same street (128) to which the family moved was abetted in his dramatic passion by James K. If the boy differed Paulding, who was between four and five years his senior, and was residing with his brother William Irving, who had married his sister. The theater was situated in John Street, between Broadway and Nassau, not far from his father's house, from which he used to steal to see the play, returning in time for the evening prayer, after which he would pretend to retire for the night to his own room in the second story, whence he would climb out of the window on a woodshed, and so get back to the theater, and the enjoyment of the after-piece. These youthful escapades, if detected, would no doubt have subjected him to a severe lecture from his father, who was a strict, Godfearing man, and to tender reproaches from his mother. "Oh, Washington!" sighed the old lady, "if you were only good!" Master Irving was not a prodigy; for at the first school, kept by a woman, to which he was sent in his fourth year, and where he remained upwards of two years, he learned little beyond his alphabet; and at the second, where boys After a year or two more of school-life, during and girls were taught, and where he remained which he acquired the rudiments of a classical until he was fourteen, he was more noted for education, he concluded to study law, a profeshis truth-telling than for his scholarship. He sion to which his brother John had devoted himdistinguished himself while at school by playing self, and accordingly entered the office of Henry the part of Juba in Addison's Cato, at a public Masterton, with whom he remained until the exhibition, and by amusing the audience by summer of 1801, when he transferred his services struggling at the same time with a mass of to Brockholst Livingston, and, on that gentlehoney-cake which he was munching behind the man being called to the bench of the Supreme scenes, when he was suddenly summoned upon Court of the State in the following January, he the stage. The first book he is known to have continued his legal pursuits in the office of Josiah read with pleasure was Hoole's translation of Ogden Hoffman. Why Irving conceived that he "Orlando Furioso," which fired him to emulate had the makings of a lawyer in him, we are not the feats of its heroes, by combatting his play-told; nor why his father, who was averse to law, mates with a wooden sword in the yard of his father's house. His next literary favorites were "Robinson Crusoe" and "Sinbad the Sailor," and a collection of voyages and travels, entitled "The World Displayed," which he used to read at night by the glimmer of secreted candles after he had retired to bed, and which begot in him a desire to go to sea-a strong desire that by the time he left school almost ripened into a determination to run away from home and be a sailor. It led him, at any rate, to try to eat salt pork, which he abominated, and to lie on the hard floor, which, of course, was distasteful to him. These preliminary hardships proved too much for his heroism, so the notion of becoming a gallant tar was reluctantly abandoned. should have permitted him to mistake his talents. It was not a very dangerous mistake, however, for he soon awoke from it; nor was it sedulously indulged in while it lasted; for when not employed, like Cowper before him, in giggling and making giggle, he passed his days in reading the belle-lettre literature of England, and such literature as America then possessed, which was not much, nor worth dwelling upon now. He found his vocation in his nineteenth year, in the beginning of December, 1802, or it was found for him, by his brother Peter, who, a couple of months before, had started a daily paper in New York, under the title of the Morning Chronicle, of which he was the editor and proprietor, and in which he persuaded his clever young brother Irving's first known attempt at original com- to assist him. He furnished a series of essays position was a couplet levelled against a larger over the signature of "Jonathan Oldstyle," which school-fellow, who was attentive to the servant- betrayed the bent of his mind and his early readgirl of his master, and who was so enraged at the ing, and which were generally of a humorous fun it occasioned, that he gave the writer a severe character. They were so much superior to the threshing. The young poet was discouraged in newspaper writings of the period that they athis personalities, but not his art; for he contrib-tracted great attention, and in spite of their local uted metrical effusions to the Weekly Museum, a and temporary interest, were copied into the little periodical of four pages, published in Peck | journals of other cities. Among those who were Slip, to which he also contributed moral essays. struck by their talent was Charles Brockden At the age of thirteen he wrote a play, which was Brown, who was the first American that made represented at the house of a friend, and stim-literature a profession, and who had already pub ulated his boyish fondness for the stage. Helished four or five novels, remarkable