der H. Everett, the equally gifted brother of Edward Everett, and Mr. O. Rich, American consul at Madrid, Mr. Irving, then in the first vigor of a new and increasing reputation, examined these with the intention of translating some of them; but afterward, becoming much interested in them and other records which were freely thrown open to him, he determined to accost his great subject in an original work. The Columbus commenced thus under most favorable auspices was rapidly but carefully written; it appeared in 1828. Imbued with the spirit of the old chroniclers, gifted with an imagination equal to all the demands of his almost pictorial undertaking, he exhibits a regulated and calm historic judgment which resists the temptation and checks the tendency to romance. It is a beautiful modern restoration of old chronicle. He did not design it to be a philosophic history. He guards himself by calling it, not a history, but a life. With the magic power of an artist, he has more than compensated for the lack of philosophy by the apparent reality of his representations and the exquisite coloring of his descriptions; he brings the distant near, or rather he carries us, like some Arabian enchanter, into that far distance; he plants us upon the deck of the caravel; we stand beside that lonely admiral, that visionary viceroy of undiscovered realms, in his darkest moments; we share in cessors. He then wrote the Lives of Mohammed and his Successors, down to the Conquest of Spain by the Arab Moors. On the hither confines of the Hispano-Moorish history stood Prescott in his Ferdinand and Isabella, and again in his masterly summary preceding the story of the Moriscoes in his Philip II. In this same general field had wandered Irving in his Alhambra and his Conquest of Granada. These were but the well-told stories of a wanderer who sojourned there for a brief space in a desolate chamber of the Alhambra, which is still pointed out. His midnight rovings through the haunted courts and spirit-peopled streets of that suburban fortress, within the precincts of the great city, his long interrogative gaze at the arabesques and fairy columns of the Moorish palace, were only answered by a voice as from the dying past: "Come and interpret our meaning; we are but the symbols of a hidden wisdom which the world should know.' Through Mr. Irving's chronicles that voice. has been heard, and to some extent heeded. Irving's Life of Oliver Goldsmith is an easy, pleasant, unlabored effort. Many have supposed that Irving and Goldsmith were alike in many respects. Irving fosters the error by quoting some Italian verses apostrophizing Goldsmith as his master and exemplar. I pronounce the resemblance of the men incorrect. They are of the same literary school only; that is the likeness. Hazlitt, a severe but never an ignorant critic, calls the SketchBook and Bracebridge Hall good American. copies of British essayists and novelists. Not only Mr. Irving's language," he says, "is with great taste and felicity modelled on that of Addison, Goldsmith, Sterne or Mc Kensie, but the thoughts and sentiments are taken at the rebound, and, as they are brought forward at the present period, want both freshness and probability." This is unjust, but it furnishes us with a clue to the determination of Irving's literary resemblance to Goldsmith. He is truly of that school, par inter primos. Mr. Bryant, in an affectionate spirit of generous eulogy, can scarcely find words to express his pleasure in perusing and reperusing the biography of Goldsmith. Charming as it really is, it is a work of supererogation. Goldsmith's beautiful poems are his best, and should be his only, eulogy; for Goldsmith's life and character, apart from these, entirely destroy the ideal which his genius has raised in our minds. Time cannot impair the clustering beauties of the "Deserted Village," but Oliver Goldsmith is scarcely worth a biography. The chaplet of Irving, the glowing tribute of Macaulay, cannot make his tomb a pilgrim-shrine. Mr. Irving, after seventeen years of varied and delightful experience and merited honors abroad, returned at length to the banks of the Hudson in February, 1832, and there settled himself for an enviable life-a life of domestic retirement and social comfort, but of unremitting literary labor. He bought a little farm, the modesty of which claimed the admiration of Mr. Thackeray in that beautiful eulogy, Nil nisi bonum. He made his own home-its gables, its walks and its lawns, and its immortal memories. Its literary appellation was "Wolfert's Roost;" its popular and characteristic name was "Sunnyside." His retirement was interrupted by his appointment as minister to Spain, which post he held from 1842 to 1846. This was not his first diplomatic experience: he had been secretary of legation at London in 1829. In 1846 he returned to Sunnyside. There-loved and reverenced by his relations, the younger being to him like children; distinguished by his friends as the one most worthy of attention and respect; cherished by his country, honored by the civilized world; in a region of which he was the idol-for he had rendered it illustrious,―he journeyed calmly to the end of his years with one wish unfulfilled. At length there came a period when he might attempt the desired task. Measuring his remaining span of days and testing the remnant of his strength, finding his intellect uninjured and his fine fancy undimmed, the biographer of Columbus determined to write the Life of Washington. It was a noble and manly determination. How well that task has been accomplished every one knows, for every one has read the work. The fame of the writer gave a prestige to the book before it was read. The charm of the narrative causes the reader to forget the writer in the perusal. It is on record that when Washington Irving was an infant his nurse, seeing George Washington, then President for the second term, pass by, ran with the child to the august patriot, saying, "This bairn was named for you, sir," and asked his blessing on the boy. It was kindly bestowed. If this blessing rested in any sense as a holy obligation to be gratefully acknowledged in after-life, Irving has acknowledged and repaid it. All things considered, his Life is the fittest and noblest monument yet erected to the memory of Washington. Chastened by age and drawing nearer to the seat of eternal truth and justice, his charity is manifest in every page. We are struck with the evident anx but one gentle touch like the hand of sleep and he had departed to a better country, "even a heavenly." The artist had gone to render a happy account to the great Master. An artist in the noblest sense of that word, he claims the poet's eulogy : "Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies: Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies." iety to do justice throughout this work. Justice to the English is not an American failing. Mr. Irving had been accused of English partiality on several occasions. He had once altered a line of Bryant's poem when it was to be republished in England; he had published his own works with an affectionate preface in America and had left it out in the English edition; and, although the explanation in both cases was perfectly satisfactory, there were some grumblers left. In Irving's This departure took place on the 28th of NoWashington the English are treated by a a vember, 1859. generous enemy. Even Tarleton, who, like Claverhouse, had been always represented as a devil incarnate, appears here as a stern, cold and most energetic partisan officer, who would have done his work well anywhere, but was particularly relentless in pursuing those whom he regarded as traitors and rebels. I have seen the spots and heard the stories of his furious raids, but I think his cruelty is usually overdrawn. To complete and not to derange the symmetry of this beautiful and illustrious life, death came at last. His great work finished; his greatness-which had been achieved in an age of greatness, the age of Scott, of Rogers, of Byron, of Moore, of Hallam-thus consummated and sealed; the cosmos of his literary creation adjusted and equipoised; his old age green and happy, he waited the signal of its approach. Nor did temporal things, as fortunate and pleasant as they were to him, veil the glories and the priceless value of an eternal inheritance. He looked for an unfading crown when that of earthly laurel and myrtle should hang fading upon his tomb. He had not long to wait; there was no lingering of disease: Euthanasia, the dark angel with silver light upon his wings, gave We are struck with the fact that much of Irving's reputation is a home reputation; his honor, unprophet-like, began in his own country and was based upon the simplest legends and stories. Perhaps this was one secret of his success. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is an old tradition of the early farmers; his "Rip Van Winkle" is from the German of Grimm, and Grimm found it among the peasants of Germany. miration of his countrymen by a variety of professions: he was a literary man to whom we might point as of that profession and no other. Connected with this unity of life is the remarkable symmetry of Irving's literary career. It had most eminently the Aristotelian requisites of discourse-a beginning, a middle and an ending. Tracing with Columbus, in the early aspirations of his genius, the relaxing bounds of ocean, he may be called the Columbus of American letters, and he who in his dignity, his purity, his self-respect and his eminence may most properly be called the Washington of our literature crowns his glory by becoming the historian of Washington. As time rolls on, the brightness of Irving's individual virtues, the incense of friendship, the adulation of contemporaries will be slowly disjoined from the literature of his works. They will be measured by the more rigorous standards of rhetoric and the canons of historical criticism, and his place will be more justly assigned him among the writers of his age. Without that indiscriminating eulogy which is unjust to others, simple justice will then rank him as the first of the purely literary authors of America, and among the most popular and successful of those who have written in English. HENRY COPPÉE. in search of employment, which he could not find at home. HENRY KIRKE WHITE. IN the twenty-second Ν year died of his age Henry Kirke White. He was the son of a butcher, and was born at Nottingham, England, March 21, 1785. The cause of his early death was over-studiousness. He was held in high esteem by his contemporaries. Lord Byron, in his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, thus laments him: "Unhappy White! When life was in its spring, And thy young Muse just waved her joyous wing, The spoiler swept that soaring lyre away Which else had sounded an immortal lay. Oh what a noble mind was here undone, When Science self-destroyed her favorite son!" He was of a most amiable temperament and affectionate disposition. ANDREW GLASS. ANDREW GLASS was born about the year 1824, in Gervan, Ayrshire, Scotland, near the birthplace of Burns. He was the son of a weaver, and followed the trade of his father for more than twenty years, receiving but little education. His poems have passed through several editions. LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON. LETITIA E. LANDON was born in London in the year 1802, and pub-. lished, at eighteen years of age, her first poem, in the Literary Gazette. Her writings brought her both fame and money, which was unusual in her day. She was married at thirty-six years of age to George Maclean, governor of Cape Coast Castle. She died suddenly, on the 15th of October, 1839, a little more than a year after her marriage. EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON. Sweeter 'tis to gaze upon My Nora's lid, that seldom rises; Oh, my Nora Creina dear, But love in yours, my Nora Creina. THIS poet writes under the nom-de-plume Lesbia wears a robe of gold, of "Owen Meredith," and is a son of the distinguished novelist Bulwer. He was born November 7, 1831, and his first collection of poems was made in the year 1855. His productions have the marks of genius, and many of them bid fair to live in future days. He has filled several important positions under the English government. THIS JAMES MACFARLAN. HIS writer was a most singular being. His verses bear unmistakable evidence of genius. "His muse," says Dr. Charles Rogers, "celebrated the nobler instincts and aspirations of humanity," and yet his associations were of the lowest kind. For the greater part of his life he lived in rags, and, notwithstanding the best efforts of literary friends to raise him, he still continued his low associations and died in abject poverty. He was born at Glasgow in April, 1832, and died on the 5th of November, 1862. LESBIA HATH A BEAMING EYE. LESBIA hath a beaming eye, But no one knows for whom it beameth; Right and left its arrows fly, But what they aim at no one dreameth. But all so close the nymph hath laced it Presumes to stay where Nature placed it. gown That floats as wild as mountain-breezes, To sink or swell as Heaven pleases. Is loveliness The dress you wear, my Nora Creina. Lesbia hath a wit refined, But when its points are gleaming round us Who can tell if they're designed To dazzle merely, or to wound us? In safer slumber Love reposes- THOMAS MOORE. |