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"Why, there's scarcely a huddle of log-huts and shanties
That has not brought forth its Miltons and Dantes;
I myself know ten Byrons, one Coleridge, three Shelleys,
Two Raphaels, six Titians (I think), one Apelles,
Leonardos and Rubenses plenty as lichens,

One (but that one is plenty) American Dickens,
A whole flock of Lambs, any number of Tennysons;
In short, if a man has the luck to have any sons,
He may feel pretty certain that one out of twain
Will be some very great person over again."

And elsewhere in the same poem Lowell protests against the literature that

suits each whisper and motion

To what will be thought of it over the ocean."

The corrective of colonialism is a manly self-respect, a wholesome self-reliance, a wish to stand firmly on our own feet, a resolve to survey life with our own eyes and not through any imported spectacles. The New World has already brought forth men of action-Washington, for example, and Lincoln-worthy of comparison with the best that the Old World has enrolled on her records. Has the New World produced any man of letters of corresponding rank? Matthew Arnold thought that there were only five world-classics-Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe. This seems a list unduly scanted; but it would need to be five times larger before it included a single American name. What of it? Even if the American poets are no one of them to be inscribed among the twoscore chief singers of the world, they are not the less interesting to us Americans, not the less inspiring. When an English author suggested to Sainte-Beuve that he did not think Lamartine an important poet, the great French critic suavely answered, "He is important to us." Without Lamartine there would be a blank in French literature. So we Americans may see clearly the defects of Bryant and of Whittier, and yet we may say that they are important to us, even though they, like Lamartine, are not among the foremost poets of their language or of their century.

Colonialism and provincialism, although they seem mu

tually destructive, still manage somehow to exist side by side in our criticism to-day. The best cure for them is a study of the two other great literatures, Greek and French. Too much attention to contemporary British literature is dangerous for us, since its chief characteristics are ours by inheritance. Matthew Arnold held that it was a work of supererogation for Carlyle to preach earnestness to the English, who already abounded in that sense. For us to follow the lead of the British in literature or in any other art is but saying ditto to ourselves. It is like the marriage of cousins-and for the same reasons to be deplored. But the study of Greek literature supplies us instantly with the eternal standards, the use of which cannot but be fatal to provincialism. And the study of French literature, which is as modern as our own and yet as different as may be in its ideals and its methods, is likely to serve as a certain antidote to colonialism.

The study of Greek literature, the greatest of the literatures of the past, and the study of French literature, the other great literature of the present, will lead us towards that American cosmopolitanism which is the antithesis of both provincialism and colonialism. An American cosmopolitanism, I said, for I agree with Coleridge in thinking that "the cosmopolitanism which does not spring out of, and blossom upon, the deep-rooted stem of nationality or patriotism, is a spurious and rotten growth." Stendhal, a Frenchman who did not care for France, and who found himself, at last, a man without a country, had for a motto, "I come from Cosmopolis." A fit motto for an American author might be "I go to Cosmopolis." I go to see the best the world has to offer, the best being none too good for American use; I go as a visitor, and I return always a loyal citizen to my own country.

As Plutarch tells us, "it is well to go for a light to another man's fire, but not to tarry by it, instead of kindling a torch of one's own." A torch of one's own!-that is a possession worth having, whether it be a flaming beacon on the hilltop or a tiny taper in the window. We cannot tell how far a little candle throws its beams, nor who is laying his course by its flickering light. The most that we can do and it is also the least we should do-is to tend the flame carefully and to keep it steady.

DONALD GRANT MITCHELL

IRVING AS AUTHOR AND MAN

[Address by Donald G. Mitchell—“ Ik Marvel”—(born in Norwich, Conn., April 12, 1822; — -), delivered at Tarrytown-on-Hudson, N. Y., April 3, 1883, at the commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Washington Irving. The exercises were held at the Second Reformed Church, under the auspices of the Washington Irving Association, and were presided over by Chief Justice Noah Davis, of the Supreme Court of New York.]

You are met to-night to pay tribute to the memory of a man we all loved-born a hundred years ago.

Yet, we who put voice to your tribute are brought to a pause at the very start. Who can say over again—in a way that shall make listeners-the praises of a balmy day in June?

Simply to recall him, however, is—I think—to honor him: for there is no memory of him however shadowy or vagrant which is not grateful to you to me and to all the reading world.

