The Sketch Book (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By Washington Irving

Originally published as The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, this book is considered a landmark in American fiction for introducing the modern short story form in America, The Sketch Book includes Washington Irving’s most enduring works, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The collection also includes travel impressions and narratives featuring legends and folklore.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Mar 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411442788

Washington Irving

Washington Irving Was born in New York City in 1783. He lived in the United States, England, and Spain (where he served as an American diplomatic attache). A prolific author, Irving wrote The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York, The Alhambra, and biographies of George Washington and Christopher Columbus, among other works. He is best remembered, however, for his two most famous stories, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle."

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INTRODUCTION

THE LIFE AND WORK OF WASHINGTON IRVING

SO completely are the writings and the life of Washington Irving identified that to appreciate the one without the other is impossible. No better impression of the spirit of his youth is to be had than that given as introductory to The Sketch Book in The Author's Account of Himself, and his essays and tales are constantly to be illustrated by reference to his letters and travels. In the boy who was to be preeminently the man of letters a passion for reading developed early; at ten he was reading a translation of Orlando Furioso and imitating fantastic adventures of chivalry in his father's backyard. These deeds of prowess were mingled with various hare-brained escapades along the roofs and gutters of the neighboring houses. A little later Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the Sailor came to his hands, and the influence of these books in breeding a desire to travel was reenforced by a collection of voyages and travels under the title, The World Displayed. The sea began to exert upon the boy a lure such as it had held for his father before him. The father's sailor experience was not to be repeated, but the lad's dreams of travel were to be realized in full measure.

His first modest voyaging was occasioned by a convalescence from fever in 1798, when he first woke the echoes of Sleepy Hollow with his gun. Two years later he extended his travels by a trip up the Hudson, and his account of this journey shows that the beautiful river had already cast upon him the charm it held ever after. A second visit to the neighborhood of Albany, when he was falling into the ill health that brought about his first trip to Europe, followed in 1802, and the next year found him on an expedition with a party of friends to the site of Ogdensburg on the St. Lawrence and thence to Montreal and Quebec. At Montreal he first fell in with the fur traders of the Northwest, the romance of whose life he was afterwards to weave into his account of the settlement of Astoria on the Pacific Coast. The enthusiasm kindled in Irving by this early acquaintance with the lakes and forests and rivers of his own country he never lost. In 1824 he writes to his friend Brevoort from Paris: The bay, the rivers and their wild and woody shores, the haunts of my boyhood, both on land and water, absolutely have a witchery over my mind. I thank God for my having been born in so beautiful a place among such beautiful scenery; I am convinced that I owe a vast deal of what is good and pleasant in my nature to the circumstance.

In the hope, shared by his brothers, that his health would be benefited by the voyage, he left New York in May 1804, and landed in Bordeaux in June, just after Napoleon had been declared Emperor. Because of the state of war then existing, his trip through Southern France was hindered by police spies, who suspected him of being an Englishman. Later, on the voyage from Genoa to Sicily, an encounter with pirates served to enhance the adventurous character of his journey and to furnish material for most interesting home letters. During the next two years he traveled through Italy, France, and Belgium, with a residence of some months in Paris and brief visits to London and Oxford. Besides the hoped-for betterment in health, the fruit of this journey was a closer and more appreciative acquaintance with art and music, an enthusiasm for the opera, which was always afterward characteristic of him, and the beginning of that wide circle of acquaintance and friendship with notable people which formed so large a part of his life. In Rome he met the American artist, Washington Allston, and between the two a warm friendship sprang up, so that Irving himself was on the point of trying painting as a life work. After his return to America in 1806 he enlarged the range of his travel and acquaintance by visits to Philadelphia and Washington and trips to Montreal. He was present in a semi-legal capacity at the trial of Aaron Burr in Richmond, Virginia. This was wide traveling for that day and of no small advantage to the man who was to represent in England, for nearly twenty years, the best of America.

