Addison than to that of Macaulay. And his placid, retrospective, optimistic strain pleased a public that were excited and harrowed by the mocking and lamenting Lord Byron, and, singularly enough, 5 pleased even the great pessimist himself.

creation is sufficient to secure for him an immortality, a length of earthly remembrance that all the rest of his writings together might not give.

Irving was always the literary man; he had the habits, the idiosyncrasies, of his small genius. I mean that he regarded life not from the philanthropic, the economic, the political, the philosophic, the metaphysic, the scientific, or the theologic, but purely from the literary point of view. He belongs to that small class of which Johnson and Goldsmith are perhaps as good types as any, and to which

His writings induce to reflection, to quiet musing, to tenderness for tradition; they amuse, they entertain, they call a check to the feverishness of modern life; to but they are rarely stimulating or suggestive. They are better adapted, it must be owned, to please the many than the critical few, who demand more incisive treatment and a deeper consideration of 15 America has added very few. The liter

the problems of life. And it is very fortunate that a writer who can reach the great public and entertain it can also elevate and refine its tastes, set before it high ideas, instruct it agreeably, and all 20 this in a style that belongs to the best literature. It is a safe model for young readers; and for young readers there is very little in the overwhelming flood of to-day that is comparable to Irving's 25 books, and, especially, it seems to me, because they were not written for children.

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ary point of view is taken by few in any generation; it may seem to the world of very little consequence in the pressure of all the complex interests of life, and it may even seem trivial amid the tremendous energies applied to immediate affairs; but it is the point of view that endures; if its creations do not mold human life, like the Roman law, they remain to charm and civilize, like the poems of Horace. You must not ask more of them than that. This attitude toward life is defensible on the highest grounds. A man with Irving's gifts has the right to take the position of an observer and describer, and not to be called on for a more active participation in affairs than he chooses to take. He is doing the world the highest service of which he is capable, and the most enduring it can receive from any man. It is not a question whether the work of the literary man is higher than that of the reformer or the statesman; it is distinct work, and is justified by the result, even when the work is that of the humorist only. We recognize this in the case of the poet. Although Goethe has been reproached for his lack of sympathy with the liberalizing movement of his day (as if his novels were quieting social influences), it is felt by this generation that the author of Faust needs no apology that he did not spend his energies in the effervescing politics of the German states. I mean, that while we may like or dislike the man for his sympathy or want of sympathy, we concede to the author the right of his attitude; if Goethe had not assumed freedom from moral responsibil5 ity, I suppose that criticism of his aloofness would long ago have ceased. Irving did not lack sympathy with humanity in the concrete; it colored whatever he

Irving's position in American literature, or in that of the English tongue, will only be determined by the slow settling of opinion, which no critic can foretell, and the operation of which no criticism seems able to explain. I venture to believe, however, that the verdict will not be in accord with much of the present preva- 35 lent criticism. The service he rendered to American letters no critic disputes; nor is there any question of our national indebtedness to him for investing a crude and new land with the enduring charms 40 of romance and tradition. In this respect, our obligation to him is that of Scotland to Scott and Burns; and it is an obligation due only, in all history, to here and there a fortunate creator to whose 45 genius opportunity is kind. The Knickerbocker Legend and the romance with which Irving has invested the Hudson are a priceless legacy; and this would remain an imperishable possession in popular tra- 50 dition if the literature creating it were destroyed. This sort of creation is unique in modern times. New York is the Knickerbocker city; its whole social life remains colored by his fiction; and the romantic background it owes to him in some measure supplies to it what great age has given to European cities. This

wrote. But he regarded the politics of his Own country, the revolutions in France, the long struggle in Spain, without heat; and he held aloof from projects of agitation and reform, and maintained the attitude of an observer, regarding the life about him from the point of view of the literary artist, as he was justified in doing.

his own, and is as copious, felicitous in the choice of words, flowing, spontaneous, flexible, engaging, clear, and a little wearisome when read continuously in quantity 5 as any in the English tongue. This is saying a great deal, though it is not claiming for him the compactness, nor the robust vigor, nor the depth of thought, of many other masters in it. It is some10 times praised for its simplicity. It is certainly lucid, but its simplicity is not that of Benjamin Franklin's style; it is often ornate, not seldom somewhat diffuse, and always exceedingly melodious. noticeable for its metaphorical felicity. But it was not in the sympathetic nature of the author, to which I just referred, to come sharply to the point. It is much to have merited the eulogy of Campbell that

