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Indiana University Studies 



appear to him that he finds it difficult to understand the intense 

 amusement caused by the work at the time of its first appearance. 

 The pictures of EngHsh Hfe in the latter work, M. Eyma, like his 

 predecessors, finds ".sl little strained". This view, which was the 

 traditional one in France, is not to be wondered at if we take into 

 consideration the anti-English feeling that developed during the later 

 Napoleonic wars. Wellington and Waterloo were not soon to be 

 forgotten. 



Sketch-book Introductions. Among the studies of Irving 

 published in French editions of the Sketch-book, we have selected those 

 of L. G. Rosenzweig (ISST), E. Haussaire (1888), and P. Fievet (1891) 

 as being most significant. 



M. Rosenzweig informs us that in England and America the 

 Sketch-book was read by everybody, that in Germany it was studied in 

 the Realschulen, and that in France it had been made a subject of 

 study in the universities and in certain schools for less advanced 

 students. Its popularity was due, he thinks, to its style, to its ^'rich 

 and varied vocabulary", to the ''rare felicity of its expressions", 

 to its "language, at the same time natural and polished, correct and 

 audacious". He is not sure that Irving possesses all the quiet per- 

 vasive charm of his predecessors — Addison, Steele, Goldsmith, and 

 Johnson — but on the other hand he finds Irving more poetic, clearer, 

 and more correct than his models. And while recognizing in him a 

 worthy successor of these English essayists, he regards him as the 

 first of the American essayists of the rank of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 

 James Russell Lowell, and Charles Dudley Warner. Apropos of 

 Irving's humor, M. Rosenzweig says that it is much superior to that 

 of Bret Harte, Artemus Ward, and Mark Twain. For these reasons, 

 he adds, the English consider him a "master and a model", and he 

 thinks it not the least of the merits of the Sketch-book that it gave 

 Charles Dickens the inspiration for many pages of his Chimes and of 

 his Christmas Carol. 



M. Haussaire likewise praises Irving's humor, saying that his 

 natural good sense prevents him from falling into the gross caricature 

 which is the pitfall of this kind of writing. Like M. Rosenzweig, 

 also, he sees in him the descendant of the great writers of the seven- 

 teenth and the eighteenth centuries, especially of Addison, Steele, 

 and Goldsmith. But Irving possessed one quahty, he affirms, that 

 is not to be found in his masters, a genuine love of nature. This 

 quality is to be attributed, he thinks, to the influence of the poets — 

 Gray, Cowper, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Scott. In the judgment 