The year 1809 brought to Irving the great sorrow of his life and his first notable literary success. In the spring of this year occurred the death of Matilda Hoffman, the daughter of Irving's friend, Judge Hoffman, in whose office he had studied law. To this loss probably is traceable much of a certain melancholy tenderness that runs through his work. It was characteristic of the man, however, that during the following two months of retirement at Kinderhook he should occupy himself with the final preparation of the History of New York for the press. This was his first book, his previous writing having been confined to a few papers contributed to The Morning Chronicle in the autumn of 1802 under the pen name of Jonathan Oldstyle and parts of the humorous periodical, Salmagundi, written during 1807. To Mr. Brevoort, who had presented to him a copy of the History, Walter Scott in 1813 wrote enthusiastically of the most excellently jocose history of New York, and expressed a desire to see the next of Mr. Irving's work. In the years that elapsed before the appearance of that next work the two became personal friends, and Scott's connection with The Sketch Book is told in Irving's Preface to the Revised Edition.

During the five years following the publication of the History Irving's only important literary work was the editing of The Analectic Magazine, from which the papers Philip of Pokanoket and Indian Traits were afterward taken for The Sketch Book. Frequent missions to Washington for the firm of Irvings, in which he now had an interest, served to extend his acquaintance. In 1814 his always ardent patriotism found vent in a transient attachment to the military staff of the Governor of New York, under which commission he made a hasty trip to Sacketts Harbor on Lake Ontario to inspect the war preparations there.

Looking forward again with pleasure to a period of leisurely travel in Europe, Irving embarked for Liverpool in May 1815, and arrived, as he wrote, just as the coaches were coming in decked with laurel and dashing proudly through the streets with the tidings of the Battle of Waterloo. But, like many others, during the following period of business depression, the firm of Irvings, of whose business Peter Irving was in charge in Liverpool, was in difficulties, and Washington devoted most of his time during the next three years to a vain attempt to ward off the failure which came in 1818. Finally, in August of this year, with some material which he had gathered during occasional holidays snatched for visits to London, Stratford, Abbotsford, and other places of interest, he went to London to try the literary career he had hitherto shunned. He declined several government appointments, and on March 3, 1819, sent to his brother Ebenezer in New York the first part of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

It was not without a good deal of hesitation that Irving launched himself on this new venture, but the work was a success from the first, and the author was assured of a place among the first writers, not only of his own day but of all English literature. Bracebridge Hall and Tales of a Traveller, both modeled somewhat upon the form of The Sketch Book, followed after a period of residence on the Continent. He now began to look for wider fields of work. A suggestion that he should translate a new Spanish work on Columbus prompted the visit to Spain which extended itself to a three years' residence and proved so rich a source of material. During this period he wrote his Life of Columbus and Conquest of Granada and gathered material for his other Spanish papers. After two years as Secretary of Legation at London, Irving returned to America in 1832, having received as crowning honors the degree of D.C.L. from Oxford University and one of the medals conferred by the Royal Society of Literature in 1830, the other medal having been given to the historian Hallam.

At the request of John Jacob Astor he now undertook the writing of the account of Astoria, a work which was received in England with the greatest enthusiasm. But this, as well as several other American subjects which were the fruit of his travel in the South and West, he looked upon as subordinate to the great work he had long had in mind, a Life of Washington. This had been suggested to him as early as 1825, and now that he seemed settled in America and had surrendered the subject of the Conquest of Mexico to Prescott, the time seemed ripe for the task; but many demands of the public upon his time and the necessity for other literary work interfered with the plan. He hoped for leisure in Spain after accepting the post of Minister to that country in 1842, but in this hope too he was disappointed, and it was not until 1859, within a year of his death, that the last volume of this, his longest and final work was published.

