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Page 66
And this leads me to speak of Irving's moral quality, which I cannot
bring myself to exclude from a literary estimate, even in the face of
the current gospel of art for art's sake. There is something that made
Scott and Irving personally loved by the millions of their readers, who
had only the dimmest of ideas of their personality. This was some
quality perceived in what they wrote. Each one can define it for
himself; there it is, and I do not see why it is not as integral a part
of the authors--an element in the estimate of their future position--as
what we term their intellect, their knowledge, their skill, or their
art. However you rate it, you cannot account for Irving's influence in
the world without it. In his tender tribute to Irving, the great-hearted
Thackeray, who saw as clearly as anybody the place of mere literary art
in the sum total of life, quoted the dying words of Scott to
Lockhart,--"Be a good man, my dear." We know well enough that the great
author of "The Newcomes" and the great author of "The Heart of
Midlothian" recognized the abiding value in literature of integrity,
sincerity, purity, charity, faith. These are beneficences; and Irving's
literature, walk round it and measure it by whatever critical
instruments you will, is a beneficent literature. The author loved good
women and little children and a pure life; he had faith in his
fellow-men, a kindly sympathy with the lowest, without any subservience
to the highest; he retained a belief in the possibility of chivalrous
actions, and did not care to envelop them in a cynical suspicion; he was
an author still capable of an enthusiasm.* His books are wholesome, full
of sweetness and charm, of humor without any sting, of amusement without
any stain; and their more solid qualities are marred by neither pedantry
nor pretension.
*Transcriber's note: Word printed as "enthusiam" in original text.
Washington Irving died on the 28th of November, 1859, at the close of a
lovely day of that Indian Summer which is nowhere more full of a
melancholy charm than on the banks of the lower Hudson, and which was in
perfect accord with the ripe and peaceful close of his life. He was
buried on a little elevation overlooking Sleepy Hollow and the river he
loved, amidst the scenes which his magic pen has made classic and his
sepulchre hallows.
* * * * *
=Standard and Popular Library Books=
SELECTED FROM THE CATALOGUE OF
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.
John Adams and Abigail Adams.
Familiar Letters of, during the Revolution. 12mo, $2.00.
Louis Agassiz.
Methods of Study in Natural History. Illus. 16mo, $1.50.
Geological Sketches. First Series. 16mo, $1.50.
Geological Sketches. Second Series. 16mo, $1.50.
A Journey in Brazil. Illustrated. 8vo, $5.00.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
Story of a Bad Boy. Illustrated. 12mo, $1.50.
Marjorie Daw and Other People. 12mo, $1.50.
Prudence Palfrey. 12mo, $1.50.
The Queen of Sheba. 16mo, $1.50.
The Stillwater Tragedy. 12mo, $1.50.
From Ponkapog to Pesth. 16mo, $1.25.
Cloth of Gold and Other Poems. 12mo, $1.50.
Flower and Thorn. Later Poems. 16mo, $1.25.
Poems, Complete. Illustrated. 8vo, $5.00.
Mercedes, and Later Lyrics. 12mo.
American Commonwealths.
Edited by HORACE E. SCUDDER.
Virginia. By John Esten Cooke.
Oregon. By William Barrows.
(_In Preparation_.)
South Carolina. By Hon. W.H. Trescot.
Kentucky. By N.S. Shaler.
Maryland. By Wm. Hand Browne.
Pennsylvania. By Hon. Wayne MacVeagh.
Each volume, 16mo, $1.25.
Others to be announced hereafter.
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