Morris: Irving' s Fiction in France 



25 



write in a simple, unaffected style. Addison had received a finished 

 classical education, was eminently a man of books, and had a decided 

 taste for literary criticism. Mr. Irving, for a man of letters, was not a 

 great reader, and if he possessed the critical faculty, never exercised 

 it. Addison quoted the Latin poets freely — Mr. Irving made no pre- 

 tensions to a familiar acquaintance with the classics. Addison wrote 

 some English poetry, which Irving, I believe, never attempted. One 

 deep chord in the human heart, the pathetic, for whose sweet music 

 Addison had no ear, Irving touched with the hand of a master." As 

 miscellaneous essayist, Everett thinks '^Irvingexceeds Addison in ver- 

 satility and range quite as much as Addison exceeds Irving in the far 

 less important quality of classical tincture. "^"^ 



Some of Irving's books have been much more popular in America 

 than in France. Salmagundi, which, altho not wholly a product of his 

 pen, is usually included for purposes of criticism among his works, 

 was never thoroly enjoyed in France, but was, on the contrary, highly 

 appreciated in our own country, as the following statement made by 

 Alexander Everett will show: 'Take it altogether, it was certainly a 

 production of extraordinary merit and was instantly and universally 

 recognized as such by the public. Bracehridge Hall, which likewise 

 was not a favorite with Irving's French readers, was pronounced by 

 Edward Everett, without hesitation, to be ''quite equal to anything 

 which that age of English literature had produced, — for accuracy 

 and fidelity of observation, for spirit of description, for a certain 

 peculiar pleasantry, and for uncommon simplicity and purity of 

 style". It is in respect to the History of New York, however, that 

 the greatest divergence of opinion is to be noticed. As a rule it was 

 not understood either by the French or by the English, Walter Scott 

 being a striking exception to the rule. In America, on the contrary, it 

 was read with the greatest delight. Edward Everett writes, in 1822, 

 that it is "a book of unwearying pleasantry, which, instead of flashing 

 out as English and American humor is wont, is kept up with a true 

 French vivacity from beginning to end, a book which, if it have a fault, 

 has only that of being too pleasant, too sustained a tissue of merri- 

 ment and ridicule". Many years later he affirmed that it had 

 "probably been read as widely and with as keen a relish as anything 

 from Mr. Irving's pen".^i E. P. Whipple has characterized it as "the 



'7 Everett, Orations and Speeches, IV (1868), 251. 



78 North American Review, XXVIII (1829), 116. 



79 Ibid., XV (1822), 208. 



80 Ibid., XV. 206. 



81 Everett, Orations and Speeches, IV (1868), 249. 