Meanwhile, his cottage, Wolfert's Roost, or Sunnyside as it was later styled, near the Sleepy Hollow that he had made famous, had become a place of pilgrimage as the residence of this most friendly and lovable man of letters. To a generously warm family sympathy there was added in him, in a notable degree, the capacity for friendship with people of all ranks. His books and his own personal charm gained for him an acquaintance probably as wide as that of any man of his day. In 1853 he wrote to his niece, Mrs. Storrow, at Paris: Louis Napoleon and Eugenie Montijo, Emperor and Empress of France!—one of whom I had a guest at my cottage on the Hudson; the other, whom, when a child, I have had on my knee at Granada! An English lady who enjoyed an intimate acquaintance with Irving during his residence at Dresden in 1822–23 wrote of him in 1860: He was thoroughly a gentleman, not merely externally in manners and look but to the innermost fibres and core of his heart. Sweet-tempered, gentle, fastidious, sensitive, and gifted with the warmest affections, the most delightful and invariably interesting companion, gay and full of humor, even in spite of occasional fits of melancholy, which he was however seldom subject to when with those he liked—a gift of conversation that flowed like a full river in sunshine, bright, easy, and abundant.

The following letter from Dickens, written in May 1841, just before his first visit to America in answer to one from Irving telling of his enjoyment of the story of Little Nell, is interesting here.

"MY DEAR SIR:

"There is no man in the world who could have given me the heartfelt pleasure you have, by your kind note of the 13th of last month. There is no living writer, and there are very few among the dead, whose approbation I should feel so proud to earn. And with everything you have written upon my shelves, and in my thoughts, and in my heart of hearts, I may honestly and truly say so. . . . I wish I could find in your welcome letter some hint of an intention to visit England. . . . I should love to go with you—as I have gone, God knows how often—into Little Britain, and Eastcheap, and Green Arbor Court, and Westminster Abbey. I should like to travel with you, outside the last of the coaches, down to Bracebridge Hall . . . to compare notes . . . about Robert Preston, and the tallow chandler's window, whose sitting-room is second nature to me; and about all those delightful places and people that I used to walk about and dream of in the day-time, when a very small and not over-particularly-well-taken-care-of boy. . . . Diedrich Knickerbocker I have worn to death in my pocket, and yet I should show you his mutilated carcass with a joy past all expression. . . .

"Always your faithful friend, 

CHARLES DICKENS.

Irving was not a man with a great message for the world, and yet he had always a serious purpose in his humor. He was a man who simply recast the world he saw and made a part of in the forms of his own beautiful, generous, good nature. He was an ardent patriot, and both as private citizen and official did, in an unassuming way, good service for his country at a time when an American gentleman abroad had it in his power to do quite otherwise. He was born in New York April 3, 1783, and his life had spanned the long period of the beginnings of American literature when he died, full of years and honors, November 28, 1859, and was buried by the side of his mother in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery.

THE STUDY OF THE SKETCH BOOK

Since Irving himself uses the comparison and we know that at the time of writing The Sketch Book his most intimate friends were the artists, Allston, Leslie, and Newton, we shall not go far wrong if in reading the book we view its contents much as one would the small sketches of a great artist. Such sketches are always interesting, not only in themselves but also for their suggestion of the artist's larger canvases and for the light they shed upon his methods of work. In the first place, while reading The Sketch Book the student must be careful to get with some certainty the various viewpoints of the author. Failing this, he loses best half of the affair; he will fail to catch the suggestion of a larger canvas, which each sketch carries in itself; he will fail to appreciate the varied phases of life which the book presents; and he will miss also the common quality that marks all the sketches—the intimate, personal, sympathetic humor which is precisely the peculiar mark of the man, Washington Irving.

In point of subject-matter and purpose—for Irving's work was never purposeless—the sketches fall into several classes, or rather may be grouped in several different ways. For most of them some such classification is indicated in the Notes. In general, when making up the parts for publication in America, Irving seems to have had in mind three groups: the humorous, such as Rip Van Winkle; the pathetic, like The Wife, or The Broken Heart; and the curious or antique, of which the Christmas papers may serve as examples. But clearly this must leave quite out of view such literary pilgrimages as Stratford-on-Avon, or A Royal Poet, although in both, as well as in Westminster Abbey, which stands quite alone, the antiquary is visible. Others, like Rural Life, are simply reflections upon the features of English life that interested the author.

