THE LIFE OF WASHINGTON. adapting the researches of Prior and Forster, fully borne by the author, who sacrificed welland a revised edition of his own writings pub-earned ease and leisure, with no other stimulus lished by Putnam, of which several of the vol- than the sense of duty, and with which we may umes have been issued in a more costly form, associate the impulse of genius, performing a enriched by the vigorous and refined designs of great part, if not the whole, of his allotted work Darley, were the literary employments of his after he had attained the age of threescore and closing years. His retirement at Sunnyside was ten. There are few more cheering instances of all that his youthful fancy painted, and more literary activity in the whole history of authorthan experience of the world could have prom- ship. We have frequently thought, as our eye ised. His age was not exempt from infirmities; but it was spared many of the sufferings common to mortality. And when he came to die, his soul passed to heaven the nearest way. His death, on the night of November 28, 1859, when he had just retired from his cheerful family circle, was instantaneous. We now return to the concluding literary labor of the life we have thus traced to its close. The preface to the first volume of the Washington bears date 1855. Two volumes were published in that year; a third in the following; a fourth in 1857; the fifth, and concluding portion, in 1859. It was the completion of a work to which, in his own words prefixed to the last volume, "the author had long looked forward as the crowning effort of his literary career." Continuing this retrospect, Mr. Irving relates that "the idea of writing a life of Washington entered at an early day into his mind. It was especially pressed upon his attention nearly thirty years ago, while he was in Europe, by a proposition of the late Mr. Archibald Constable, the eminent publisher of Edinburgh, and he resolved to undertake it as soon as he should return to the United States, and be within reach of the necessary documents." The purpose was never lost sight of, though the work was postponed. If there was any expiation due the delay, the author paid the penalty in the increasing difficulty of the theme. Thirty years ago less would have been demanded by the public in the performance of such a work. A thoroughly scientific school of historians had sprung up in the interval. The collection of facts by the historical societies and other agencies imposed new exactions in the weighing of evidence. Each addition to the vast Washington library brought additional care and responsibility. Researches of this nature may, indeed, be benefited by the judgment of age; but the labor would seem to require the strength and enthusiasm of youth. The writer, no doubt, found the undertaking a very different one from that which presented itself to his mind, on his first conception of the idea in the presence of Mr. Constable. There were sterner requisitions, as we have said, to be met; and there was also a spectre of his own raising to be encountered, the shadow of his fame. But, whatever the struggle, it was man rested on the narrative, that the author needed all the encouragement to be derived from the conscientiousness and sense of duty of his great subject. There stood above the page the awful shade of Washington, with warning finger pointing the way his historian should follow. The monition was not unheeded. The history is such a one as Washington himself, were he privileged or condemned to revisit the scene of his earthly cares and anxieties, the country which he loved, the people for whom he gravely toiled, would, we think, calmly approve of. The qualities of Washington in the book are its simple, straightforward manner; its dignity and reserve, associated with care and candor, its paramount truthfulness. It is scarcely possible that a work of the kind could be written with greater absence of display or personal pretension on the part of the writer. The labor of rejection must have been great, where the material was overwhelming. The forbearance and self-denial, the avoidance of the sin of surplusage, can be fully estimated only by one who has made the prevalent characteristics and vices of the literature of the day a study. There are eloquent, profound, learned works in abundance; but a well-written book is a great rarity. We are not aware that Mr. Irving goes out of his way to make a point, indulge in an unnecessary digression, or yield, in a single instance, to the temptation to description, which last must, at times, have sorely beset his pen. He never stops in his steady movement to attitudinize, to strike a position, arouse the attention of his reader with "Here we are!" like the mountebank in the ring, or violate in any manner the sober pace of history. Great men come and depart noiselessly on the plain republican stage, trumpeted by no rhetorical blare of adjectives; their acts only betray their presence. There are no set attempts, no efforts for effect. A half reflection inwrought with the progress of the sentence, a single epithet does all-and the whole is any thing but a barren recital. It is the charm of the writings of Washington himself, where we are impressed by the truthfulness and pleased by a certain native gracefulness-a plain thing like the clown's mistress, but his own. Little, winning idiomatic touches frequently appear in the composition; but it has also the higher merit of COPYRIGHTS.