American Literature and Charleston Society [pp. 380-421]

1853.1 Amer~can Literatur~ and Charleston Society. 391
ect, which is not to discuss and controvert our author's opinions,
but to lay them before our readers. Let us see his criticisms on
some of our principal writers
"Washington Irving, more modest and happier [than Brockden
Brown] has not pretended to so much grandeur; he owes the renown which encircles him, not to sallies of the imagination, creative
thought or a lofty mental flight, but to a graceful imitation of old
English literature. It is a somewhat timid copy, upon silk paper,
of Addison, Steele and Swift. All that he writes glows with the
gentle, agreeable lustre of watered silk. Correct and agreeable, he
pleases but does not move you; the sensations which he excites lack
power. It is like a young lady of good family, well brought up, a
slave to propriety, never elevating the voice, never exaggerating the
tone, never guilty of the sin of eloquence, and careful not to have
any energy, energy being often vulgar. Our intention is not to
lower a really great merit, to depr~uate a talent which we love.
None know better than we, the excellence of a style without pretension and without emphasis, though not without grace, the colouring
of w~ich is harmonious and the form pure; but we cannot dissemble
that there is a certain feebleness under these qualities.
"We may add that the characteristic merit of Mr. Irving has
nothing American in it. All his thoughts direct themselves towards
England alone; for her his wishes, his memories; he has for her a
singularly superstitious and poetic worship, and takes her as the
writers of Queen Anne's day exhibit her. Do not tell him that
Addison's England is an embellished ideality, he will not hear you;
do not try to prove to him that Sir Roger de Coverly is a creature
like Don Quixotte, a half symbolic personage, to whom the man of
talent has lent action, speech and costume. For Washington Irving,
all that the cotemporaries of Pope have written is gospel. lle reprod~ces their phrases, he borrows their language. lle loves even
the noisy, drunken hospitality of that day. This writer, who traces
his lines not far from the savannahs of the Ohio, or in some square
house in Boston, lives in thought in St. James' Park; he wanders
in his reveries through the shadowy alleys of Kensington; he talks
with Sterne; he shakes hands with Goldsmith. lle will soon don
the rose-coloured buck ram and jerkin of the seventeenth century.
Do not wake him; he dreams of losing himself in the sinuous alleys
of the old city; he is listening to the winds which whistle by the
great arched windows of the feudal mansions, or agitate the immense sign-boards, so spoken against by Addison. All Irving's
poetic past is there; it is the charm of his works. The velvety and
golden dream which enchants him, ~ives a delicious illusion to olden