WASHINGTON IRVING

By Charles Dudley Warner

1891

EDITOR’S NOTE

Washington Irving, the first biography published in the American Men of Letters Series, came out in December, 1881.  It was an expansion of a biographical and critical sketch prefixed to the first volume of a new edition of Irving’s works which began to appear in 1880.  It was entitled the Geoffrey Crayon edition, and was in twenty-seven volumes, which were brought out, in most cases, in successive months.  The first volume appeared in April.  The essay was subsequently published during the same year in a volume entitled “Studies of Irving,” which contained also Bryant’s oration and George P. Putnam’s personal reminiscences.

“The Work of Washington Irving” was published early in August, 1893.  Originally it was delivered as a lecture to the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on April 3, 1893, the one hundred and tenth anniversary of Irving’s birth.

T. R. L.

WASHINGTON IRVING

I

PRELIMINARY

It is over twenty years since the death of Washington Irving removed that personal presence which is always a powerful, and sometimes the sole, stimulus to the sale of an author’s books, and which strongly affects the contemporary judgment of their merits.  It is nearly a century since his birth, which was almost coeval with that of the Republic, for it took place the year the British troops evacuated the city of New York, and only a few months before General Washington marched in at the head of the Continental army and took possession of the metropolis.  For fifty years Irving charmed and instructed the American people, and was the author who held, on the whole, the first place in their affections.  As he was the first to lift American literature into the popular respect of Europe, so for a long time he was the chief representative of the American name in the world of letters.  During this period probably no citizen of the Republic, except the Father of his Country, had so wide a reputation as his namesake, Washington Irving.

It is time to inquire what basis this great reputation had in enduring qualities, what portion of it was due to local and favoring circumstances, and to make an impartial study of the author’s literary rank and achievement.

The tenure of a literary reputation is the most uncertain and fluctuating of all.  The popularity of an author seems to depend quite as much upon fashion or whim as upon a change in taste or in literary form.  Not only is contemporary judgment often at fault, but posterity is perpetually revising its opinion.  We are accustomed to say that the final rank of an author is settled by the slow consensus of mankind