credit his statement that it is "faithfully digested" from a great variety of authentic sources, and we may justly remain indifferent to the degree of error which it may betray in the light of subsequent studies. From the most reprehensible errors it is splendidly free, from the errors of stupidity, from the errors that attend a lack of imagination.

Is it too much to say that Irving's style, resonant and full of colour, set a standard for American historians, to which is owing in some measure the rich readability of Prescott and Parkman? And is it presumptuous to suggest that there has departed a glory from historical writing which in these alert and many-talented days might advantageously be recovered by those historiographers who "discourse of affairs orderly as they were done?" Of the arid and cautiously accurate there is no lack, and there is plenty, too, of the over-rhetorical which results from the efforts of mediocrity to sound the pipes of eloquence. Professional historians who would be neither dry nor sentimental might profitably go to school to Irving and learn that verity is not incompatible with the stately charm of his style. The mind is stimulated, certainly it is not distracted from the true order of events, by such a sentence as this from the "Life of Columbus": "What consoled the Spaniards for the asperity of the soil was to observe among the sands of those crystal streams glittering particles of gold, which, though scanty in quantity, were regarded as an earnest of the wealth locked up within the mountains.” It may be that the pleasant appeal of that sentence to an American ear is due to the subject, wealth, in which only America among the nations of the earth has

evinced any considerable interest a bit of irony not out of place in a chapter on Irving, for it was he who invented the phrase "almighty dollar.'

The flower of Irving's residence in Spain and his study of Spanish chronicle is "The Alhambra." This book is sketchy and informal, and in it the exigencies of history do not compel Irving's genius beyond its delicate powers. His style is fit for this enchanted palace; the fragmentary traditions furnish him with the sort of fanciful short story which he knew how to touch with pretty skill. In these inconsequential tales, spun with fine zest and pretending to no virtuous purpose but the giving of pleasure, Irving meets the genius of the Arabian nights and is not dwarfed by it.

Certain American books have sufficient depth and breadth to be called masterpieces; they stand self-contained and all but assured of immortality; such books are "The Scarlet Letter," "The House of the Seven Gables," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Huckleberry Finn." Other books, like Emerson's "Essays" and Whitman's poems, contain matter of loftiest quality yet in such brief form that the author's title to mastery lies in the collected work, rather than in any single unit of art. In neither of these ultimate classes can Irving be included. Though one would not wish to quarrel with whoever should call "Rip Van Winkle" a self-secure masterpiece, nevertheless Irving is, for all his bulky histories, essentially a sketcher, a miscellanist. His place is on one of the gentler lower slopes of literature in the company suggested

by the sub-title of "Bracebridge Hall"-"The Humourists, a Medley.'

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Irving was born in New York City, April 3, 1783. He died at Sunnyside, near Tarrytown, New York, November 28, 1859. He travelled in Europe from 1804 to 1806. He studied law and was admitted to the bar, but did not practise. He went to England on business in 1815. The business failed the next year, but he remained in England until 1820. The next nine years he spent on the continent of Europe. In 1826 he was attaché of the United States legation in Spain, and in 1829 he was appointed secretary of legation at London. From 1832 to 1842 he lived at Sunnyside on the Hudson. He was Minister to Spain from 1842 to 1846. The rest of his life was spent in New York and at Sunnyside.

His works are Salmagundi, 1807-1808; Knickerbocker's History of New York, 1809; Sketch-Book, 1819-1820; Bracebridge Hall, 1822; Tales of a Traveller, 1824; Life and Voyages of Columbus, 1828; The Conquest of Granada, 1829; The Companions of Columbus, 1831; The Alhambra, 1832; Crayon Miscellanies, 1835; Astoria, 1836; Adventures of Captain Bonneville, 1837; Oliver Goldsmith, 1849; Mahomet and His Successors, 1849; Wolfert's Roost, 1855; Life of Washington, 1855-1859; Spanish Papers, 1866.

It is worth noting, as a matter of literary history and as an example of Irving's magnanimity, that he had planned

to write the chronicle of the conquest of Mexico, but when he heard that Prescott had the same plan, he yielded the subject to his junior. Irving was not married. His nephew Pierre Irving, edited his "Life and Letters." The best biography of Irving is that by Charles Dudley Warner in American Men of Letters.

CHAPTER III

COOPER

IN 1820, when Cooper was thirty years old, he read a feeble conventional English novel; irritated by its futility, he announced to his wife that he could write a better one, and the result was his first book, "Precaution." It is a poor book, because it is not grounded on the author's experience, and because Cooper had not the kind of imagination that can give reality to human characters in ordinary social surroundings. But he learned his lesson and turned immediately to outdoor scenes with which he was familiar, and to adventures which he had witnessed or which were appropriate to the ground he knew. "The Spy," a tale of the Revolution, was successful, and he followed it industriously with "The Pioneers," "The Pilot," "The Last of the Mohicans."

Those who insist that a young country ought to produce a "young" literature, will find Cooper a rather valid subsumption under a theory that is not quite valid but is largely a matter of verbal analogy. What does "young" mean? Our literature is a pleasant-voiced, fine-mannered gentleman, well past middle age. There is all too little of the untamed boy about it. But Cooper is in many senses "young." Though he was a dignified and self-consciously important personage,