mary: Mystery is apt to leave off. A great literature, originating from the Sumheart of the people, declares itself first in spontaneous songs Brown's and ballads and legends; it is apt to end in prose fiction. Sense of With labored and imitative prose fiction our American and Sense literature begins. This labored prose fiction of Brown of Form. has traits, however, which distinguish it from similar work in England. To begin with, the sense of horror which permeates it is not conventional but genuine. Brockden Brown could instinctively feel, more deeply than almost any native Englishman since the days of Elizabeth, what mystery may lurk just beyond human ken. In the second place, Brown's work, for all its apparent confusion, proves confused chiefly by a futile attempt to fix his point of view through autobiographic devices. In the third place, he reveals on almost every page an instinctive sense of rhythmical form. Brown's six novels are rather long, and all are hastily written. In his short, invalid life he never attempted any other form of fiction. As one considers his work, however, one may well incline to guess that if he had confined his attempts to single episodes,-if he had had the originality to invent the short story, he might have done work comparable with that of Irving or Poe or even Hawthorne. Brockden Brown, in brief, never stumbled on the one literary form which he might have mastered; pretty clearly that literary form was the sort of romantic. short story whose motive is mysterious; and since his time. that kind of short story has proved itself the most characteristic phase of native American fiction, II Life. WASHINGTON IRVING REFERENCES WORKS: Various editions, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. An excellent one is that in 40 vols., 1891–97. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM: P. M. Irving, Life and Letters of Washington Irving, 4 vols., New York: Putnam, 1862-64; *C. D. Warner, Washington Irving, Boston: Houghton, 1881 (AML). BIBLIOGRAPHY: Foley, 150-154. SELECTIONS: *Carpenter, 124-146; Duyckinck, II, 53-59; Griswold, Prose, 206-222; *Stedman and Hutchinson, V, 41–83. J. K. PAULDING WORKS: Select Works, 4 vols., New York: Scribner, 1867–68. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM: W. I. Paulding, Literary Life of James K. Paulding, New York: Scribner, 1867. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Foley, 222-223. SELECTIONS: Duyckinck, II, 6-10; Griswold, Poetry, 83-85; Stedman, 17; *Stedman and Hutchinson, IV, 402–419. THE name of WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859) reminds us rather startlingly how short is the real history of American letters. Although he has been dead for decidedly more than forty years, many people still remember him personally; and when in 1842 he went as President Tyler's minister to Spain, he passed through an England where Queen Victoria had already been five years on the throne. Yet this Irving, who has hardly faded from living memory, may in one sense be called, more certainly than Brockden Brown, the first American man of letters. He was the first whose work has remained popular; and the first, too, who was born after the Revolution, which made native Americans no longer British subjects but citizens of the United States. His parents, to be sure, were foreign, his father Scotch, his mother English; but he himself was born in New York. He was not very strong; his education was consequently irregular; he read law languidly; and at the age of twenty-one he was sent abroad for his health. There he remained two years. In 1806, Irving returned home; the next year, in company with William Irving and James Kirke Paulding, he began writing a series of essays called Salmagundi* (1807- Salma 1808). Only his subsequent eminence has preserved gundi. from oblivion these conventional survivals of the eighteenth century. About this time he fell in love with a young girl whose death at seventeen almost broke his heart. When she died he was at her bedside; and throughout his later life he could not bear to hear her name mentioned. The tender melancholy in so many of his writings was probably due to this bereavement. In 1809 he published his first important book-the "Knickerbocker" History of New York.† Shortly thereafter he devoted himself to business; and in 1815 he went abroad in connection with his affairs. There, after a few years, commercial misfortune overtook him. In 1819 and 1820 he brought out his Sketch Book; from that time forth he was a professional man of letters. He remained abroad until 1832, spending the years between 1826 and 1829 in Spain, and those between 1829 and 1832 *In cookery, salmagundi is a dish "consisting of chopped meats, eggs, anchovies, onions, oil, etc."; applied to literature, it means a collection of miscellaneous essays. †The title is A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty * * *By Diedrich Knickerbocker. Four Classes of as Secretary to the American Legation in London. Coming home, he resided for six or seven years at Tarrytown on the Hudson, in that house, "Sunnyside," which has become associated with his name. From 1842 to 1846 he was Minister to Spain. He then finally returned home, crowning his literary work with his Life of Washington, of which the first volume ap peared in 1855, and the last-the fifth-in the year of his death, 1859. Irving was the first American man of letters to attract wide attention abroad. His Knickerbocker History was favorably received by contemporary England; and the Sketch Book and Bracebridge Hall, which followed Washington Soving it in 1822, were from the begin ning what they have remained, -as popular in England as they have been in his native his Work country. The same, on the whole, is true of his writings about Spain; and, to a somewhat slighter degree, of his Life of Oliver Goldsmith (1840), and his Life of Washington. The four general classes of work here mentioned followed one another in fairly distinct succession through his half-century of literary life. We may perhaps get our clearest notion of him by considering them in Comic turn. The Knickerbocker History has properly lasted. The origin of this book resembles that of Dickens's Pickwick Papers some twenty-five years later. Both began as burlesques and ended as independent works of fic Purpose of tion, retaining of their origin little more trace than occasional extravagance. In 1807 Dr. Samuel Latham Origin and Mitchill had published A Picture of New York, ridiculous, the Knick even among works of its time, for ponderous pretentious- erbocker The book had such success, however, that Irving and his brother were moved to write a parody of it. Pres`ently Irving's brother went abroad, leaving the work to ness. History. SUNNYSIDE, IRVING'S HOME AT TARRYTOWN Irving himself. The "Author's Apology" prefixed to the Knickerbocker History tells how, as he wrote on, his style and purpose underwent a change. Instead of burlesquing Mitchill, he found himself composing a comic history of old New York, and incidentally introducing a good deal of personal and political satire, now as forgotten as that which lies neglected in "Gulliver's Travels." His style, which began in deliberately ponderous imitation of Dr. Mitchill's, passed almost insensibly into one of considerable freedom, so evidently modelled on that of eighteenth-century England as to seem like some skilful bit |