old. His best efforts,
however qualified their success, were strainings at the leash of
eighteenth-century convention.
Go! kneel a worshipper at nature's shrine!
For you her fields are green, and fair her skies!
For you her rivers flow, her hills arise!
And will you scorn them all, to pour forth tame
And heartless lays of feigned or fancied sighs?
And will you cloud the muse? nor blush for shame
To cast away renown, and hide your head from fame?
As "The Culprit Fay" shows, Drake's idea was to escape from the
drawing-room into the open, but when in the open to weave, as it were,
Gobelin tapestries for drawing-room use. He saw no gleam of essential
poetry in democracy or the crowded town, yet in his vague craving for
something better than Georgian iterations he showed that the revival of
individualism was at work in him. The story is told that his intimacy
with Halleck began in his accord with the latter's wish that he could
"lounge upon the rainbow, and read 'Tom Campbell.'" In his aspirations
he seems to have been nearer to the spirit of Keats and Shelley.
As fate would have it, the more independent of the two was taken
off before his prime, and Halleck, the survivor, settled down into
complacent Knickerbockerism. With his nicety of taste, his keen
eye, his fund of humor, and his frankness, he was an established
literary and social favorite. He was the kind of handsome and courtly
gentleman of the old school, as Irving was also, who became a friend
and associate of the leading financier of the day. There was nothing
restless or disconcerting about him. He was a critic of manners, but
not of the social order. He probably knew little of Emerson, and he
certainly disapproved of Whitman. In 1848, when less than sixty years
of age, he went back to his native town in Connecticut and lived there
till after the Civil War, totally unaffected as a man of letters,
except as the conflict seems to have silenced him. But he was not
alone, for when he sank into eclipse all the Knickerbockers disappeared
with him. Their vogue was over.
BOOK LIST
=_Individual Authors_=
WASHINGTON IRVING. First posthumous complete edition. New York,
1860-1861. 21 vols. These appeared originally as follows:
Salmagundi, 1807-1808; History of New York, 1809; The Sketch
Book, 1819; Bracebridge Hall, 1822; Jonathan Oldstyle, 1824;
Tales of a Traveller, 1824; Columbus, 1828; Conquest of Granada,
1829; Companions of Columbus, 1831; The Alhambra, 1832; The
Crayon Miscellany, 1835; Astoria, 1836; Captain Bonneville, 1837;
Goldsmith, 1849; Mahomet, 1839-1850; Wolfert's Roost, 1855;
Washington, 1855-1859; Uncollected Miscellanies, 1866.
=Bibliography=
Compiled by Shirley V. Long for Cambridge History of American
Literature, Vol. I, pp. 510-517.
=Biography and Criticism=
The standard life of Washington Irving is by P. M. Irving, The
Life and Letters of Washington Irving. 1862-1864. 1864, 1879,
1883. 4 vols.
BOYNTON, H. W. Washington Irving. Boston, 1901.
BRYANT, W. C. A Discourse on the Life, Character, and Genius of
Washington Irving, 1860.
CURTIS, G. W. Irving's Knickerbocker. _Critic_, Vol. III. 1883.
CURTIS, G. W. Washington Irving, in _Literary and Social
Essays_. 1894.
HAZLITT, WILLIAM. Elia, and Geoffrey Crayon, in _The Spirit of
the Age_. 1825.
HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. Irving's Power of Idealization.
_Critic_, Vol. III. 1883.
HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. Tribute to Irving. _Mass. Hist. Soc.
Proceedings_. 1858-1860.
HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN. My Literary Passions. 1895.
LONGFELLOW, H. W. Tribute to Irving. _Mass. Hist. Soc.
Proceedings_. 1858-1860.
LOWELL, J. R. A Fable for Critics. 1848.
PAYNE, W. M. Leading American Essayists. 1910.
POE, E. A. Irving's Astoria. _Southern Literary Messenger_, Vol.
III. 1837.
PUTNAM, G. H. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I,
Bk. II, chap. iv.
THACKERAY, W. M. Nil Nisi Bonum. _Cornhill Magazine_, Vol. I.
1860. _Harper's_, Vol. XX. 1860.
WARNER, C. D. _American Men of Letters Series_. 1881.
WARNER, C. D. Irving's Humor. _Critic_, Vol. III. 1883.
WARNER, C. D. Washington Irving. _Atlantic_, Vol. XLV. 1880.
WARNER, C. D. The Work of Washington Irving. 1893.
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK, The Poetical Works of. New York, 1847, 1850,
1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1858, 1859. Poetical writings with
extracts from those of Joseph Rodman Drake. J. G. Wilson, editor.