It is now well-nigh upon thirty-five years since I first met Mr. Irving. It was in a sunny parlor in one of the houses of that Colonnade Row which stands opposite the Astor Library in Lafayette Place, New York. I can recall vividly the trepidation which I carried to that meeting-so eager to encounter the man whom all honored and admired-so apprehensive lest a chilling dignity might disturb my ideal. And when that smiling, quiet, well-preserved gentleman (I could hardly believe him sixty-five) left his romp with some of his little kinsfolk, to give me a hearty shake of the hand, and thereafter to run From the Centenary Commemoration volume of Washington Irving. Copyright, by G. P. Putnam's Sons. Published by permission. 872

on in lively, humorous chat-stealing all trepidation out of me, by—I know not what-kindly magnetism of voice and manner, it was as if some one were playing counterfeitas if the venerated author were yet to appear and displace this beaming, winning personality, with some awful dignity that should put me again into worshipful tremor.

But no: this was indeed Mr. Irving-hard as it was to adjust this gracious presence, so full of benignity, with the author who had told the story of the Knickerbockers and of Columbus.

Another puzzle to me was-how this easy-going gentleman, with his winning mildness and quiet deliberationas if he never could, and never did, and never would knuckle down to hard task-work-should have reeled out those hundreds-nay, thousands of pages of graceful, well-ordered, sparkling English.

I could not understand how he did it. I do not think we ever altogether understand how the birds sing and sing; and yet, with feathers quite unruffled, and eyes always a-twinkle.

My next sight of Mr. Irving was hereabout, at his own home. By his kind invitation I had come up to pass a day with him at Sunnyside, and he had promised me a drive through Sleepy Hollow. What a promise that was! No boy ever went to his Christmas holidays more joyously, I think, than I, to meet that engagement.

It was along this road, beside which we are assembled to-night, that we drove. He all alert and brisk, with the cool morning breeze blowing down upon us from the Haverstraw heights and across the wide sweep of river. He called attention to the spot of poor André's capturenot forbearing that little touch of sympathy, which came to firmer yet not disloyal expression, afterward, in his story of Washington. A sweep of his whip-hand told me the trees under which Paulding and the rest chanced to be loitering on that memorable day.

We were whirling along the same road a short way farther northward, when I ventured to query about the memorable night-ride of Ichabod Crane and of the Headless Horseman.

Aye, it was thereabout that tragedy came off too. "Down this bit of road the old horse Gunpowder.'

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came thundering: there away-Brom Bones with his Pumpkin-I tell you this in confidence," he said—" was in waiting; and along here they went clattering neck and neck-Ichabod holding a good seat till Van Ripper's saddle-girths gave way, and then bumping and jouncing from side to side as he clung to mane or neck (a little pantomime with the whip making it real), and so at last-away yonder-well, where you like, the poor pedagogue went sprawling to the ground-I hope in a soft place.' think the rollicking humor of it was as much enjoyed by him that autumn morning, and that he felt in his bones just as relishy a smack of it all-as if Katrina Van Tassel had held her quilting frolic only on the yesternight.

And I

Irving first came to know Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow when a boy of fourteen or fifteen-he passing some holidays in these parts, I think, with his friend Paulding. To those days belong much of that idle sauntering along brook-sides hereabout, with fly-hooks and fish-rods, and memories of Walton, which get such delightful recognition in a certain paper of the "Sketch Book."

Then, too, he with his companions came to know the old Dutch farmers of the region, whose home interiors found their way afterward into his books.

I think he pointed out also, with a significant twinkle of the eye, which the dullest boy would have understood, some orchards, with which he had early acquaintance; and specially, too, upon some hilltop (which I think I could. find now), a farmery, famous for its cider-mill and the good cider made there; he, with the rest, testing it over and over in the old slow way with straws, but provoked once on a time to a fuller test, by turning the hogshead, so they might sip from the open bung; and then (whether out of mischief or mishandling, he did not absolutely declare to me) the big barrel got the better of them, and set off upon a lazy roll down the hill-going faster and faster -they, more and more frightened, and scudding away slantwise over the fences-the yelling farmer appearing suddenly at the top of the slope, but too broad in the beam for any sharp race, and the hogshead between them plunging, and bounding, and giving out ghostly, guttural explosions of sound, and cider, at every turn. You may judge if Mr. Irving did not put a nice touch to that story!

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