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Page 63
He had time also to revise his works. It is perhaps worthy of note that
for several years, while he was at the height of his popularity, his
books had very little sale. From 1842 to 1848 they were out of print,
with the exception of some stray copies of a cheap Philadelphia edition,
and a Paris collection (a volume of this, at my hand, is one of a series
entitled a "Collection of Ancient and Modern _British_ Authors"), they
were not to be found. The Philadelphia publishers did not think there
was sufficient demand to warrant a new edition. Mr. Irving and his
friends judged the market more wisely, and a young New York publisher
offered to assume the responsibility. This was Mr. George P. Putnam. The
event justified his sagacity and his liberal enterprise; from July,
1848, to November, 1859, the author received on his copyright over
eighty-eight thousand dollars. And it should be added that the relations
between author and publisher, both in prosperity and in times of
business disaster, reflect the highest credit upon both. If the like
relations always obtained we should not have to say: "May the Lord pity
the authors in this world, and the publishers in the next."
I have outlined the life of Washington Irving in vain, if we have not
already come to a tolerably clear conception of the character of the man
and of his books. If I were exactly to follow his literary method I
should do nothing more. The idiosyncrasies of the man are the strength
and weakness of his works. I do not know any other author whose writings
so perfectly reproduce his character, or whose character may be more
certainly measured by his writings. His character is perfectly
transparent: his predominant traits were humor and sentiment; his
temperament was gay with a dash of melancholy; his inner life and his
mental operations were the reverse of complex, and his literary method
is simple. He _felt_ his subject, and he expressed his conception not so
much by direct statement or description as by almost imperceptible
touches and shadings here and there, by a diffused tone and color, with
very little show of analysis. Perhaps it is a sufficient definition to
say that his method was the sympathetic. In the end the reader is put in
possession of the luminous and complete idea upon which the author has
been brooding, though he may not be able to say exactly how the
impression has been conveyed to him; and I doubt if the author could
have explained his sympathetic process. He certainly would have lacked
precision in any philosophical or metaphysical theme, and when, in his
letters, he touches upon politics there is a little vagueness of
definition that indicates want of mental grip in that direction. But in
the region of feeling his genius is sufficient to his purpose; either
when that purpose is a highly creative one, as in the character and
achievements of his Dutch heroes, or merely that of portraiture, as in
the "Columbus" and the "Washington." The analysis of a nature so simple
and a character so transparent as Irving's, who lived in the sunlight
and had no envelope of mystery, has not the fascination that attaches to
Hawthorne.
Although the direction of his work as a man of letters was largely
determined by his early surroundings,--that is, by his birth in a land
void of traditions, and into a society without much literary life, so
that his intellectual food was of necessity a foreign literature that
was at the moment becoming a little antiquated in the land of its birth,
and his warm imagination was forced to revert to the past for that
nourishment which his crude environment did not offer,--yet he was by
nature a retrospective man. His face was set towards the past, not
towards the future. He never caught the restlessness of this century,
nor the prophetic light that shone in the faces of Coleridge, Shelley,
and Keats; if he apprehended the stir of the new spirit he still, by
mental affiliation, belonged rather to the age of Addison than to that
of Macaulay. And his placid, retrospective, optimistic strain pleased a
public that were excited and harrowed by the mocking and lamenting of
Lord Byron, and, singularly enough, pleased even the great pessimist
himself.
His writings induce to reflection, to quiet musing, to tenderness for
tradition; they amuse, they entertain, they call a check to the
feverishness of modern life; but they are rarely stimulating or
suggestive. They are better adapted, it must be owned, to please the
many than the critical few, who demand more incisive treatment and a
deeper consideration of the problems of life. And it is very fortunate
that a writer who can reach the great public and entertain it can also
elevate and refine its tastes, set before it high ideas, instruct it
agreeably, and all this in a style that belongs to the best literature.
It is a safe model for young readers; and for young readers there is
very little in the overwhelming flood of to-day that is comparable to
Irving's books, and, especially, it seems to me, because they were not
written for children.
Irving's position in American literature, or in that of the English
tongue, will only be determined by the slow settling of opinion, which
no critic can foretell, and the operation of which no criticism seems
able to explain. I venture to believe, however, that the verdict will
not be in accord with much of the present prevalent criticism. The
service that he rendered to American letters no critic disputes; nor is
there any question of our national indebtedness to him for investing a
crude and new land with the enduring charms of romance and tradition. In
this respect, our obligation to him is that of Scotland to Scott and
Burns; and it is an obligation due only, in all history, to here and
there a fortunate creator to whose genius opportunity is kind. The
Knickerbocker Legend and the romance with which Irving has invested the
Hudson are a priceless legacy; and this would remain an imperishable
possession in popular tradition if the literature creating it were
destroyed. This sort of creation is unique in modern times. New York is
the Knickerbocker city; its whole social life remains colored by his
fiction; and the romantic background it owes to him in some measure
supplies to it what great age has given to European cities. This
creation is sufficient to secure for him an immortality, a length of
earthly remembrance that all the rest of his writings together might
not give.
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