Such a paper as Roscoe is to be read in the light of the writer's interest in the work of a public-spirited citizen, such work as might be done in his own home city. English Writers on America, again, is written in the conciliatory spirit of a man who, with wide acquaintance in both countries, well knew the ease with which friction and misunderstanding were engendered between England and America, and who knew also a way to avoid the difficulty. In The Mutability of Literature and The Art of Book-making he takes two very old themes of satire and cynical reflection and treats them in a humorous and gently satirical vein that is quite past classifying. Little Britain and John Bull are specimens of caricature at its best, a quality which The Country Church shares with them in some degree. They should be read with the pending social and political changes in the England of that day clearly in mind.

Irving did larger pieces of work in his lives of Washington and Columbus and the shorter Life of Goldsmith. But he always continued to make sketches, and The Sketch Book remains, taken altogether, a characteristic piece of work, suggesting widely varied sources of material and possibilities of larger work. This suggestiveness of other work, of more sketches, of wide fields of reading and observation, is for the student one of the most valuable qualities of The Sketch Book. Few volumes are richer in such hints. The reader may follow the author to the wide range of his literary sources, and he may go into the later books in which the plots that Irving merely outlines are more fully developed, where in the pictures of life that he merely sketched the colors have been laid on. Besides, a twofold value is to be found in acquaintance with the author's method of work. First the student comes to know the personal quality and habits of the man who is so skilful a guide in the borderland between romance and fact; and in the second place he may form by imitation of the master such habits of open-mindedness and prompt readiness to take suggestions from many sources as will insure him ample material for his own composition.

Information as to sources and occasions of the various papers will be found in the Notes. In general Irving's method was to gather his material from conversations, from his own observations of life, or from odd corners of libraries, and then to allow his fancy to play over it for a while at will. Out of this sort of preparation came most of his sketches. Sometimes a chance remark or passing scene would set his pen going, and when in the mood he wrote rapidly, with an enjoyment of his work like that which characterized Dickens. More frequently he wrote slowly, giving much time to correction, and rejecting much. Thomas Moore, the poet, after hearing Irving read from the manuscript of the Tales of a Traveller A Literary Dinner, wrote: He has given the description of the booksellers' dinner so exactly like what I told him of one of the Longmans (the carving partner, the partner to laugh at the popular author's jokes, the twelve-edition writers treated with claret, etc.), that I very much fear my friends in Paternoster Row will know themselves in the picture.

His friend Leslie gives an interesting account of the writing of The Stout Gentleman, accounted the best sketch in Bracebridge Hall. The two had spent a rainy Sunday in the inn at Oxford. That next morning, as we mounted the coach, I said something about a stout gentleman who had come from London with us the day before, and Irving remarked that 'The Stout Gentleman' would not be a bad title for a tale; as soon as the coach stopped, he began writing with his pencil, and went on at every like opportunity. We visited Stratford-on-Avon, strolled about Charlecot Park and other places in the neighborhood, and while I was sketching, Irving, mounted on a stile or seated on a stone, was busily engaged with 'The Stout Gentleman.' He wrote with the greatest rapidity, often laughing to himself, and from time to time reading the manuscript to me.

Irving himself was pretty clear as to the precise and peculiar character of his work. He was frequently urged to write a novel, but he chose deliberately to hold to the sort of work he had already done well. For my part, he wrote to a friend in 1824, I consider a story merely as a frame upon which to stretch my materials. It is the play of thought and sentiment and language; the weaving in of characters lightly yet expressively delineated; the familiar and faithful exhibition of scenes in common life; and the half-concealed vein of humor that is often playing through the whole—these are among what I aim at. . . . I have preferred adopting the mode of sketches and short tales rather than long works, because I choose to take a line of writing peculiar to myself, rather than fall into the manner or school of any other writer. Thomas Moore, writing in March 1821, says: Irving . . . has followed up an idea which I suggested, and taken the characters in his 'Christmas Essay,' Master Simon, etc., etc., for the purpose of making a slight thread of a story on which to string his remarks and sketches of human manners and feelings.