both for their extravagance and their power. He was a con- to send him to Europe. The expense was mainly tributor to the periodicals of the day-such as borne by his brother William, who told him, they were of which the best, perhaps, was The speaking in behalf of his relatives, that one of Monthly Magazine and American Register, of their greatest sources of happiness was that forwhich he was the proprietor. It soon died, tune put it in their power to add to the comfort and was followed by The Literary Magazine and and happiness of one so dear to them. They acAmerican Register, of which he was also the cordingly secured a passage for him to Bordeaux, proprietor, and it was in this latter capacity, for which he started on the 19th of May, 1804. rather than as the first American author, that he "There's a chap," said the captain, "who will visited Irving, and besought him to aid him in his go overboard before we get across." new enterprise. He was not successful, for, whatever may have been his inclinations, "Mr. Jonathan Ol'style" had not yet decided upon being an author. prove himself in the language. The first European visit of an American was a greater event seventy years ago than it is to-day. It was less common, at any rate, and was attended with dangers which no longer exist. What it Irving's love of adventure, which had been was to Irving we gather from his letters, which stimulated by the reading of voyages and travels, may still be read with pleasure, though nothing and which would have led him to follow a mari- like the pleasure they afforded his friends, who time life, if he could have gratified his inclina- were more interested in his itinerary than it is tions, expended itself in long rambles about the possible for us to be. He reached Bordeaux after rural neighborhoods of the city, which he knew what the sailors call "a lady's voyage," much imby heart, and in more distant excursions into the proved in health, and enough of a sailor to climb country. He spent a holiday in Westchester to the masthead, and go out on the main topsail County in his fifteenth year, and explored the yard. He remained at Bordeaux about six weeks, recesses of Sleepy Hollow; and, in his seven-seeing what there was to see, and studying to imteenth year, made a voyage up the Hudson, the From Bordeaux beauties of which, as Bryant has pointed out, he he proceeded to Marseilles by diligence, accomwas the first to describe. He was greatly im- panied by an eccentric American doctor, who pressed by the sight of the Highlands, crowned pretended that Irving was an English prisoner, with forests, with eagles sailing and screaming whom a young French officer that was with around them, and unseen streams dashing down them had in custody, much to the regret of their precipices; and was fairly bewitched by the some girls at Tonneins, who pitied "le pauvre Kaatskill Mountains. "Never shall I forget," he garçon," and his prospect of losing his head, and wrote, "the effect upon me of the first view of them supplied him with a bottle of wine, for which predominating over a wide extent of country, they would not take any recompense. At Nismes part wild, woody, and rugged, part softened away he began to have misgivings about his passports, into all the graces of cultivation. As we slowly of which he had two, neither accurate, his eyes floated along, I lay on the deck and watched being described as blue in one, and gray in the them through a long summer's day; undergoing other. He had a great deal of trouble with his a thousand mutations under the magical effects passports, first and last, but he worried through of atmosphere; sometimes seeming to approach, it, with considerable loss of temper, and, after a at other times to recede; now almost melting detention at Nice, finally set sail in a felucca for into hazy distance, now burnished by the setting Genoa. From Genoa, where he resided upsun, until, in the evening, they printed them- wards of two months, he started for Messina, selves against the glowing sky in the deep purple falling in with a privateer, or pirate, on the way, of an Italian landscape." In his twentieth year who frightened the captain and crew, and relieved he made a visit to Johnstown, the residence of them of about half their provisions, besides some his eldest sister, which he reached in a wagon, of their furniture, and a watch and some clothes after a voyage by sloop to Albany. This visit out of the trunks of the passengers. From seems to have been undertaken on account of his Genoa he proceeded to Syracuse, where he exhealth, for he was troubled with a constant pain plored the celebrated Ear of Dionysius, and set in his breast, and a harassing cough at night. "I out with a party for Catania, and thence to Pahave been unwell almost all the time I have been lermo, where he arrived at the latter end of the up here," he wrote to a friend. "I am too weak Carnival. He reached Naples on March 7, 1805, to take any exercise, and too low-spirited half and after resting a few days, made a night ascent the time to enjoy company." "Was