-FRIENDSHIP WITH ARTISTS. sand dollars. They owe much to the good taste of the publisher, especially in the illustrated series. dramatic unity and steady progress. Washing-said, have paid to the author seventy-five thouton is the central personage, never far distant, always inspiring and directing the scene: he appears firmly planted amidst the historical elements of his people and country. Mr. Irving always received handsome sums for his copyrights. In 1850 it began to be doubted in England whether the copyright of a book by an American or alien could be held by a British publisher, and Irving's works were boldly taken from Murray, and issued in cheap editions by Bohn and Routledge. The legal question was carried into the Court of Chancery, and the plea was at least meditated by Mr. Murray, that Mr. Irving was not an alien, his father being a native of the Orkneys, and his mother of Falmouth. The absurdity of this pretence to citizenshipwith which, of course, Mr. Irving had nothing to do-in behalf of an American who had held military rank in a war with Great Britain, was at once apparent. What stood in the way, it was asked, if he were a British subject, of taking him from Westminster Hall, as a rebel, to a court-martial, and ordering him to be shot! A more pertinent plea was Mr. Murray's long previous undisputed enjoyment of the copyrights, and a statement of the sums he had paid for them. As given in the London Athenæum of Aug. 24, 1850, they were as follows: footing up the respectable sum of..9,767 10 Mr. Bentley also published a statement of the sums paid by him to Irving, in conjunction with his partner, Colburn. They were, for the copyright of the Alhambra, £1,050; for Astoria, £500; for Captain Bonneville's Adventures, £900. Nor were his copyrights of late less remunerative in America. In a recent statement it is said, that within the last ten years—the period of the revised edition of his works-there have been sold twenty-two thousand sets of fifteen volumes each, exclusive of the Life of Washington, and The Sketch Book; while of the latter thirty-five thousand copies have been distributed, and of the Washington forty-two thousand sets of five volumes each-a total of five hundred and seventy-five thousand volumes disposed of by Mr. George P. Putnam, the publisher of the works since 1849. These various editions, it is Mr. Allibone, who, in his "Critical Dictionary," has infused a loving spirit into his comprehensive bibliographical details of the writings of Irving, pays a just tribute to his publisher, Mr. Putnam,-"a gentleman who, by his extensive circulation of sound literature for many years both in Europe and America, has honestly earned the title of a benefactor to the public mind." A letter from Mr. Irving to Mr. Putnam, expresses a still more intimate and cordial sentiment. "I take pleasure," he writes, "in expressing the great satisfaction I have derived throughout all our intercourse, from your amiable, obliging, and honorable conduct. Indeed, I never had dealings with any man, whether in the way of business or friendship, more perfectly free from any alloy." Mr. Irving was throughout life fortunate in his friendships with artists, who were attracted by the man, no less than his picturesque books, for subjects for their pencil. His friend, the Academician Leslie, who had much in common with his genius, designed for Murray a series of ten plates to illustrate The Sketch Book, and Knickerbocker's History of New York, which were engraved by the best artists of the day. He also introduced a portrait of his friend in his Roger de Coverly picture. Allston, likewise, made illustrations for the Knickerbocker. Heath, the engraver, drew a humorous design of the march of the great Amsterdam army to the attack of Fort Casimir, from the original of which, preserved at Sunnyside, an engraving was published by Mr. Putnam. He also engraved a choice series of Illustrations of the Sketch Book, from designs by Westall. George Cruikshank also made several capital pictures for an edition of Knickerbocker, published in the "Family Library," and also quite a number of very felicitous designs, chiefly from Salmagundi, and the Knickerbocker, which appeared in an elegant little volume, by Tegg, of London, entitled The Beauties of Washington Irving. Of the American designs, by Mr. Darley, much might be said, particularly of the two series of "Sleepy Hollow," and “Rip Van Winkle," issued by the American Art Union. They seize with a firm grasp, and an individuality of their own, the stronger and deeper elements of Mr. Irving's pathos and humor. They are full of grace and feeling, and are something more than interpreters of the author,-they are revelations of the artist's own mind. Washington Irving was so lucky in his choice of subjects, and treated them so happily, that his name and fame are associated with some of the AT THE ALHAMBRA.