These comments are really the key to the structure of Irving's sketches. They explain also why he never developed the short story with its compactness and climax. He simply was not interested in it. The papers of The Sketch Book, then, vary in technical form between the narrative essay and the romantic tale, the distinction between the two lying in the greater prominence of reflection in the former and of narrative interest in the latter. Of the narrative essay Westminster Abbey may be taken as representative; of the romantic tale The Spectre Bridegroom with its loose story structure is typical. The narrative essay, in which the writer uses a thread of narrative to carry his reflections, had been skilfully developed by Addison, Steele, and Goldsmith, who had served Irving as models of style; the tale, of course, is as old as once upon a time. Irving's sympathetic humor enabled him to throw into most of his sketches the qualities of both these forms.

The next problem therefore, for the student, that of observing the literary form of the sketches, is simple. Allowing for the inimitable element of Irving's genius, the problem is to discover the method of unifying an essay by means of a consistent setting of narrative or description.

This direction leads naturally to some study of Irving's diction, which for aptness, grace, and appropriateness has yet to be surpassed. In this matter, the teacher needs often to guard against laying too much emphasis upon the unusual word. Irving uses some antique forms of word and phrase with a definite purpose, as he uses also some provincial and colloquial turns of expression; but these are the exception. His habitual, ordinary diction is the important thing. The best method for this study is that based upon oral reading. As Irving's descriptions are drawn with the eye of an artist, so his sentences and words are chosen and tested by the ear of a lover of music. None of the books usually read in high school English classes, is better adapted than The Sketch Book for oral reading to develop an appreciation of English vowels and consonants and that skill in forming them which is often so sadly wanting in our speech.

IRVING'S PUBLISHED WORKS

Jonathan Oldstyle Papers, contributed to The Morning Chronicle, 1802. Republished without authority, 1823, in New York.

Salmagundi (name meaning a dish of spiced, chopped meat, etc.; hence a Miscellany). A series of papers modeled somewhat after the Spectator papers of Addison. Twenty numbers published during 1807–08. Washington Irving, his brother William Irving, and James K. Paulding worked together on this, writing under the pen names of Lancelot Langstaff, Anthony Evergreen, William Wizard, Pindar Cockloft (poet), and Mustapha Rub-a-dub Keli Khan, the aliases being used now by one, now by another of the three writers.

Contributions to The Analectic Magazine, 1813–1814. Philip of Pokanoket and Indian Traits were written for this review.

History of New York, 1809, published as A Posthumous work of Diedrich Knickerbocker.

The Sketch Book, published in seven parts in America.

Part 1. May 1819:

Author's Account of Himself.

The Voyage.

Roscoe.

The Wife.

Rip Van Winkle.

Part 2. July 1819:

English Writers on America.

Rural Life in England.

The Broken Heart.

The Art of Book-making.

Part 3. September 1819:

A Royal Poet.

The Country Church.

The Widow and Her Son.

The Boar's Head.

Part 4. November 1819:

The Mutability of Literature.

The Spectre Bridegroom.

Rural Funerals.

Part 5. December 1819:

The Christmas Papers.

Part 6. March 1820:

The Pride of the Village.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

John Bull.

Part 7. September 1820:

Westminster Abbey.

Stratford.

Little Britain.

The Angler.

Parts 1–4 were published in England as vol. i. in February 1820, parts 5–7, in July 1820, with Philip of Pokanoket and Indian Traits.

Bracebridge Hall, 1822.

Tales of a Traveller, 1824.

The Life and Voyages of Columbus, 1828. Abridged in America, 1829, in England, 1830.

A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, 1829.

The Voyages of the Companions of Columbus, 1830–31.

The Alhambra, in England and America, and in France in translation in two volumes, 1832.

The Crayon Miscellany, 1835.

Part 1. A Tour on the Prairies.

Part 2. Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey.

Part 3. Legends of the Conquest of Spain.

Astoria, 1836.