1869, 1885. (These editions include the Croaker Papers.) These
appeared originally as follows: Fanny, 1819; Alnwick Castle with
Other Poems, 1827; Fanny and Other Poems, 1839; Young America, a
Poem, 1865; Lines to the Recorder, 1866.
=Biography and Criticism=
The standard life is The Life and Letters of Fitz-Greene
Halleck. J. G. Wilson. 1869.
BRYANT, W. C. Some Notices on the Life and Writings of
Fitz-Greene Halleck. 1869.
DENNETT, J. R. The Knickerbocker School. _Nation_, Dec. 6, 1867.
DUYCKINCK, E. A. Fitz-Greene Halleck, in _Putnam's Magazine_.
1868.
LEONARD, W. E. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I,
Bk. II, in chap. v.
POE, E. A. Fitz-Greene Halleck, in _Complete Works_, Vol. VIII.
1902.
TUCKERMAN, H. T. Reminiscences of Fitz-Greene Halleck, in
_Lippincott's Magazine_. 1868.
WILSON, J. G. Bryant and his Friends. 1886.
=Collections=
BOYNTON, PERCY H. American Poetry, pp. 147-168, 626-629.
DUYCKINCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature,
Vol. II, pp. 207-212.
GRISWOLD, R. W. Poets and Poetry of America. 1842.
STEDMAN and HUTCHINSON. Library of American Literature, Vol. V,
pp. 216-225.
JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. Poems by Croaker, Croaker and Co., and
Croaker, Jr. First printed in the New York _Evening Post_.
1819. Reprinted as a pamphlet, 1819. The Culprit Fay and Other
Poems. 1835. The American Flag. 1861.
=Biography and Criticism=
CORNING, A. L. Joseph Rodman Drake. _Bookman_. 1915.
HOWE, M. A. DEW. American Bookmen. 1898.
POE, E. A. Fancy and Imagination. _Complete Works_, Vol. VII.
1902.
WELLS, J. L. Joseph Rodman Drake Park. 1904.
WILSON, J. G. Bryant and his Friends. 1886.
WILSON, J. G. Joseph Rodman Drake, in _Harper's Magazine_. June,
1874.
=Collections=
BOYNTON, PERCY H. American Poetry, pp. 136-153, 624-626.
DUYCKINCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature,
Vol. I, pp. 201-207.
GRISWOLD, R. W. Poets and Poetry of America. 1842.
STEDMAN and HUTCHINSON. Library of American Literature, Vol. V,
pp. 363-379.
TOPICS AND PROBLEMS
Read the "Salmagundi Papers" and "The Citizen of the World" for evident
influences. Close attention will reveal obligations not merely in the
use of a foreign observer, a slight narrative thread, and the kind of
topics treated, but also in actual detail passages.
Read passages covering the education of Goldsmith in Irving's Life, in
Macaulay's essay, and in Thackeray's "English Humourists," and compare
the degrees of sympathy with which Goldsmith is presented.
In connection with the problems of international copyright, see
passages indicated in the table of contents or index of the following
volumes: "Matthew Carey, Publisher," by E. L. Bradsher; "Letters of
Richard Watson Gilder" (edited by Rosamond Gilder, 1916); "These Many
Years," by Brander Matthews, 1917; "Memories of a Publisher" and "The
Question of Copyright," by George Haven Putnam, 1915; "Mark Twain, a
Biography," by A. B. Paine, 1912.
Read "John Bull" in "The Sketch Book" for the passages in specific
reference to the English government.
Read "Rural Life" in "The Sketch Book" for a further obligation to
Goldsmith--the influence of "The Deserted Village."
Read "Bracebridge Hall" for a further development of English life and
character begun in the "Sketch Book" essays discussed in the text.
Read "The Alhambra" for a comparison in subject matter, method, and
tone with the three stories in "The Sketch Book."
Pick out the five essays in literary criticism in "The Sketch Book" for
the light they throw on Irving's literary likings and critical acumen.
Read in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" the description of the domestic
group at the Van Tassels for comparison with similar pictures in the
English sketches.
Compare the "Croaker Papers" with the "Salmagundi Papers."
Read Halleck's "Fanny" (see Boynton, "American Poetry," pp. 154-158)
for comparison in method with the "Croaker Papers."
Read Joseph Rodman Drake's "To a Friend" for an appeal for originality
characteristic of the period and then read "The Culprit Fay" ("American
Poetry," pp. 136-146) for a nonfulfillment of the authors' own appeal.