-LOVE OF THE HUDSON. evenings with Mateo, Tia Antonio, and Dolores, exciting their powers of story-telling, listening to their recitals, and reviving their flagging memory or invention by a good supper when the night wore on. It was pleasant to hear how good Geoffrey had given a marriage portion to that "little, plump, black-eyed Andalusian damsel Dolores." Our traveller visited Mateo, of course, and found him a quiet, slow, soft-spoken, good-looking old man, such as his beneficent guest would be inclined to cotton to. He saw, in fact, Washington Irving firmly rooted in the pockets and affections of the tribe, a sort of family estate or heirloom handed down from father to son. most enduring objects of interest about the and narrated how he was accustomed to pass his world. At Stratford-upon-Avon, the traveller, sitting down at the cheerful fireside of mine host of the "Red Lion," may, if he will, wield "the sceptre of Geoffrey Crayon;" when the traditional poker with which that pleasant tourist stirred the fire, bearing that identical inscription, is put into his hands, with a well-thumbed copy of the Sketch-Book, in which it is all written down, as voucher. The incident happened to ourself, and we presume the custom will be perpetuated to a late posterity, with the memories of the "Red Lion Inn"-for inns in England have a long life. Next to the birthplace of Shakspeare, the fancy of the world nestles in the quaint galleries, pillared courts, and carved recesses of the Alhambra-the deserted home of a fallen race, dear to the imagination in a land of poetry. Washington Irving is firmly installed in the traditions of the place, and will doubtless, in time, become a myth, with King Chico and the rest. A traveller who recently visited the Alhambra was immediately taken possession of, upon his arrival at Granada, by a youth of the town, who produced his plenipotentiary powers over English-speaking strangers in the following card: GRANADA. JOSÉ JIMENEZ, (SON OF MATEO JIMENEZ, GUIDE TO WASHINGTON IRVING,) A NATIVE OF THE ALHAMBRA, RESPECTFULLY offers his services, to ac— company Strangers, Travellers and visitors, to the Palace of the Alhambra and the environs of the above named Capital; for which his intimate acquainlance with the antiquities and beauties which distinguish GRANADA, eminently qualify him. The Irving traditions were rife in his mind. He pointed out Geoffrey Crayon's apartments, If these are slight, though agreeable incidents to travellers, home-keepers are not forgetful of these haunts of the imagination. They, too, remember what they owe to Irving; and they have other claims upon their sympathy in the biographies of Goldsmith, of Columbus, and Washington. It is something to be associated with these names, and leave behind all baser matter. We might linger, too, upon the nationality of Irving's descriptions of American nature; of the fortunate turn his mind took to the great western regions of the American continent before they were invaded by the advancing pioneers of civilization: we might say much of the fancy and humor with which he has invested his native island and city: and no reader of his writings can forget his love of the noble river which flowed by his doorway, which had tempted his youthful imagination with its magic wonderswhich had been fondly remembered by him in distant lands as he traced it in descriptionwhich was the solace of his age, and glowed, deeply dyed in the rays of the setting sun at his burial. "I thank God," he wrote in his later years, "that I was born on the banks of the Hudson. I fancy I can trace much of what is good and pleasant in my own heterogeneous compound to my early companionship with this glorious river. In the warmth of youthful enthusiasm, I used to clothe it with moral attributes, and, as it were, give it a soul. I delighted in its frank, bold, honest character; its noble sincerity, and perfect truth. Here was no specious, smiling surface, covering the shifting sandbar and perfidious rock, but a stream deep as it was broad, and bearing with honorable faith the bark that trusted to its waves. I gloried in its simple, quiet, majestic, epic flow, ever straight forward, or, if forced aside for once by opposing mountains, struggling bravely through them, and resuming its onward march. Behold, thought I, an emblem of a good man's course through life, ever simple, open, and direct; or if, over GENIUS OF IRVING.