THE FOUNDERS OF THE

LITERATURE OF THE UNITED STATES

IRVING, COOPER, BRYANT.

FOR a generation these three-Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Cullen Bryant- were the only names which America had given to the literature of the world. The poet was born a literary man; he "lisped in numbers"; he was famous before he was out of short jackets. But Cooper appears to have fallen upon literature by accident, and Irving to have been drawn into it by necessity as much as inclination. Irving was the first to acquire general reputation.

Before the Revolutionary war, there used to be a line of small packet-ships plying between New York, and a seaport in the south of England named Falmouth.

The father of Washington Irving was a mate in one of these packets. He was a native of one of the Orkney Islands, and after his mother's death went to sea before the mast, and was a sailor in the packet service until his good conduct and seamanship led to his promotion. Soon after this event he married the girl of his heart, with whom he had become acquainted when on shore at Falmouth. A year or two after their marriage they sailed for New York, where they arrived in 1763, the year of the peace between France and England.

There are two houses now in the city which were standing when William Irving and Sarah his wife reached these

western shores in 1763. One was the Walton House, in Pearl street, and the other is the old Dutch Church, now used as the post-office.

In New York, Mr. Irving went into business, and was a moderately prosperous man when the Revolutionary war drove him from the city, and he fled to Rahway, in New Jersey. Finding himself there an object of persecution by the English officers, he returned to New York, where he resumed his business, and was noted for his liberality toward the American prisoners confined in the prison-ships and elsewhere. In 1783, eight months before the evacuation of the city, in William Street, Washington Irving, the eleventh and youngest child of his parents, was born.

He was named after the victorious General Washington, whom he may have seen with his baby eyes marching into the city on Evacuation Day, November twenty-fifth, 1783. The hand of Washington once rested upon his head. A Scotch servant girl who had him in charge one day, when he was about three years old, followed General Washington into a shop, and thus addressed the Father of his Country: "Please your honor, here's a bairn was named after you." Washington placed his hand upon the head of the boy, and gave him the usual benediction.

Except Columbia College, the only means of education which the city then furnished were small private schools, kept by persons more or less competent; and at these the boy received that small portion of his education which he did not acquire by his own unassisted efforts. He was an affectionate, merry lad, and a great reader from early childhood. From his eleventh year he was passionately fond of reading voyages and travels, a little library of which was within his reach, and he used to secrete candles to enable him to read these transporting works in bed.

The persual of such books gave him a strong desire to go to sea, and at fourteen he had almost made up his mind to run away and be a sailor. But there was a difficulty in the way. He had a particular aversion to salt pork, which he endeavored to overcome by eating it at every opportunity. He also endeavored to accustom himself to a hard bed by sleeping on the floor of his room. Fortunately for the infant literature of his country, the pork grew more disgusting instead of less, and the hard floor became harder, until he gave up his purpose of trying a sailor's life.

At sixteen he left school and entered a law office, and he continued the study of the law until he was admitted to the bar. Il health at first, and a love of literature afterwards, prevented him from practising the profession of law with any benefit to himself, although he was occasionally employed as junior counsel in important cases. He was one of the half dozen lawyers engaged to defend Aaron Burr at Richmond against the charge of treason, but took no public part in the

case.

In 1802, his brother, Dr. Peter, established in New York a daily paper, called "The Morning Chronicle." Dr. Irving was assisted in this enterprise by Aaron Burr, then Vice-President of the United States, and the main object of the paper was to defend Burr against his political opponents, who had then become numerous and powerful. A few weeks after the first number of the "Chronicle " appeared, Washington Irving, then nineteen years of age, began to contribute to it a series of satirical essays, signed Jonathan Oldstyle, which Colonel Burr and his fellow-citizens generally thought were "very good for so young a man." This was the beginning of Washington Irving's long and splendid literary career. He continued to write occasionally for the "Chronicle," winning considerable local reputation, until the dis

astrous termination of Burr's political career put an end to the existence of his organ; which occurred, I think, soon after the duel with Hamilton in 1804.

Irving was then twenty-one years of age. His health was extremely delicate, and there was a sad prospect of his early filling a consumptive's grave. His family sent him abroad to spend a year or two in the south of Europe, and as he was going on board ship, the captain said to himself: "There's a chap who will go overboard before we get

But he did not. He gained strength as he neared the European shore, and under the influence of leisurely travel in the pleasant climates of Southern Europe, he began to gain something of that robustness of body and ruddiness of complexion which many of us remember. At Rome he was strongly tempted to turn painter; and it was there also that he was the recipient of attentions more flattering than he could account for until just as he was going away.

"Tell me, sir," said a great Roman banker, who had paid him particular honor, "are you a relative of General Washington ?"

He thus learned that he had been indebted for unexpected invitations and other civilities to his supposed relationship to our first President. Mr. Irving, after telling this anecdote, used sometimes to add to it another. An English lady and her daughter paused in a gallery of art before a bust of Washington.

"Mother," said the daughter, "who was Washington?" Why, my dear, don't you know? He wrote the Sketch Book."

Returning home after two years' absence, he made some slight attempt at practising his profession; but the only thing he really cared for, or ever seriously attempted, was

literature, and in that he was always successful. The Salmagundi now appeared, a series of humorous numbers, which appeared three or four times a month; obtaining a circulation of several hundred copies a number. Erelong, his humorous history of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker began to amuse the public, and it has ever since been part of its common stock of entertainment.

After the war of 1812, Washington Irving joined one of his brothers who was established as a merchant in Liverpool; and there occurred the fortunate calamity which drove him to adopt literature as a profession. The brothers failed in business, and lost all they had in the world. Then it was that Washington Irving began the publication of the Sketch Book, which appeared in numbers in New York, and won an immediate popularity, which it has ever since retained. The first number was published in May, 1819, price seventyfive cents, and the first edition of two thousand copies was rapidly sold, and most eagerly read.

Under the auspices of Sir Walter Scott, the Sketch Book was republished in England, where it became and remains not less a favorite than in America. Its most remarkable and memorable effect was in awakening the genius of Charles Dickens. Mr. Dickens has repeatedly acknowledged, and once in writing to Mr. Irving himself, that it was his early reading of the Sketch Book that gave his mind the habit of surveying life in the humorous and sympathetic spirit which led to his peculiar literary career.

The Sketch Book, as we all know, was followed by similar volumes, which confirmed and extended the author's reputation; until, having exhausted his stock of pleasant fancies, he had the good sense to exert his maturer powers upon works of solid instruction, - chief among which are his Life of Columbus and his Life of Washington.