Adventures of Captain Bonneville, 1837.

Sketch of the Life of Goldsmith, in Harper's Family Library, 1839.

Contributions to The Knickerbocker Magazine, 1839–1840, republished as Wolfert's Roost, 1855.

Revision of Works, 1848–9.

Life of Goldsmith, rewritten and published separately, 1849.

Wolfert's Roost, 1855.

Life of Washington, 1855–59.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following list is not intended to be exhaustive, but simply to give the books and articles that would be available for most schools, in libraries of moderate size.

Life and Letters of Washington Irving, by Pierre M. Irving, 3 volumes, 1869. The standard, complete authority.

Washington Irving, Charles Dudley Warner, in American Men of Letters Series. This contains good chapters on his works, with summaries.

A Literary History of America, book iv., chapter iii., by Barrett Wendell. An excellent chapter of discriminating criticism.

American Short Stories, by C. S. Baldwin. The introduction discusses Irving's relation to the development of the short story.

Nil Nisi Bonum, in Roundabout Papers, Thackeray, contains a very interesting estimate of the man.

The Work of Washington Irving, a short essay, by C. D. Warner, 1893.

Irving, in Leading American Essayists, by W. M. Payne, 1910. An excellent brief account of his life and place in American literature.

The Critic for March 31, 1883, The Irving Centenary Edition, contained many useful articles on Irving, with a rather full bibliography.

PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION

THE following papers, with two exceptions, were written in England, and formed but part of an intended series, for which I had made notes and memorandums. Before I could mature a plan, however, circumstances compelled me to send them piecemeal to the United States, where they were published from time to time in portions or numbers. It was not my intention to publish them in England, being conscious that much of their contents would be interesting only to American readers, and, in truth, being deterred by the severity with which American productions had been treated by the British press.

By the time the contents of the first volume had appeared in this occasional manner, they began to find their way across the Atlantic, and to be inserted, with many kind encomiums, in the London Literary Gazette. It was said, also, that a London bookseller intended to publish them in a collective form. I determined, therefore, to bring them forward myself, that they might at least have the benefit of my superintendence and revision. I accordingly took the printed numbers, which I had received from the United States, to Mr. John Murray, the eminent publisher, from whom I had already received friendly attentions, and left them with him for examination, informing him that should he be inclined to bring them before the public, I had materials enough on hand for a second volume. Several days having elapsed without any communication from Mr. Murray, I addressed a note to him, in which I construed his silence into a tacit rejection of my work, and begged that the numbers I had left with him might be returned to me. The following was his reply:

MY DEAR SIR,—

I entreat you to believe that I feel truly obliged by your kind intentions towards me, and that I entertain the most unfeigned respect for your most tasteful talents. My house is completely filled with work-people at this time, and I have only an office to transact business in; and yesterday I was wholly occupied, or I should have done myself the pleasure of seeing you.

If it would not suit me to engage in the publication of your present work, it is only because I do not see that scope in the nature of it which would enable me to make those satisfactory accounts between us, without which I really feel no satisfaction in engaging—but I will do all I can to promote their circulation, and shall be most ready to attend to any future plan of yours.

With much regard, I remain, dear sir,

Your faithful servant,     

JOHN MURRAY.

This was disheartening, and might have deterred me from any further prosecution of the matter, had the question of republication in Great Britain rested entirely with me; but I apprehended the appearance of a spurious edition. I now thought of Mr. Archibald Constable as publisher, having been treated by him with much hospitality during a visit to Edinburgh; but first I determined to submit my work to Sir Walter (then Mr.) Scott, being encouraged to do so by the cordial reception I had experienced from him at Abbotsford a few years previously, and by the favorable opinion he had expressed to others of my earlier writings. I accordingly sent him the printed numbers of the Sketch Book in a parcel by coach, and at the same time wrote to him, hinting that since I had had the pleasure of partaking of his hospitality, a reverse had taken place in my affairs which made the successful exercise of my pen all-important to me; I begged him, therefore, to look over the literary articles I had forwarded to him, and, if he thought they would bear European republication, to ascertain whether Mr. Constable would be inclined to be the publisher.