Irving had the defects of his peculiar genius, and these have no doubt helped to fix upon him the complimentary disparagement of genial.' He was not aggressive; in his nature he was wholly unpartizan, and full of lenient charity; and I suspect 15 that his kindly regard of the world, although returned with kindly liking, cost him something of that respect for sturdiness and force which men feel for writers who flout them as fools in the main. 20 he had added clarity to the English Like Scott, he belonged to the idealists, and not to the realists, whom our generation affects. Both writers stimulate the longing for something better. Their creed was short: 'Love God and honor the 5 King.' It is a very good one for a literary man, and might do for a Christian. The supernatural was still a reality in the age in which they wrote. Irving's faith in God and his love of humanity were 3o very simple; I do not suppose he was much disturbed by the deep problems that have set us all adrift. In every age, whatever is astir, literature, theology, all intellectual activity, takes one and the same drift, and approximates in color. The bent of Irving's spirit was fixed in his youth, and he escaped the desperate realism of this generation, which has no outcome, and is likely to produce little 4° that is noble.

I do not know how to account, on principles of culture which we recognize, for our author's style. His education was exceedingly defective, nor was his want 45 of discipline supplied by subsequent desultory application. He seems to have been born with a rare sense of literary proportion and form; into this, as into a mold, were run his apparently lazy and 50 really accurate observations of life. That he thoroughly mastered such literature as he fancied there is abundant evidence; that his style was influenced by the purest English models is also apparent. But 55 there remains a large margin for wonder how, with his want of training, he could have elaborated a style which is distinctly

tongue.' This elegance and finish of style (which seems to have been as natural to the man as his amiable manner) is sometimes made his reproach, as if it were his sole merit, and as if he had concealed under this charming form a want of substance. In literature form is vital. But his case does not rest upon that. As an illustration his Life of Washington may be put in evidence. Probably this work lost something in incisiveness and brilliancy by being postponed till the writer's old age. But whatever this loss, it is impossible for any biography to be less pretentious in style, or less ambitious in proclamation. The only pretension of matter is in the early chapters, in which a more than doubtful genealogy is elaborated, and in which it is thought necessary to Washington's dignity to give a fictitious importance to his family and his childhood, and to accept the southern estimate of the hut in which he was born as a mansion.' In much of this false estimate Irving was doubtless misled by the fables of Weems. But while he has given us a dignified portrait of Washington, it is as far as possible removed from that of the smileless sprig which has begun to weary even the popular fancy. The man he paints is flesh and blood, presented, I believe, with substantial faithfulness to his character; with a recognition of the defects of his education and the deliberation of his mental operations; with at least a hint of that want of breadth of culture and knowledge of the past, the possession of which character

that is very rare to any writer foreign to the soil. As to America, I do not know what can be more characteristically American than the Knickerbocker, the 5 Hudson River tales, the sketches of life and adventure in the far West. But underneath all this diversity there is one constant quality, the flavor of the author. Open by chance and read almost anywhere in his score of books,- it may be the Tour on the Prairies, the familiar dream of the Alhambra, or the narratives of the brilliant exploits of New World explorers; surrender yourself to the flowing current of his transparent style, and you are conscious of a beguilement which is the crowning excellence of all lighter literature, for which we have no word but 'charm.'

upon the affirmation or the reversal of their views of life and their judgments of characters. I think the calm work of Irving will stand when much of the more 5 startling and perhaps more brilliant intellectual achievement of this age has passed

away.

this was the impression he made upon his ablest contemporaries. And this fact, when I consider the effect the man produced, makes the study of him all the more interesting. As an intellectual personality he makes no such impression, for instance, as Carlyle, or a dozen other writers now living who could be named. The incisive critical faculty was almost entirely wanting in him. He had neither 10 the power nor the disposition to cut his way transversely across popular opinion and prejudice that Ruskin has, not to draw around him disciples equally well pleased to see him fiercely demolish to- 15 who had only the dimmest ideas of their

day what they had delighted to see him set up yesterday as eternal. He evoked neither violent partizanship nor violent opposition. He was an extremely sensitive man, and if he had been capable of 25 creating a conflict he would only have been miserable in it. The play of his mind depended upon the sunshine of approval. And all this shows a certain want of intellectual virility.

