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Page 2
he was neglected by the succeeding age, the subject of violent extremes
of opinion in the eighteenth century, and so lightly esteemed by some
that Hume could doubt if he were a poet "capable of furnishing a proper
entertainment to a refined and intelligent audience," and attribute to
the rudeness of his "disproportioned and misshapen" genius the "reproach
of barbarism" which the English nation had suffered from all its
neighbors. Only recently has the study of him by English scholars--I do
not refer to the verbal squabbles over the text--been proportioned to
his pre�minence, and his fame is still slowly asserting itself among
foreign peoples.
There are already signs that we are not to accept as the final judgment
upon the English contemporaries of Irving the currency their writings
have now. In the case of Walter Scott, although there is already visible
a reaction against a reaction, he is not, at least in America, read by
this generation as he was by the last. This faint reaction is no doubt a
sign of a deeper change impending in philosophic and metaphysical
speculation. An age is apt to take a lurch in a body one way or another,
and those most active in it do not always perceive how largely its
direction is determined by what are called mere systems of philosophy.
The novelist may not know whether he is steered by Kant, or Hegel, or
Schopenhauer. The humanitarian novel, the fictions of passion, of
realism, of doubt, the poetry and the essays addressed to the mood of
unrest, of questioning, to the scientific spirit and to the shifting
attitudes of social change and reform, claim the attention of an age
that is completely adrift in regard to the relations of the supernatural
and the material, the ideal and the real. It would be natural if in such
a time of confusion the calm tones of unexaggerated literary art should
be not so much heeded as the more strident voices. Yet when the passing
fashion of this day is succeeded by the fashion of another, that which
is most acceptable to the thought and feeling of the present may be
without an audience; and it may happen that few recent authors will be
read as Scott and the writers of the early part of this century will be
read. It may, however, be safely predicted that those writers of fiction
worthy to be called literary artists will best retain their hold who
have faithfully painted the manners of their own time.
Irving has shared the neglect of the writers of his generation. It
would be strange, even in America, if this were not so. The development
of American literature (using the term in its broadest sense) in the
past forty years is greater than could have been expected in a nation
which had its ground to clear, its wealth to win, and its new
governmental experiment to adjust; if we confine our view to the last
twenty years, the national production is vast in amount and encouraging
in quality. It suffices to say of it here, in a general way, that the
most vigorous activity has been in the departments of history, of
applied science, and the discussion of social and economic problems.
Although pure literature has made considerable gains, the main
achievement has been in other directions. The audience of the literary
artist has been less than that of the reporter of affairs and
discoveries and the special correspondent. The age is too busy, too
harassed, to have time for literature; and enjoyment of writings like
those of Irving depends upon leisure of mind. The mass of readers have
cared less for form than for novelty and news and the satisfying of a
recently awakened curiosity. This was inevitable in an era of
journalism, one marked by the marvelous results attained in the fields
of religion, science, and art, by the adoption of the comparative
method. Perhaps there is no better illustration of the vigor and
intellectual activity of the age than a living English writer, who has
traversed and illuminated almost every province of modern thought,
controversy, and scholarship; but who supposes that Mr. Gladstone has
added anything to permanent literature? He has been an immense force in
his own time, and his influence the next generation will still feel and
acknowledge, while it reads not the writings of Mr. Gladstone but may be
those of the author of "Henry Esmond" and the biographer of "Rab and his
Friends." De Quincey divides literature into two sorts, the literature
of power and the literature of knowledge. The latter is of necessity for
to-day only, and must be revised to-morrow. The definition has scarcely
De Quincey's usual verbal felicity, but we can apprehend the distinction
he intended to make.
It is to be noted also, and not with regard to Irving only, that the
attention of young and old readers has been so occupied and distracted
by the flood of new books, written with the single purpose of satisfying
the wants of the day, produced and distributed with marvelous cheapness
and facility that the standard works of approved literature remain for
the most part unread upon the shelves. Thirty years ago Irving was much
read in America by young people and his clear style helped to form a
good taste and correct literary habits. It is not so now. The
manufacturers of books, periodicals, and newspapers for the young keep
the rising generation fully occupied, with a result to its taste and
mental fibre which, to say the least of it, must be regarded with some
apprehension. The "plant," in the way of money and writing industry
invested in the production of juvenile literature, is so large and is so
permanent an interest, that it requires more discriminating
consideration than can be given to it in a passing paragraph.
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