The parcel containing my work went by coach to Scott's address in Edinburgh; the letter went by mail to his residence in the country. By the very first post I received a reply, before he had seen my work.

I was down at Kelso, said he, when your letter reached Abbotsford. I am now on my way to town, and will converse with Constable, and do all in my power to forward your views—I assure you nothing will give me more pleasure.

The hint, however, about a reverse of fortune had struck the quick apprehension of Scott, and, with that practical and efficient good will which belonged to his nature, he had already devised a way of aiding me.

A weekly periodical, he went on to inform me, was about to be set up in Edinburgh, supported by the most respectable talents, and amply furnished with all the necessary information. The appointment of the editor, for which ample funds were provided, would be five hundred pounds sterling a year, with the reasonable prospect of further advantages. This situation, being apparently at his disposal, he frankly offered to me. The work, however, he intimated, was to have somewhat of a political bearing, and he expressed an apprehension that the tone it was desired to adopt might not suit me. Yet I risk the question, added he, because I know no man so well qualified for this important task, and perhaps because it will necessarily bring you to Edinburgh. If my proposal does not suit, you need only keep the matter secret, and there is no harm done. 'And for my love I pray you wrong me not.' If, on the contrary, you think it could be made to suit you, let me know as soon as possible, addressing Castle-street, Edinburgh.

In a postscript, written from Edinburgh, he adds, "I am just come here, and have glanced over the Sketch Book. It is positively beautiful, and increases my desire to crimp you, if it be possible. Some difficulties there always are in managing such a matter, especially at the outset; but we will obviate them as much as we possibly can."

The following is from an imperfect draught of my reply, which underwent some modifications in the copy sent:

I cannot express how much I am gratified by your letter. I had begun to feel as if I had taken an unwarrantable liberty; but, somehow or other, there is a genial sunshine about you that warms every creeping thing into heart and confidence. Your literary proposal both surprises and flatters me, as it evinces a much higher opinion of my talents than I have myself.

I then went on to explain that I found myself peculiarly unfitted for the situation offered to me, not merely by my political opinions, but by the very constitution and habits of my mind. My whole course of life, I observed, "has been desultory, and I am unfitted for any periodically recurring task, or any stipulated labor of body or mind. I have no command of my talents, such as they are, and have to watch the varyings of my mind as I would those of a weather-cock. Practice and training may bring me more into rule; but at present I am as useless for regular service as one of my own country Indians or a Don Cossack.

"I must, therefore, keep on pretty much as I have begun; writing when I can, not when I would. I shall occasionally shift my residence and write whatever is suggested by objects before me, or whatever rises in my imagination; and hope to write better and more copiously by and by.

I am playing the egotist, but I know no better way of answering your proposal than by showing what a very good-for-nothing kind of being I am. Should Mr. Constable feel inclined to make a bargain for the wares I have on hand, he will encourage me to further enterprise; and it will be something like trading with a gipsy for the fruits of his prowlings, who may at one time have nothing but a wooden bowl to offer, and at another time a silver tankard.

In reply, Scott expressed regret, but not surprise, at my declining what might have proved a troublesome duty. He then recurred to the original subject of our correspondence; entered into a detail of the various terms upon which arrangements were made between authors and booksellers, that I might take my choice; expressing the most encouraging confidence of the success of my work, and of previous works which I had produced in America. I did no more, added he, than open the trenches with Constable; but I am sure if you will take the trouble to write to him, you will find him disposed to treat your overtures with every degree of attention. Or, if you think it of consequence in the first place to see me, I shall be in London in the course of a month, and whatever my experience can command is most heartily at your command. But I can add little to what I have said above, except my earnest recommendation to Constable to enter into the negotiation.a

Before the receipt of this most obliging letter, however, I had determined to look to no leading bookseller for a launch, but to throw my work before the public at my own risk, and let it sink or swim according to its merits. I wrote to that effect to Scott, and soon received a reply:

"I observe with pleasure that you are going to come forth in Britain. It is certainly not the very best way to publish on one's own account; for the booksellers set their face against the circulation of such works as do not pay an amazing toll to themselves. But they have lost the art of altogether damming up the road in such cases between the author and the public, which they were once able to do as effectually as Diabolus in John Bunyan's Holy War closed up the windows of my Lord Understanding's mansion. I am sure of one thing, that you have only to be known to the British public to be admired by them, and I would not say so unless I really was of that opinion.