-HABITS OF COMPOSITION. powered by adverse circumstances, he deviate into error, it is but momentary-he soon resumes his onward and honorable career, and continues it to the end of his pilgrimage." most literature is weariness, in the sick-room of the convalescent. Every influence which breathes from these writings is good and generous. Their sentiment is always just and manly, without cant or affectation; their humor is always within the tion of American nature, which is not the less nature for the art with which it is adorned. The color of personality attaches us throughout to the author, whose humor of character is always to be felt. This happy art of presenting rude and confused objects in an orderly pleasurable aspect, everywhere to be met with in the pages of Irving, is one of the most beneficent in literature. The philosopher Hume said a turn for humor was worth to him ten thousand a year, and it is this gift which the writings of Irving impart. To this quality is allied an active fancy and poetic imagination, many of the choicest passages of Irving being interpenetrated by this vivifying power. On one or two occasions only, we believe,-in some stanzas to the Passaic River, some delicate lines descriptive of a painting by Gilbert Stuart Newton, and a theatrical address once pronounced by Cooper at the Park Theatre,-has he ever put pen to verse: but he is an essential poet in prose, in many exquisite passages of vivid description from Westininster Abbey and English rural scenery to the waste beauties of the great region beyond the Mississippi. The finest description, perhaps, of the American climate ever written is from the pen of Ir-bounds of propriety. They have a fresh inspiraving. It occurs in an out-of-the-way sketch of the Catskills in the Book of the Picturesque, published a few years ago. "Here let me say a word in favor of those vicissitudes which are too often made the subject of exclusive repining. If they annoy us occasionally by changes from hot to cold, from wet to dry, they give us one of the most beautiful climates in the world. They give | us the brilliant sunshine of the south of Europe with the fresh verdure of the north. They float our summer sky with clouds of gorgeous tints or fleecy whiteness, and send down cooling showers to refresh the panting earth and keep it green. Our seasons are all poetical; the phenomena of our heavens are full of sublimity and beauty. Winter with us has none of its proverbial gloom. It may have its howling winds, and thrilling frosts, and whirling snow-storms; but it has also its long intervals of cloudless sunshine, when the snow-clad earth gives redoubled brightness to the day; when at night the stars beam with intensest lustre, or the moon floods the whole landscape with her most limpid radiance-and then the joyous outbreak of our spring, bursting at once into leaf and blossom, redundant with vegetation, and vociferous with life!-and the In composition, Mr. Irving's style flowed splendors of our summer; its morning voluptu- easily, though in common with most writers of ousness and evening glory; its airy palaces of original genius he had his favoring moods and sun-gilt clouds piled up in a deep azure sky; and seasons. Some of his best works were struck off its gusts of tempest of almost tropical grandeur, at a heat. He took pleasure in writing when he when the forked lightning and the bellowing could have his own way, and nurse a subject in thunder volley from the battlements of heaven his mind. The many hours passed at his desk in and shake the sultry atmosphere-and the sub- the absorbing pursuit of tracing his small, neat lime melancholy of our autumn, magnificent in manuscript pages, were among his happiest. its decay, withering down the pomp and pride His principles of composition were few and simof a woodland country, yet reflecting back from ple. He recommended short and direct phrases its yellow forests the golden serenity of the sky in writing, with as few long words as possible, -surely we may say that in our climate the avoiding the use of conjunctions and expletives. heavens declare the glory of God, and the firma- On looking over his books we find that he is ment showeth forth his handywork day unto much less indebted to the Latin element of the day uttereth speech; and night unto night show-language, for the flow of his composition, than eth knowledge.' In estimating the genius of Irving, we can hardly attach too high a value to the refined qualities and genial humor which have made his writings favorites wherever the English language is read. The charm is in the proportion, the keeping, the happy vein which inspires happiness in return. It is the felicity of but few authors, out of the vast stock of English literature, to delight