that young of Mount Vesuvius, where he had a tremendous Irving," asked Judge Kent of his brother-in-law, view of the crater, that poured out a stream of red. "who slept in the room next to me, and kept hot lava, the sulphurous smoke of which stifled up such an incessant cough during the night?" him, so much so, that but for the shifting of the "It was." "He is not long for this world." wind he might have shared the fate of Pliny. This lugubrious judgment of the great jurist was Twenty days later he entered Rome by the Latshared by the family of Irving, who determined eran Gate. Here he met a fellow-countryman, the theatre of Port St. Martin. He made the acquaintance at this time of another American painter, Vanderlyn, a man of genius, in whom he was much interested, and who made a sketch of him in crayons. His mental improvement was not neglected in the gay capital, for he bought a botanical dictionary, and took two months' tuition in French. in the person of Washington Alston, who was Artistes, where boys acted plays; and a fourth to about four years his elder, whose taste for art had been awakened at Newport by his association with Malbone, the famous miniature painter, and who was already more than a painter of promise. "I do not think," Irving wrote years after, "that I have ever been more completely captivated on a first acquaintance. He was of a light and graceful form, with large, blue eyes, and black, silken hair, waving and curling round a pale, expressive countenance. Everything about him bespoke the man of intellect and refinement. His conversation was copious, animated, and highly graphic, warmed by genial sensibility and benevolence, and enlivened by chaste and gentle humor." Irving arrived in London on the 8th of October, after a tour through the Netherlands. He found lodgings to his liking in Norfolk Street, Strand, not far from the city, and being in the vicinity of the theatres, he devoted most of his evenings to visiting them. Three great actors were then playing-John Kemble, Cooke, and Irving and Alston fraternized, and spent the Mrs. Siddons, and in his correspondence with his twenty-second birthday of the former in seeing brother William he described the impression they some of the finest collections of paintings in made on him. Kemble was a very studied actor, Rome, the painter teaching the traveller how to he thought. His performances were correct and visit them to the most advantage, leading him al-highly-finished paintings, but much labored. He ways to the masterpieces, and passing the others never led the spectators to forget him in "Othello;" without notice. They rambled in company it was Kemble they saw throughout, not the jealaround the Eternal City and its environs, and Irving contrasted their different pursuits and prospects, favoring as he did so those of Alston, who was to reside amid the delightful scenes among which they were, surrounded by famous works of art and classic and historic monuments, and by men of congenial tastes, while he was to return home to the dry study of the law, for which he had no relish, and, as he feared, no talent. "Why might I not remain here, and be a painter?" he thought, and he mentioned the idea to his friend, who caught at it with eagerness. They would take an apartment together, and he would give him all the instruction and assistance in his power. But it was not to be; their lots in life were differently cast. So Irving resigned the transient, but delightful, prospect of becoming a painter. During his sojourn in Rome he attended the conversaziones of Torlonia, the banker, who treated him with great distinction, and, calling him aside when he came to make his adieu, asked him, in French, if he was not a rela-dicted the prophecy of the captain with whom he tive of General Washington? He was also introduced to the Baron de Humboldt, Minister of Prussia to the Court of Rome, and brother to the celebrated traveller and savant, and to Madam de Staël, who astounded him by the amazing flow of her conversation, and the multitude of questions with which she plied him. Irving started for Paris on the 11th of April, and reached it on the 24th of May. His stay in Paris, which extended over four months, was a round of sight-seeing and amusement. One night he went to the Theatre Montansier, where the acting was humorous, but rather gross; another night he went to the Imperial Academy of Music, where he saw the opera of "Alceste "; a third night he went to the theatre of Jeunes ous Moor. He was cold, artificial, and unequal, Irving set out from Gravesend on the 18th of January, 1806, and reached New York after a stormy passage of sixty-four days. He had contra originally sailed-that he would go overboard before he got across; and of Judge Kent, who declared he was not long for this world. He returned in good health, and resumed his legal studies, which were advanced enough to enable him to pass an examination in the ensuing November, which ended in his admission to the bar. He entered the office of his brother John, at No. 3 Wall Street, and while waiting for