The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1883-03-28

and Dryden, and their place is secure
The brows of irving and Cooper. of En-
erson and Hawthorne, do not crave the
laurels OF any other master. The per-
turbed spirit of Blackwood NAV rest in
the confident assurance that no generous
and intelligent student of our literature
admires Gibbon less because he admires
Macauly, or Bacon, because he delights
IN Emerson, or denies the sting of Gull
liver because he owns the charm of
knickerbocker. 1t is with good fame as
with true love,
That to divide is not to take away
knickerbocker's History was the work
OF young man of twenty-six, who lived
nifty years afterward, with a constantly
increasing fame, making many and adj
mlrable contributions to literature.
But nothing that followed surpassed the
Joyous brilliancy and gay felicity of the
earliest work. Appearing in the midst
OF the sober illusions of our Puritan lit
erature, and of grave and energetic
life still engrossed with the subiugation
of a continent and the establishment of
a new nation, Knickerbocker's History
was remarkable work. To pass the
vague and venerable traditions of the
austere and heroic founders of the city
through the alembic of youths hilari-
Gus creative humor, and turn them out
in forms resistlessly grotesque, but with
their identity uninlpaired, was a stroke
as daring as it was successful. The au-
dacious Goth of the legend who plucked
the Roman Senator by the beard was
not more ruthless iconocast than this
son of New Amsterdam, who drew his
civil ancestors from venerable obscurity
by flooding them with the cheerful light
of blameless fun.
The skill and power with which this is
done can be best appreciated by those
who are most familiar with the history
which the gleeful genius burlesques.
Irving follows the actual story closely,
and the characters that he develops
faithfully, although with smiling carl
cature, are historical. Indeed, the fidel-
ity is so absolute that the fiction is
welded with the fact. The days of
Dutch ascendency in New York are in
extricably associated with this ludicrous
narrative. The Wouther Van Twiller,
the Wilhelmus Kief, the Peter Stuyve-
SAINT, who are Familiarity and popularity
known, are the figures drawn by Died
rich Knickerbocker. In a comical
despair the historian Grahame, whose
Colonial history is still among the best,
says of Knickerbocker, "If Sancho Panza
had been real Governor misrepresented
by the wit of Cervantes, his future his
torian would have found it no easy mat
ter to bespeak grave attention to the
annals of his administration"
Irving's position in literature is assur-
ed, although literary fashions will
change, and critics will stoutly and in
geniously maintain their varying views
of the quality and character of his gem
ius. Horace Binney Wallace, one of
his most careful American critics, denies
him both imagination and humor, and
finds him to be at once an extreme real
list and caricaturist. Others hold him to
be slenderly equipped for a long contest
with the enyious obscurity that forever
threatens renown. Undoubtedly he is
less read by this generation than by his
own. But this is true of his chief con-
temporaries, Scott and Byron. Irving's
exquisite literary art, the freshness and
gayety and originality Of Knickerbocker,
the charming legends of the Hudson, the
idyllic England of the Sketch-Book and
Bracebridge Hall, the picturesque and
poetic narrative of the Columbus, all
touched by the nameess grace of gen
tie, humane, refined, and healthy Nus
secure to him as to Goldsmith a long
and affectionate remembrance. His own
aspiration, in the words which Willis
oddly selected for the motto of his sec
ond volume, Fugitive Poetry, published
in 1927, has been amply fulfilled: "H,
however, | can by lucky chance, in these
days of evil, rub out one wrinkle from
the brow of care, or beguile the
heavy heart of one moment of sadness
if | can, now and then, penetrate the
gathering film Of misanthropy, prompt
a benevolent view of human nature, and
make my reader more in good-humor
with his fellew-beings and himself
surely, surely, ! shall not then have
written entirely in vain"
The portrait of Irving which adorns
this number of the Magazine is taken
from the picture painted by his friend
Stuart Newton, ten years after the pub
LEGATION of the Knickerbocker, when Try
ing was thirty-six years old. Itbelonged
to John Murray, the publisher, anc
shows the Irving Of the Sketch-Bool
and the Columbus, the Irving of the
sunny hour when Byron wrote to Moore
that the American authors books were
his delight, and the eyergenerous Scot
pleasantly told him, as Warner recalls
"Your name is up, and may go
From Toledo to Madrid"
Irying's name has gone farther, and hi
native city may well reflect, on the cen
tenary of his birth, upon the odd capric.
of fortune which has made her most il
lustrious son the least representative 0
her character and interests. -Georgt
William Curtis, in Harper's Magazin
for April.