|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 40
The Knickerbocker's "History of New York" and the "Sketch-Book" never
would have won for Irving the gold medal of the Royal Society of
Literature, or the degree of D.C.L. from Oxford.
However much the world would have liked frankly to honor the writer for
that which it most enjoyed and was under most obligations for, it would
have been a violent shock to the constitution of things to have given
such honor to the mere humorist and the writer of short sketches. The
conventional literary proprieties must be observed. Only some laborious,
solid, and improving work of the pen could sanction such distinction,--a
book of research or an historical composition. It need not necessarily
be dull, but it must be grave in tone and serious in intention, in order
to give the author high recognition.
Irving himself shared this opinion. He hoped, in the composition of his
"Columbus" and his "Washington," to produce works which should justify
the good opinion his countrymen had formed of him, should reasonably
satisfy the expectations excited by his lighter books, and lay for him
the basis of enduring reputation. All that he had done before was the
play of careless genius, the exercise of frolicsome fancy, which might
amuse and perhaps win an affectionate regard for the author, but could
not justify a high respect or secure a permanent place in literature.
For this, some work of scholarship and industry was needed.
And yet everybody would probably have admitted that there was but one
man then living who could have created and peopled the vast and humorous
world of the Knickerbockers; that all the learning of Oxford and
Cambridge together would not enable a man to draw the whimsical portrait
of Ichabod Crane, or to outline the fascinating legend of Rip Van
Winkle; while Europe was full of scholars of more learning than Irving,
and writers of equal skill in narrative, who might have told the story
of Columbus as well as he told it and perhaps better. The
under-graduates of Oxford who hooted their admiration of the shy author
when he appeared in the theatre to receive his complimentary degree
perhaps understood this, and expressed it in their shouts of "Diedrich
Knickerbocker," "Ichabod Crane," "Rip Van Winkle."
Irving's "gift" was humor; and allied to this was sentiment. These
qualities modified and restrained each other; and it was by these that
he touched the heart. He acquired other powers which he himself may have
valued more highly, and which brought him more substantial honors; but
the historical compositions, which he and his contemporaries regarded as
a solid basis of fame, could be spared without serious loss, while the
works of humor, the first fruits of his genius, are possessions in
English literature the loss of which would be irreparable. The world may
never openly allow to humor a position "above the salt," but it clings
to its fresh and original productions, generation after generation,
finding room for them in its accumulating literary baggage, while more
"important" tomes of scholarship and industry strew the line of its
march.
I feel that this study of Irving as a man of letters would be
incomplete, especially for the young readers of this generation, if it
did not contain some more extended citations from those works upon which
we have formed our estimate of his quality. We will take first a few
passages from the "History of New York."
* * * * *
It has been said that Irving lacked imagination. That, while he had
humor and feeling and fancy, he was wanting in the higher quality, which
is the last test of genius. We have come to attach to the word
"imagination" a larger meaning than the mere reproduction in the mind of
certain absent objects of sense that have been perceived; there must be
a suggestion of something beyond these, and an ennobling suggestion, if
not a combination, that amounts to a new creation. Now, it seems to me
that the transmutation of the crude and theretofore unpoetical
materials, which he found in the New World, into what is as absolute a
creation as exists in literature, was a distinct work of the
imagination. Its humorous quality does not interfere with its largeness
of outline, nor with its essential poetic coloring. For, whimsical and
comical as is the "Knickerbocker" creation, it is enlarged to the
proportion of a realm, and over that new country of the imagination is
always the rosy light of sentiment.
This largeness of modified conception cannot be made apparent in such
brief extracts as we can make, but they will show its quality and the
author's humor. The Low-Dutch settlers of the Nieuw Nederlandts are
supposed to have sailed from Amsterdam in a ship called the Goede Vrouw,
built by the carpenters of that city, who always model their ships on
the fair forms of their countrywomen. This vessel, whose beauteous model
was declared to be the greatest belle in Amsterdam, had one hundred feet
in the beam, one hundred feet in the keel, and one hundred feet from the
bottom of the stern-post to the taffrail. Those illustrious adventurers
who sailed in her landed on the Jersey flats, preferring a marshy
ground, where they could drive piles and construct dykes. They made a
settlement at the Indian village of Communipaw, the egg from which was
hatched the mighty city of New York. In the author's time this place had
lost its importance:--
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|