Various - Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XI.—April, 1851—Vol. II.

His fame is as natural and as healthy as his character, owing none of its lustre to the gloss of flattery, or the glare of fashion. His themes have been taken, to a great extent from common life. He has derived the coloring of his pictures from the universal sentiments of humanity. He is equally free from cold, prosaic, common-place hardness of feeling and from sickly and mawkish effeminacy. He loves to deal with matters of fact, but always surrounds them with the light of his radiant imagination. He exalts and glorifies the actual, without losing it in the clouds of a vaporous ideal. Refined and fastidious in feeling, he retains his sympathy with the most homely realities of life, chuckles over the luscious comforts of a Dutch ménage, and professes no philosophical indifference to the savor of smoking venison in an Indian lodge. With the curious felicity of his style, he uses no strange and far-fetched words. Its charm depends on the beauty of its combinations, not on the rarity of its language. He employs terms that are in the mouths of the people, but weaves them up into those expressive and picturesque forms that never cease to haunt the memory of the reader. Accordingly, he is cherished with equal delight by persons of every variety of culture. His fascinating volumes always formed a part of the traveling equipage of one of the most celebrated New-England judges, and they may be found with no less certainty among the household goods of the emigrant, and the resources for a rainy day on the frugal shelves of the Yankee farmer. They still detain the old man from his pillow, and the schoolboy from his studies. Under their potent charm, the merchant forgets his Wall-street engagements; the preacher lingers over their seductive sentences till the Sunday becomes an astonishment; the statesman is beguiled into oblivion of the salvation of his country; and the advocate is absorbed in the fortunes of some "roystering varlet," till his own forlorn client loses all chance of recovering his character.

The writings of Mr. Irving are no less distinguished by the truthfulness and purity of their moral tone, than by their delightful humor, and their apt delineations of nature and society. It is small praise to say that he never panders to a vicious sentiment, that he makes no appeal to a morbid imagination, and has written nothing to encourage a false and effeminate view of life. His merits, in this respect, are of a positive character. No one can be familiar with his productions, without receiving a kindly and generous influence. His goodness of heart communicates a benignant contagion to his readers. His mild and beautiful charity, his spirit of wise tolerance, the considerateness and candor of his judgments, the placable gentleness of his temper, and the just appreciation of the infinite varieties of character and life are adapted to mitigate the harshness of the cynic, and even to quell the wild furies of the bigot. His sharpest satire never degenerates into personal abuse. It seems the efflorescence of a rich nature, susceptible to every shade of the ludicrous, rather than the overflow of a poisonous fountain, spreading blight and mildew in its course. If he laughs at the follies of the world, it is not that he has any less love for the good souls who commit them, but that with his exuberant good-nature he has no heart to use a more destructive weapon than his lambent irony. With his fine moral influence, he never affects the sternness of a reformer. He is utterly free from all didactic pedantry. We know nothing that he has written with a view to ethical effect. He reveals his own nature in the sweet flow of his delicate musings, and if he does good it is with delightful unconsciousness. He would blush to find that he had been useful when he aimed only to give pleasure, or rather to relieve his own mind of its "thick coming fancies."

In describing the position of Mr. Irving in the field of American literature, we have incidentally touched upon the characteristics of his genius, to which he is indebted for his high and enviable fame. We need not expand our rapid sketch into a labored analysis. Indeed every just criticism of his writings would only repeat the verdict that has so often been pronounced by the universal voice.

Nor is it exclusively as a writer that Mr. Irving has won such a distinguished place in the admiration of his countrymen. While proud of his successes in the walks of literature, they have regarded his personal character with affectionate delight, and lavished the heartfelt sympathies on the man which are never paid to the mere author. The purity of this offering is the more transparent, as Mr. Irving has never courted the favor of the public, nor been placed in those relations with his fellow-men, that are usually the conditions of general popularity. He has wisely kept himself apart from the excitements of the day; with decided political opinions, he has abstained from every thing like partisanship; no one has been able to count on his advocacy of any special interests; and with his singular fluency and grace of expression in written composition, he has never affected the arts of popular oratory. His habits have been those of the well-educated gentleman – neither cherishing the retirement of the secluded student, nor seeking a prominence in public affairs – throwing a charm over the social circles which he frequented by the brilliancy of his intellect, the amenity of his manners, and the ease of his colloquial intercourse – but never surrounded by the prestige of factitious distinction by which so many inferior men obtain an ephemeral notoriety. His appointment as Minister to Spain has been his sole official honor; and this was rather a tribute to his literary eminence than the reward of political services. On his return from Europe in 1832, after an absence of nearly twenty years, he was received with a spontaneous welcome by his fellow-citizens, such as has been seldom enjoyed by the most successful claimants of popular favor; and from that time to the present, no one has shown a more undisputed title to the character of the favorite son of Manhattan. In his beautiful retreat at Sunnyside, "as quiet and sheltered a nook as the heart of man could desire in which to take refuge from the cares and troubles of this world," he listens to the echoes of his fame, cheered by the benedictions of troops of friends, and enjoying the autumn maturity of life with no mists of envy and bitterness to cloud the purple splendors of his declining sun.

It is understood that Mr. Irving is now engaged in completing the Life of Washington, a work of which he commenced the preparation before his residence in Europe as Minister to the Spanish Court. We are informed that it will probably be given to the public in the course of another season. It can not fail to prove a volume of national and household interest. The revered features of the Immortal Patriot will assume a still more benignant aspect, under the affectionate and skillful touches of the congenial Artist. With his unrivaled power of individualization, his practiced ability in historical composition, and his acute sense of the moral perspective in character, he will present the illustrious subject of his biography in a manner to increase our admiration of his virtues, and to inspire a fresh enthusiasm for the wise and beneficent principles of which his life was the sublime embodiment. There is a beautiful propriety in the still more intimate connection of the name of Washington Irving with that of the Father of his Country. It is meet that the most permanent and precious memorial of the First Chief of the American Republic should be presented by the Patriarch of American Letters. It would be a fitting close of his bright career before the public – the melodious swan-song of his historic Muse.

The birthplace of Mr. Bryant, in a secluded and romantic spot among the mountains of western Massachusetts, seems to have been selected by Nature as a fit residence for the early unfolding of high poetic genius. Situated on the forest elevations above the beautiful valley of the Connecticut in the old county of Hampshire, surrounded by a rare combination of scenery, in which are impressively blended the wild and rugged with the soft and graceful, adorned in summer with the splendors of a rapid and luxuriant vegetation, in winter exposed to the fiercest storms from the northwest which bury the roads and almost the houses in gigantic snow-drifts, inhabited by a hardy and primitive population which exhibit the peculiar traits of New England character in their most salient form, the little town of Cummington has the distinction of giving birth to the greatest American poet.

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