clients who never came, he turned his attention to literature more seriously than he had ever done before. There was more room in it than in the overcrowded profession of the law; so much room, indeed, that a young man of his talents might do almost anything that he chose. There was no fear of competitors, at any rate; for authorship, as a craft, had no followers, except Charles Brock- | things, and which should come out in numbers den Brown, who was still editing the Literary whenever it suited their pleasure and convenMagazine, and perhaps John Dennie, whose rep-ience. The title that they selected was "Salmautation, such as it was, rested on his Lay Preacher, gundi," which is derived from the French word and who was editing the Port Folio. The few salmigondis, which is made up of two Latin poets of which America boasted were silent. words salgama and condita, signifying preserved Trumbull, the author of "McFingal," which was pickles. Johnson defines the word as “a mixture published the year before Irving's birth, was a of chopped meat and pickled herring with oil, Judge of the Superior Court; Dwight, whose vinegar, pepper, and onions," which, no doubt, is "Conquest of Canaan was published three years an appetizing dish when one has become accuslater, was merely the President of Yale College; tomed to it. Irving and Paulding were joined Barlow, whose "Vision of Columbus" was by William Irving, and the three resolved thempublished two years later still, and who had re-selves into what the Spaniards call a junta,—i. e. turned to this country after shining abroad as a Launcelot Langstaff, Anthony Evergreen, and diplomatist, was living in splendor on the banks William Wizard. The first number of Salmaof the Potomac, and brooding over that unread-gundi" was issued on January 24th, 1807, the able poem which he expanded into the epic of last on January 25th, 1808, the twenty numbers "The Columbiad"; and Freneau, by all odds the of which it consisted covering just the true-love best of our earlier versifiers, who had published epoch of the old ballads, A twelvemonth and a collection of his effusions in 1795, had aban- a day." The time, which was ripe for almost doned the Muses, and was sailing a sloop between anything in the shape of American literature, Savannah, Charleston, and the West Indies. was so propitious for a periodical of this kind, Pierpont, who was two years younger than Irving, that the success of the first number was decisive. was a private tutor in South Carolina; Dana was There was no home literature then to speak of, a student at Harvard, and Bryant, a youth of as I have already hinted, and the city in which twelve, at Cummington, was scribbling juvenile this bright venture appeared was a mere town poems, which were being published in a news-compared with the Babel of to-day, scarcely paper at Northampton. numbering 80,000 inhabitants. It was not difficult " " The library of Irving's father was rich in Eliza- to make a sensation in a place of that size, in a bethan writers, among whom Chaucer and Spen- | barren literary period, and “ Salmagundi" cerser were his early favorites, and it contained tainly made a great one. Everybody talked the classics of the eighteenth century, in verse about it, and wondered who its writers could and prose, not forgetting the Spectator and Tat- be, and nobody was much the wiser for his ler and Rambler, and the works of the ingenious wonderment, for the secret was well kept. It Dr. Goldsmith. Everybody who read fiction was would be idle now to attempt to distinguish the familiar with the novels of Fielding and Smol- share of the different writers, for, as Paulding lett, and lovers of political literature were wrote afterward, in the uniform edition of his familiar with the speeches of Burke and the works, in which it was included, "The thoughts letters of Junius. Everybody read (or could of the authors were often so mingled together in read) the poetical works of Cowper and Burns, these essays, and they were so literally joint pioCampbell's Pleasures of Hope," and Scott's ductions, that it would be difficult as well as use"Lay of the Last Minstrel," and whatever else less to assign each his exact share.” in the shape of verse American publishers thought it worth their while to reprint for them; for then, as now, they were willing to enlighten their countrymen at the expense of British authors. Authors, there were none in New York, with the exception of the authors of Salmagundi," though there was no lack of writers, so called, among whom figured Samuel Latham Mitchill, practicer in physic (like Johnson's friend Levett), Equipped with a liberal education, which he lawyer and retired Indian commissioner, member had imbibed from English literature, and with of Congress, and of various learned societies, the practice which he had gained in writing for and editor of the Medical Repository. This genthe paper of his brother Peter, which was dis- tleman, who wrote largely, and was a butt to the continued shortly before his return to America, wits of the day, had lately published a "Picture Irving cast about for a field of authorship in of New York," which, if not funny itself, was a which he might safely venture. His inclination source of fun to others, particularly to Irving was toward the writing of essays, in which he and his brother Peter, who determined to burhad had considerable experience, and the taste lesque it. With this object in view they made of his friend Paulding, who was still living many notes, and not to be behind its erudite under the roof of his brother William, was in author, who began his work with an account of the same direction. They put their heads together, and sketched out a plan of publication, in which they might have their fling at men and the aborigines, they began theirs with the creation of the world. Started shortly after the publication of "Salmagundi," it proceeded slowly thing so closely resembling the style of Dean and with many interruptions, until the following the North American Review, pronounced it the January, when Peter Irving departed for Liver- wittiest book our press had ever produced; and pool on urgent business. Left to himself, his Scott, to whom a copy of the second edition was forsaken collaborateur changed the whole plan of sent by Irving's friend, Henry Brevort, and upon the work, condensing the great mass of notes whom, from his ignorance of American parties which they had accumulated into five introduc- and politics, much of its concealed satire was tory chapters, and commencing at a considerably lost, owned, that looking at its simple and later period, the new Genesis being the dynasty obvious meaning only, he had never read anyof the Dutch in New York. Laid aside for a time, he resumed it in the summer, at a country house, at Ravenswood, near Hellgate, whither he had retired in order to prepare it for the press. A stupendous hoax, it was launched with a series of small hoaxes, the first of which appeared in the Evening Post of October 25th, 1809, in the shape of a paragraph narrating the disappearance from his lodging of a small elderly gentleman, by the name of Knickerbocker. He was stated to be dressed in an old black coat and a cocked hat, and it was intimated that there were some reasons for believing that he was not in his right mind. Great anxiety was felt, and any information concerning him would be thankfully received at the Columbian Hotel, Mulberry street, or at the office of the paper. This feeler was followed in a week or two by a communication from "A Traveller," who professed to have seen him some weeks before by the side of the road, a little above Kingsbridge. "He had in his hands a small bundle, tied in a red bandanna handkerchief; he appeared to be travelling northward, and was very much fatigued and exhausted." Ten days later (November 6th), Mr. Seth Handaside, landlord of the Independent Columbian Hotel, inserted a card in the same paper, in which he declared that there had been found in the room of the missing man, Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker, a curious kind of a written book, in his own handwriting; and he wished the editor to notify him, if he was alive, that if he did not I will not say that there are no passages in this return and pay off his bill for board, he would have to dispose of his book to satisfy him for the same. The bait took, so much so that one of the city authorities actually waited upon Irving's brother, John, and consulted him on the propriety of offering a reward for the mythi-forgive, we overlook, we forget all this as we cal Diedrich ! To these "puffs preliminary" was added the precaution of having the manuscript set up in Philadelphia, which lessened the danger of the real character of the work being discovered before its appearance. The "History of New York," which was published in this city on the 6th of December, 1809, was a success in more ways than one. Its whim and satire amused the lovers of wit and humor, and its irreverence towards the early Dutch settlers of the State annoyed and angered their descendants. Between these two classes of readers it was much talked about, and largely circulated. The Monthly Anthology, the forerunner of work which are not worthy of their context; that we do not sometimes meet with phraseology which we could wish changed; that the wit does not sometimes run wild, and drop here and there a jest which we could willingly spare. We read, in consideration of the entertainment we have enjoyed, and of that which beckons us forward in the next page. Of all mock-heroic works, Knickerbocker's History of New York' is the gayest, the airiest, and the least tiresome.” Irving's next literary labor was the editorship of a monthly publication, which had been established in Philadelphia, and which, from its title, Select Reviews, would appear to have been of an eclectic character. Its name was changed to the Analectic Magazine during his management, which extended through the years 1813 and 1814, and it bade fair to be successful, until its proprietor was ruined by the failure of the New York publishers of "Salmagundi." Irving's contribu |