A historian of American literature says: ‘Irving had no message.’ He was not indeed enslaved by a theory literary or political; neither was he passionate for some reform and convinced that his particular reform was paramount. But he who gave to the world a series of writings which, in addition to being exquisite examples of literary art, are instinct with humor, brotherly kindness, and patriotism, can hardly be said not to have had a message.
Irving rendered an immense service to the biographical study of history. Columbus, Mahomet, the princes and warriors of the Holy War, are made real to us. Nor is this all. His books help to counteract that tendency of the times to make history a recondite science. History cannot be confined to the historians and erudite readers alone. Said Freeman to his Oxford audience one day: ‘Has anybody read the essay on Race and Language in the third series of my Historical Essays? It is very stiff reading, so perhaps nobody has.’ And one suspects that Freeman rejoiced a little to think it was ‘stiff reading.’
Nevertheless the public insists on its right to know the main facts. And as Leslie Stephen says, ‘the main facts are pretty well ascertained. Darnley was blown up, whoever supplied the powder, and the Spanish Armada certainly came somehow to grief.’ That man of letters is a benefactor who, like Irving, can give his audience the main facts, expressed in terms which make history more readable even than romance.
Irving perfected the short story. His genius was fecundative. Many a writer of gift and taste, and at least one writer of genius, owes Irving a debt which can be acknowledged but which cannot be paid. Deriving much from his literary predecessors, and gladly acknowledging the measure of his obligation, Irving by the originality of his work placed fresh obligations on those who came after him.
With his stories of Dutch life he conquered a new domain. That these stories remain in their first and untarnished beauty is due to Irving’s rich humor and ‘golden style,’ and to that indescribable quality of genius by which it lifts its creations out of the local and provincial, and endows them with a charm which all can understand and enjoy.
II
William Cullen Bryant
REFERENCES:
G. W. Curtis: The Life, Character, and Writings of William Cullen Bryant, Commemorative Address before the New York Historical Society, 1878.
Parke Godwin: A Biography of William Cullen Bryant, 1883.
John Bigelow: William Cullen Bryant, ‘American Men of Letters,’ 1890.