to be read, of all men. Be his theme what it may–and in choice of themes he is comprehensive enough–whether a Dutch "tea and turnout," or a "Siege of Granada;" a full-length of "Mahomet," or a crayon sketch of "Jack Tibbetts;" a biography of "Goldsmith," or of "Dolph Heyliger;" a "prairie on fire," or a "Yorkshire Christmas dinner;" a night on the "Rocky Mountains," or a morning at "Abbotsford"–to each he brings the same bello stile che, as he may say, and has said,[1] m'ha fatto onore. His style is indeed charming, so far as it goes. That is not, possibly, very far, or at least very deep. For it is not a style to compass profound or impassioned subjects, or to intone the thrilling notes which "sigh upward from the Delphic caves of human life." It has not, speaking generally, and "organically," more than one set of keys, and can give little meaning to passages demanding diapason grandeur, or trumpet stop. It fluently expresses ballad and dance music; or even the mellifluous cadences of Bellini, and the gliding graces of Haydn; but beyond its range are such complex harmonies as a Sinfonia Eroica, such tumultuous movements as a Hailstone Chorus. And therefore is it not what one sometimes hears it called, a perfect style–unless the perfection be relatively interpreted, quoad rem, which of itself is a "pretty considerable" concession. But in its proper track, it is eminently delightful, and flows on, not in serpentine, meandering curves, but straightforward, "unhasting, yet unresting," with musical ripple as of some soft inland murmur. Hence a vast proportion of the favour vouchsafed to its master, who has made it instrumental in popularising subjects in the treatment of which he had scarcely another advantage, or even justification. Quiet humour, gentle pathos, sober judgment, healthy morality, amiable sentiment, and exemplary professional industry, have done the rest.
That Mr. Irving was eminently endowed with the mytho-pœic faculty–the art of myth-making–was delightfully evident in the production of "Knickerbocker's History of New York." In relation to the infant experiences of the city he depicts, he occupies as notable a position from the positive pole as Niebuhr does from the negative; the German's skill in the use of the minus sign, he emulates in dexterous management of the plus; whatever fame the one deserves as a destructive, the other may arrogate as a conservative or rather a creator; the former immortalises himself because he exhausts old worlds, the latter because he imagines new. All honour, then, to the undaunted historian of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty–being the Only Authentic History of the Times that ever hath been published; which peremptory "only," so far at least as it excludes other claimants, is a terse and tidy challenge, "which nobody can deny." Equally undeniable is it that, for a historian and chronicler, old Knickerbocker is "a jolly good fellow ;" and that even Sir Robert Walpole might have been tempted to revoke and recant his slander on history at large, had he been familiar with such a dainty dish as this. Every pursuivant of useful knowledge is conciliated in limine, by the honest man's assurance, that if any one quality pre-eminently distinguishes his compilation, it is that
- ↑ In the preface to his "Life of Goldsmith," to whose literary influence over himself he applies the address of Dante to Virgil.