equally young and old. The tales of Irving are the favorite authors of childhood, and their good humor and amenity can please where we had supposed. He would, doubtless, have concurred with the advice of Sydney Smith to a young author, to improve his style by striking out every other word. He attributed his ease in writing, we have heard it stated, to the early training which he received at his first school, where this branch of education was much insisted upon. He would write out the compositions of many of his schoolfellows, and adapt his style to that of the one whose task he had undertaken. This is the remark of one who knew him well. But whatever PERSONAL TRAITS. direction may thus have been given to his guided him in every thing. A beneficent deity "He read much as a boy," remarks our narrator," and always had entertaining books in his desk for a stealthy perusal, when the master's eye was turned. He was not a very deep classical scholar, not having received a collegiate education, but his deficiencies in this respect were amply compensated by his thorough ease in the use of plain, terse English, in which he was excelled by none. In reading, his memory of facts was not good, but he would grasp the spirit of a narrative, and conjure up a coloring of his own, which indelibly impressed it upon his mind, and was used as occasion required."* We have said that the university of Irving was the world. He was never a very bookish man in the restricted sense; he was oftener to be found in good company than in the library, in the fields and streets than in the study; yet he was not a man of action in crowds. His life was a happy compromise between literature and society. A meditative disposition threw him upon himself; he was not cramped by pedantry, nor was his mind volatilized or lost in the dissipations or business of the world. 66 "Nothing annoyed him," writes Mr. Brevoort to us, so much as to be lionized, or made the centre of a group of listeners. To hear him talk, and to draw him out, it was necessary to have but few present. He preferred the society of such as had some refinement of taste; not humorous or witty, but with a disposition to take the pleasant side of any question; neither boisterous nor satirical. He never said any thing for effect, nor with a view to its being repeated or recorded. His remarks would drop from him as naturally as possible, and he never monopolized the conversation, but followed, instead of leading it," His chief guides were his tastes and affections, with which his principles of duty and religion, his love of independence, and his patriotism, were inwrought. Let his pastor, and the villagers and children of his neighborhood, as on the day of his funeral, that memorable first of December, when nature seemed to sympathize with his departure from earth, bear witness to his unaffected piety. BY W. FRANCIS WILLIAMS. It was early remarked by one of the most subtle and powerful critics whom America has THE FUNERAL OF WASHINGTON IRVING. produced, Mr. Dana, the author of that more deeply-graven "Sketch Book," The Idle Man, that Irving's wit and humor do not appear to come of reading witty and humorous books; but from the world acting upon a mind of that cast, and putting those powers in motion."† We have now concluded our brief sketch of the literary career of Washington Irving. It would be an injustice to his memory, and a reproach to ourselves, not to say a word of those sterling moral qualities which were the secret springs nurturing, in the image of Jeremy Taylor, the "fair spreading tree" of his reputation in his books. He was intimately and essentially, in small things and in great, an honest, honorable inan. His judgment was sound, and his course always straightforward; so that he attained success without craft or chicanery, which were entirely foreign to his nature. A modest simplicity * MS. Notes by Mr. J. Carson Brevoort. + North American Review for 1319. Article-"The Sketch Book." YESTERDAY* the funeral of Washington Irving took place at Tarrytown, where for twenty-one years the great author had resided, and to almost every inhabitant of which he was a personal friend. Indeed, the unanimity with which the people of that vicinity flocked to do honor to of their late fellow-townsman, was the spontaneous exhibition of their personal regard rather than an ovation to the genius and talent of a world-renowned author. the memory According to previous arrangement the stores at Tarrytown were closed yesterday, and many of them draped with black and white muslin. This gave a peculiar air of melancholy to the aspect of this quiet village, to which the slow tolling of the church-bells gave an additional mournfulness. The numerous visitors from New York, most of whom came by the eleven-o'clock train from the city, reaching Tarrytown at about This sketch appeared in the N. Y. Evening Post, Dec. 2, 1839. |