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,

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, their art. However you rate it, you cannot account for Irving's influ25 ence 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 possi

A recent anonymous writer has said that most of the writing of our day is characterized by an intellectual strain. I have no doubt that this will appear to be the case to the next generation. It is a 30 strain to say something new even at the risk of paradox, or to say something in a new way at the risk of obscurity. From this Irving was entirely free. There is no visible straining to attract attention. 35 His mood is calm and unexaggerated. Even in some of his pathos, which is open to the suspicion of being 'literary,' there is no literary exaggeration. He seems always writing from an internal calm, 40 which is the necessary condition of his production. If he wins at all by his style, by his humor, by his portraiture of scenes or of character, it is by a gentle force, like that of the sun in spring. There are 45 bility of chivalrous actions, and did not many men now living, or recently dead, intellectual prodigies, who have stimulated thought, upset opinions, created mental eras, to whom Irving stands hardly in as fair a relation as Goldsmith to Johnson. 50 What verdict the next generation will put upon their achievements I do not know; but it is safe to say that their position and that of Irving as well will depend largely

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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.

From Washington Irving, 1881.

One does not read long in the Nature studies of John Burroughs without realizing that their author was country born, a farmer's boy, who learned in the fields and woods those secrets of nature which only the country-reared may know. Roxbury, New York, was his birthplace. The usual farm round of work in the summer, a little schooling in the winter, a year or two of academy courses after he was seventeen, marriage at twenty, school teaching for a period, Treasury Department work at Washington for nine years, inspector of national banks for eleven years more, and then, in 1884, retirement to his native region and uninterrupted literary work, these are the external facts of his biography. For his real biography, however, one must go to his books. He was thirty when he put forth his salutatory, his literary declaration of independence, Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and Person, and it was four years later, 1871, when he issued his first distinctive book, Wake-Robin, so named from the early, homely, native blossom which all country people know. The papers had been written spontaneously out of the heart of the writer. A countryman, shut up in the city the whole year long, he dreamed of the scenes and the birds and the wild life of the woods and fields, and he wrote with an idealizing pen, and yet with the accuracy of the farmer's boy that he was. He followed the book with Winter Sunshine, 1875, Birds and Poets, 1877, Locusts and Wild Honey, 1879, and Pepacton, 1881, books which take one into the very heart of nature. The author is a most delightful companion for he takes his reader at once into his confidence, points out a thousand things he never would have seen had he been alone, gossips delightfully of the happenings in woods and meadow, tells story after story of the tragedies and the comedies of the fields, and then perhaps, leads him into his rural study and chats just as entertainingly about books and men and the various bearings of philosophy.

Of the eighteen books in the standard set of Burroughs, the eight earlier ones deal prevailingly with Nature study. The later ones are more distinctly scientific and critical. It is in the earlier part that his distinctive work is to be found. He is an out-of-doors classic, the leader, after Thoreau, of the whole out-of-doors school of writers. Thoreau was fundamentally a poet, a transcendentalist, a mystic who went to Nature for eternal truths and for the mystic meanings of nature; Burroughs is a scientist who sees with sharp eyes and who is able to make others see. Moreover, he is able to throw over his writings at their best the golden light of memory, that mellow atmosphere that transforms them from bare science into distinctive literature.

LEAVES OF GRASS

STANDARD OF THE NATURAL UNIVERSAL

What is the reason that the inexorable and perhaps deciding standard by which poems, and other productions of art, must be tried, after the application of all minor tests, is the standard of absolute Nature? The question can hardly be answered, but the answer may be hinted at. The stand- 10 ard of form, for instance, is presented by Nature, out of the prevailing shapes of her growths, and appears to perfection in the human body. All the forms in art, sculpture, architecture, etc., follow it. Of 15 course the same in colors; and, in fact, the same even in music, though more human and carried higher.

But a nearer hint still. The same

moral elements and qualities that exist in man in a conscious state, exist, says the great German philosopher, in manifold material Nature, and all her products, in 5 an unconscious state. Powerful and susceptible men in other words, poets, naturally so have an affiliation and identity with the material Nature in its entirety and parts, that the majority of people (including most especially intellectual persons) cannot begin to understand; so passionate is it, and so convertible seems to be the essence of the demonstrative human spirit, with the undemonstrative spirit of the hill and wood, the river, field, and sky.

I know that, at first sight, certain works of art, in some branches, do not exhibit this identity and controvertibility. But