In the United States he met both Dickens and Thackeray.  His friendship with Dickens was begun by a letter which Irving wrote to the great novelist, enthusiastically praising his work.  At once Dickens replied in a long letter, fairly bubbling over with delight and friendship.  Here is a part of it: 

“There is no man in the world who could have given me the heartfelt pleasure you have.  There is no living writer, and there are very few among the dead, whose approbation I should feel so proud to earn.  And with everything you have written upon my shelves, and in my thoughts, and in my heart of hearts, I may honestly and truly say so.

“I have been so accustomed to associate you with my pleasantest and happiest thoughts, and with my leisure hours, that I rush at once into full confidence with you, and fall, as it were, naturally, and by the very laws of gravity, into your open arms....  My dear Washington Irving, I cannot thank you enough for your cordial and generous praise, or tell you what deep and lasting gratification it has given me.  I hope to have many letters from you, and to exchange a frequent correspondence.  I send this to say so....

“Always your faithful friend,

“Charles Dickens.”

The warmth of feeling which Dickens displays on receiving his first letter from Irving, we must all feel when we have become as well acquainted with Irving’s works as Dickens was.

Washington Irving died on the 28th of November, 1859, at his dear Sunnyside, and now lies buried in a cemetery upon a hill near by, in a beautiful spot overlooking the Hudson river and Sleepy Hollow.

* * * * *

Note.—­The thanks of the publishers are due to G. P. Putnam’s Sons for kind permission to use extracts from the Works of Washington Irving.

THE STORY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE

[Illustration:  EDGAR ALLAN POE.]

EDGAR ALLAN POE

CHAPTER I

THE ARTIST IN WORDS

Who has not felt the weird fascination of Poe’s strangely beautiful poem “The Raven”?  Perhaps on some stormy evening you have read it until the “silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain” has “thrilled you, filled you, with fantastic terrors never felt before.”  That poem is the almost perfect mirror of the life of the man who wrote it—­the most brilliant poetic genius in the whole range of American literature, the most unfortunate and unhappy.

Poe had a singular fate.  When Longfellow and Bryant and Lowell and Holmes were winning their way to fame quietly and steadily, Poe was writing wonderful poems and wonderful stories, and more than that, he was inventing new principles and new artistic methods, on which other great writers in time to come should build their finest work; yet he barely escaped starvation, and the critics made it appear that, compared with such men as Longfellow and Bryant, he was more notorious than really great.  Lowell in his “Fable for Critics” said: