before this sketch appeared. Americans were then but little known in society or literature, and the accounts of their personal and domestic manners which had been given to us by such travellers as Mrs. Trollope and Captain Basil Hall, had not impressed us strongly in their favour. Beyond certain peculiarities of speech, and dress,—a habit of sitting with the feet higher than the head,—the custom of smoking, chewing, and expectorating on the carpet,—and "a thousand other gaucheries,"—we knew little enough of our "Transatlantic brethren"; and it was past our conception that "anything in the shape of a gentlemanly biped should come from America." Thus it came to pass that Washington Irving at once took, as it were by assault, a high place among us as an author and as a man. He still continues to retain it; and it would be difficult to name any one, among foreigners at least,—if we are so to rank this genial author,—who is so certain of enjoying in the future a definite and permanent rank among English classical writers. He is an elegant essayist, a refined humorist, a picturesque historian, and a graphic biographer; and by the kindly and altogether genial spirit with which his writings are interfused, has done much, just at the moment when it was most wanted, to unite by a living bond of unity two great nations, which must ever have, to a great extent, a common language and literature.
It was, I have said, in 1818, that Irving, on the failure of certain commercial enterprises, came to London. Here he met with two young artists who had preceded him, Charles Robert Leslie and Gilbert Stuart Newton,[1] and the trio,—all under an inspiration and promise of future fame which Time has in each case to some extent fulfilled,—became soon united in habits of close friendship and commensality. He had already gained some reputation in his native country by his Salmagundi, and Knickerbocker's History of New York, which latter work may be said to inaugurate American literature. His fame and name, moreover, were not altogether unknown among ourselves; and Knickerbocker had found its way even to remote Abbotsford, where Sir Walter Scott found mighty enjoyment in its quaint humour, reading it aloud to his family and friends, till, as he records, "our sides have been absolutely sore with laughing." His sister Sarah was married to a merchant at Birmingham, Mr. Henry Van Wart; and while a guest at their house, at Newhall Hill, he had amused himself by writing a series of papers to which he had given the name of The Sketch Book. On his arrival in London he offered these, together with certain numbers already printed in America, to that "Prince of Printers,"—as he called him,—John Murray, for examination; and it cannot but appear somewhat inexplicable to us, looking at the book now as an established classic, and perhaps the favourite among all his writings,—"typifying in its pages the pure diction and graces of Addison, and a revived portraiture of the times of Sir Roger de Coverley," as Fraser has it,—that it was rejected as unsuitable by the great bibliopole, who failed to see in it the elements of success, and who only ultimately took it up, when the failure of Miller, who had it in hand, compelled its author to seek elsewhere for protection once more.
How comes about this state of things? It has been said that booksellers
- ↑ It is customary to speak of these eminent artists as Americans, but the appellation is hardly correct. The former, who became a Royal Academician, and died in 1859, was a native of London; the latter, who finished his days in a madhouse in 1835, was born in Canada, and was a British subject at least.
