Washington Irving by Charles Dudley Warner


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Page 1

CHAPTER III.
MANHOOD: FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE 31

CHAPTER IV.
SOCIETY AND "SALMAGUNDI" 43

CHAPTER V.
THE KNICKERBOCKER PERIOD 58

CHAPTER VI.
LIFE IN EUROPE: LITERARY ACTIVITY 94

CHAPTER VII.
IN SPAIN 141

CHAPTER VIII.
RETURN TO AMERICA: SUNNYSIDE: THE MISSION TO
MADRID 158

CHAPTER IX.
THE CHARACTERISTIC WORKS 190

CHAPTER X.
LAST YEARS: THE CHARACTER OF HIS LITERATURE 282




WASHINGTON IRVING.

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY.


It is over twenty years since the death of Washington Irving removed
that personal presence which is always a powerful, and sometimes the
sole, stimulus to the sale of an author's books, and which strongly
affects the contemporary judgment of their merits. It is nearly a
century since his birth, which was almost coeval with that of the
Republic, for it took place the year the British troops evacuated the
city of New York, and only a few months before General Washington
marched in at the head of the Continental army and took possession of
the metropolis. For fifty years Irving charmed and instructed the
American people, and was the author who held, on the whole, the first
place in their affections. As he was the first to lift American
literature into the popular respect of Europe, so for a long time he was
the chief representative of the American name in the world of letters.
During this period probably no citizen of the Republic, except the
Father of his Country, had so wide a reputation as his namesake,
Washington Irving.

It is time to inquire what basis this great reputation had in enduring
qualities, what portion of it was due to local and favoring
circumstances, and to make an impartial study of the author's literary
rank and achievement.

The tenure of a literary reputation is the most uncertain and
fluctuating of all. The popularity of an author seems to depend quite as
much upon fashion or whim, as upon a change in taste or in literary
form. Not only is contemporary judgment often at fault, but posterity is
perpetually revising its opinion. We are accustomed to say that the
final rank of an author is settled by the slow consensus of mankind in
disregard of the critics; but the rank is after all determined by the
few best minds of any given age, and the popular judgment has very
little to do with it. Immediate popularity, or currency, is a nearly
valueless criterion of merit. The settling of high rank even in the
popular mind does not necessarily give currency; the so-called best
authors are not those most widely read at any given time. Some who
attain the position of classics are subject to variations in popular and
even in scholarly favor or neglect. It happens to the princes of
literature to encounter periods of varying duration when their names are
revered and their books are not read. The growth, not to say the
fluctuation, of Shakespeare's popularity is one of the curiosities of
literary history. Worshiped by his contemporaries, apostrophized by
Milton only fourteen years after his death as the "dear son of memory,
great heir to fame,"--

"So sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings, for such a tomb, would wish to die,"--

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Fri 29th Mar 2024, 2:26