"If you ever see a witty but rather local publication called Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, you will find some notice of your works in the last number: the author is a friend of mine, to whom I have introduced you in your literary capacity. His name is Lockhart, a young man of very considerable talent, and who will soon be intimately connected with my family. My faithful friend Knickerbocker is to be next examined and illustrated. Constable was extremely willing to enter into consideration of a treaty for your works, but I foresee will be still more so when

Your name is up, and may go

From Toledo to Madrid.

——And that will soon be the case. I trust to be in London about the middle of the month, and promise myself great pleasure in once again shaking you by the hand."

The first volume of the Sketch Book was put to press in London as I had resolved, at my own risk, by a bookseller unknown to fame, and without any of the usual arts by which a work is trumpeted into notice. Still some attention had been called to it by the extracts which had previously appeared in the Literary Gazette, and by the kind word spoken by the editor of that periodical, and it was getting into fair circulation, when my worthy bookseller failed before the first month was over, and the sale was interrupted.

At this juncture Scott arrived in London. I called to him for help, as I was sticking in the mire, and, more propitious than Hercules, he put his own shoulder to the wheel. Through his favorable representations, Murray was quickly induced to undertake the future publication of the work which he had previously declined. A further edition of the first volume was struck off and the second volume was put to press, and from that time Murray became my publisher, conducting himself in all his dealings with that fair, open, and liberal spirit which had obtained for him the well-merited appellation of the Prince of Booksellers.

Thus, under the kind and cordial auspices of Sir Walter Scott, I began my literary career in Europe; and I feel that I am but discharging, in a trifling degree, my debt of gratitude to the memory of that golden-hearted man in acknowledging my obligations to him.—But who of his literary contemporaries ever applied to him for aid or counsel that did not experience the most prompt, generous, and effectual assistance!

W. I.

THE SKETCH BOOK

THE AUTHOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF

I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept out of her shel was turned eftsoons into a toad, and thereby was forced to make a stoole to sit on; so the traveller that stragleth from his owne country is in a short time transformed into so monstrous a shape, that he is faine to alter his mansion with his manners, and to live where he can, not where he would.

LYLY'S EUPHUES.¹

I WAS always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city,² to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town-crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range of my observations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about the surrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famous in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had been committed, or a ghost seen. I visited the neighboring villages, and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and customs, and conversing with their sages and great men. I even journeyed one long summer's day to the summit of the most distant hill, whence I stretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita, and was astonished to find how vast a globe I inhabited.

This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of voyages³ and travels became my passion, and in devouring their contents, I neglected the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would I wander about the pier-heads in fine weather, and watch the parting ships, bound to distant climes—with what longing eyes would I gaze after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth!

Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vague inclination into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I visited various parts of my own country;⁴ and had I been merely a lover of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere its gratification, for on no country have the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes,⁵ like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with their bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine;—no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.

But Europe held forth the charms of storied and poetical association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art,⁶ the refinements of highly cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities of ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthful promise: Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of times gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievement—to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity—to loiter about the ruined castle—to meditate on the falling tower—to escape, in short, from the commonplace realities of the present, and lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.

I had, beside all this, an earnest desire to see the great men of the earth. We have, it is true, our great men in America:⁷ not a city but has an ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, and been almost withered by the shade into which they cast me; for there is nothing so baleful to a small man as the shade of a great one, particularly the great man of a city. But I was anxious to see the great men of Europe; for I had read in the works of various philosophers that all animals degenerated in America, and man among