Autumn

IRVING'S CHIEF WORKS

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life sweeping into the West, he journeyed beyond the Mississippi and found material for his pioneering books; but an active life was far from His Mellow his taste, and presently he built his house "Sunnyside" (appropriate name) at Tarrytown on the Hudson. There he spent the remainder of his days, with the exception of four years in which he served the nation as ambassador to Spain. This honor, urged upon him by Webster and President Tyler, was accepted with characteristic modesty not as a personal reward but as a tribute which America had been wont to offer to the profession of letters.

Chief Works of Irving. A good way to form a general impression of Irving's works is to arrange them chronologically in five main groups. The first, consisting of the Salmagundi essays, the Knickerbocker History and a few other trifles, we may call the Oldstyle group, after the pseudonym assumed by the author.1 The second or Sketch-Book group includes the Sketch Book, Bracebridge Hall and Tales of a Traveller. The third or Alhambra group, devoted to Spanish and Moorish themes, includes The Conquest of Granada, Spanish Voyages of Discovery, The Alhambra and certain similar works of a later period, such as Moorish Chronicles and Legends of the Conquest of Spain. The fourth or Western group contains A Tour on the Prairies, Astoria and Adventures of Captain Bonneville. The fifth or Sunnyside group is made up chiefly of biographies, Oliver Goldsmith, Mahomet and his Successors and The Life of Washington. Besides these are some essays and stories assembled under the titles of Spanish Papers and Wolfert's Roost.

The Salmagundi papers and others of the Oldstyle group would have been forgotten long ago if anybody else had written them. In other words, our interest in them is due not to their intrinsic value (for they are all "small potatoes ") but to the fact that their author became a famous literary man.

1 Ever since Revolutionary days it had been the fashion for young American writers to use an assumed name. Irving appeared at different times as "Jonathan Oldstyle." "Diedrich Knickerbocker" and "Geoffrey Crayon, Gent."

Most candid readers would probably apply this criticism also to the Knickerbocker History, had not that grotesque joke won an undeserved reputation as a work of humor.

The story of the Knickerbocker fabrication illustrates the happy-go-lucky method of all Irving's earlier work. He had tired of his Salmagundi fooling and was looking Knickerbocker for variety when his eyes lighted on Dr. Mitchill's History Picture of New York, a grandiloquent work written by a prominent member of the Historical Society. In a lightheaded moment Irving and his brother Peter resolved to burlesque this history and, in the approved fashion of that day, to begin with the foundation of the world. Then Peter went to Europe on more important business, and Irving went on with his joke alone. He professed to have discovered the notes of a learned Dutch antiquarian who had recently disappeared, leaving a mass of manuscript and an unpaid boardbill behind him. After advertising in the newspapers for the missing man, Irving served notice on the public that the profound value of Knickerbocker's papers justified their publication, and that the proceeds of the book would be devoted to paying the board-bill. Then appeared, in time to satisfy the aroused curiosity of the Historical Society, to whom the book was solemnly dedicated, the History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809).

This literary hoax made an instant sensation; it was denounced for its scandalous irreverence by the members of the Historical Society, especially by those who had Dutch ancestors, but was received with roars of laughter by the rest of the population. Those who read it now (from curiosity, for its merriment has long since departed, leaving it dull as any thrice-repeated joke) are advised to skip the first two books, which are very tedious fooling, and to be content with an abridged version of the stories of Wouter van Twiller, William the Testy and Peter the Headstrong. These are the names of

THE SKETCH BOOK

381 real Dutch governors of New Amsterdam, and the dates given are exact dates; but there history ends and burlesque begins. The combination of fact and nonsense and the strain of gravity in which absurdities are related have led some critics to place the Knickerbocker History first in time of the notable works of so-called American humor. That is doubtless a fair classification; but other critics assert that real humor is as purely human as a smile or a tear, and has therefore no national or racial limitations.

The Sketch Book, chief of the second group of writings, is perhaps the best single work that Irving produced. We shall read it with better understanding if we remember Sketch Book that it was the work of a young man who, having always done as he pleased, proceeds now to write of whatever pleasant matter is close at hand. Being in England at the time, he naturally finds most of his material there; and being youthful, romantic and sentimental, he colors everything with the hue of his own disposition. He begins by chatting of the journey and of the wide sea that separates him from home. He records his impressions of the beautiful English country, tells what he saw or felt during his visit to Stratford on Avon, and what he dreamed in Westminster Abbey, a place hallowed by centuries of worship and humanized by the presence of the great dead. He sheds a ready tear over a rural funeral, and tries to make us cry over the sorrows of a poor widow; then to relieve our feelings he pokes a bit of fun at John Bull. Something calls his attention to Isaac Walton, and he writes a Waltonian kind of sketch about a fisherman. In one chapter he comments on contemporary literature; then, as if not quite satisfied with what authors are doing, he lays aside his record of present impressions, goes back in thought to his home by the Hudson, and produces two stories of such humor, charm and originality that they make the rest of the book appear almost commonplace, as the careless sketches of a painter are forgotten in presence of his inspired masterpiece.

These two stories, the most pleasing that Irving ever wrote, are "Rip van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." They should be read if one reads nothing else of the author's twenty volumes.

The works on Spanish themes appeal in different ways to different readers. One who knows his history will complain (and justly) that Irving is superficial, that he is concerned

with picturesque rather than with important incidents; but one who likes the romance of history, and who reflects that romance Spanish plays an important part in the life of any people, Themes will find the legends and chronicles of this Spanish group as interesting as fiction. We should remember, moreover, that in Irving's day the romance of old Spain, familiar enough to European readers, was to most Americans still fresh and wondrous. In emphasizing the romantic or picturesque side of his subject he not only pleased his readers but broadened their horizon; he also influenced a whole generation

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of historians who, in contrast with the scientific or prosaic historians of to-day, did not hesitate to add the element of human interest to their narratives.

The

The most widely read of all the works of the Spanish group is The Alhambra (1832). This is, on the surface, a collection of semihistorical essays and tales clustering around Alhambra the ancient palace, in Granada, which was the last stronghold of the Moors in Europe; in reality it is a record of the impressions and dreams of a man who, finding himself on historic ground, gives free rein to his imagination. At times, indeed, he seems to have his eye on his American readers, who were then in a romantic mood, rather than on the place or people he was describing. The book delighted its first critics, who called it "the Spanish Sketch Book"; but though pleasant enough as a romantic dream of history, it hardly compares in originality with its famous predecessor.

Western

Except to those who like a brave tale of exploration, and who happily have no academic interest in style, Irving's In fact, Stories they are often omitted from the list of his important works, though they have more adventurous interest than all the others combined. A Tour on the Prairies, which records a journey beyond the Mississippi in the days when buffalo were the explorers' mainstay, is the best written of the pioneer books; but the Adventures of Captain Bonneville, a story of wandering up and down the great West with plenty of adventures among Indians and "free trappers," furnishes the most excitement. Unfortunately this journal, which vies in interest with Parkman's Oregon Trail, cannot be credited to Irving, though it bears his name on the title-page.1

western books are of little consequence.

1 The Adventures is chiefly the work of a Frenchman, a daring free-rover, who probably tried in vain to get his work published. Irving bought the work for a thousand dollars, revised it slightly, gave it his name and sold it for seven or eight times what he paid for it. In Astoria, the third book of the western group, he sold his services to write up the records of the fur house established by John Jacob Astor, and made a poor job of it.