Morris: Irving' s Fiction in France 23 



Alexander Everett, for example, apropos of the Sketch-hook and Brace- 

 bridge Hall writes as follows: ''We really cannot but wonder how Mr. 

 Irving, so just and acute an observer of nature, should have failed so 

 completely in seizing the true aspect of rural life in England, or why, 

 if he saw it as it is, he should have given us an unreal mockery of it, 

 instead of a correct picture." His contention is that Irving represents 

 the British aristocracy in a light much too favorable, while he does not 

 do the common people justice. ''If there be in the known world," he 

 continues, "an animal who by general consent of all who are acquaint- 

 ed with his habits, reahzes the idea of complete puppyism and is, in 

 the strickest sense of the term, insupportable, it is the young English- 

 man of rank and fortune" and he cannot refrain from making the 

 comment that was made of Cooper on the publication of the Bravo, 

 and of Poe apropos of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", the scenes 

 of which are laid in foreign lands, namely that "he would have done 

 better to stay at home". One can understand that French critics in 

 1827 should have been unable to do justice to England — it is less com- 

 prehensible that an American in 1835 should have spoken of the English 

 nobility with such bitterness. As a matter of fact Mr. Everett's 

 view was not the prevailing one among American critics, and it goes 

 without saying that in England Irving's descriptions of English 

 manners and customs were looked upon as evidence that the author 

 possessed remarkable powers of discrimination. 



Irving's American and English critics, like those of France, are 

 practically unanimous in crediting him with good taste and sound 

 judgment. They are also in agreement with them in regard to the 

 complexity of his talent. The former, however, have gone farther 

 than the latter in describing his talent, in that they have essayed to 

 point out its dominant element, some claiming that he is essentially 

 a sketcher, a miscellanist, others that he is fundamentally a novelist. 

 Again, some of Irving's English-speaking critics contradict the asser- 

 tion that his moralizing was too paternal, one of them declaring even 

 that it was "always unconscious". While not quite so sure as his 

 French critics that "his humor never exaggerates", they admit that 

 his satire is always innocent of bitterness. As to his style, which 

 has been so highly praised in France, they are not in perfect agree- 

 ment among themselves. All agree that it possesses rare delicacy, 

 fluency, and grace, but some are of the opinion that the constant dis- 

 play of these qualities is itself a fault. Thus, Francis Lord Jeffrey 

 writes: "The great charm and peculiarity of this work [Bracebridge 

 Hall] consists in the singular sweetness of the composition and the 



71 North American Review, XXVIII, 122. 



