THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES OF WASHINGTON IRVING (Illustrated Edition). Вашингтон Ирвинг

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      And this leads me to speak of Irving’s moral quality, which I cannot bring myself to exclude from a literary estimate, even in the face of the current gospel of art for art’s sake. There is something that made Scott and Irving personally loved by the millions of their readers, who had only the dimmest ideas of their personality. This was some quality perceived in what they wrote. Each one can define it for himself; there it is, and I do not see why it is not as integral a part of the authors — an element in the estimate of their future position — as what we term their intellect, their knowledge, their skill, or their art. However you rate it, you cannot account for Irving’s influence in the world without it. In his tender tribute to Irving, the great-hearted Thackeray, who saw as clearly as anybody the place of mere literary art in the sum total of life, quoted the dying words of Scott to Lockhart,—”Be a good man, my dear.” We know well enough that the great author of “The Newcomes” and the great author of “The Heart of Midlothian” recognized the abiding value in literature of integrity, sincerity, purity, charity, faith. These are beneficences; and Irving’s literature, walk round it and measure it by whatever critical instruments you will, is a beneficent literature. The author loved good women and little children and a pure life; he had faith in his fellowmen, a kindly sympathy with the lowest, without any subservience to the highest; he retained a belief in the possibility of chivalrous actions, and did not care to envelop them in a cynical suspicion; he was an author still capable of an enthusiasm. His books are wholesome, full of sweetness and charm, of humor without any sting, of amusement without any stain; and their more solid qualities are marred by neither pedantry nor pretension.

      Washington Irving died on the 28th of November, 1859, at the close of a lovely day of that Indian summer which is nowhere more full of a melancholy charm than on the banks of the lower Hudson, and which was in perfect accord with the ripe and peaceful close of his life. He was buried on a little elevation overlooking Sleepy Hollow and the river he loved, amidst the scenes which his magic pen has made classic and his sepulcher hallows.

      COLLECTIONS OF SHORT STORIES

       Table of Contents

THE SKETCH BOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.

       Table of Contents

       THE AUTHOR’S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF

       THE VOYAGE

       ROSCOE

       THE WIFE

       RIP VAN WINKLE

       ENGLISH WRITERS ON AMERICA

       RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND

       THE BROKEN HEART

       THE ART OF BOOK-MAKING

       A ROYAL POET

       THE COUNTRY CHURCH

       THE WIDOW AND HER SON

       A SUNDAY IN LONDON

       THE BOAR’S HEAD TAVERN, EASTCHEAP

       THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE

       RURAL FUNERALS

       THE INN KITCHEN

       THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM

       WESTMINSTER ABBEY

       CHRISTMAS

       THE STAGECOACH

       CHRISTMAS EVE

       CHRISTMAS DAY

       THE CHRISTMAS DINNER

       LONDON ANTIQUES

       LITTLE BRITAIN

       STRATFORD-ON-AVON

       TRAITS OF INDIAN CHARACTER

       PHILIP OF POKANOKET

       JOHN BULL

       THE PRIDE OF THE VILLAGE

       THE ANGLER

       THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW

       L’ENVOY

      THE SKETCHBOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.

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