with the liberalizing movement of his day (as if his novels were quieting social influences), it is felt by this generation that the author of “Faust” needs no apology that he did not spend his energies in the effervescing politics of the German states.  I mean, that while we may like or dislike the man for his sympathy or want of sympathy, we concede to the author the right of his attitude; if Goethe had not assumed freedom from moral responsibility, I suppose that criticism of his aloofness would long ago have ceased.  Irving did not lack sympathy with humanity in the concrete; it colored whatever he wrote.  But he regarded the politics of his own country, the revolutions in France, the long struggle in Spain, without heat; and he held aloof from projects of agitation and reform, and maintained the attitude of an observer, regarding the life about him from the point of view of the literary artist, as he was justified in doing.

Irving had the defects of his peculiar genius, and these have no doubt helped to fix upon him the complimentary disparagement of “genial.”  He was not aggressive; in his nature he was wholly unpartisan, and full of lenient charity; and I suspect that his kindly regard of the world, although returned with kindly liking, cost him something of that respect for sturdiness and force which men feel for writers who flout them as fools in the main.  Like Scott, he belonged to the idealists, and not to the realists, whom our generation affects.  Both writers stimulate the longing for something better.  Their creed was short:  “Love God and honor the King.”  It is a very good one for a literary man, and might do for a Christian.  The supernatural was still a reality in the age in which they wrote, Irving’s faith in God and his love of humanity were very simple; I do not suppose he was much disturbed by the deep problems that have set us all adrift.  In every age, whatever is astir, literature, theology, all intellectual activity, takes one and the same drift, and approximates in color.  The bent of Irving’s spirit was fixed in his youth, and he escaped the desperate realism of this generation, which has no outcome, and is likely to produce little that is noble.

I do not know how to account, on principles of culture which we recognize, for our author’s style.  His education was exceedingly defective, nor was his want of discipline supplied by subsequent desultory application.  He seems to have been born with a rare sense of literary proportion and form; into this, as into a mould, were run his apparently lazy and really acute observations of life.  That he thoroughly mastered such literature as he fancied there is abundant evidence; that his style was influenced by the purest English models is also apparent.  But there remains a large margin for wonder how, with his want of training, he could have elaborated a style which is distinctively his own, and is as copious, felicitous in the choice of words, flowing, spontaneous, flexible, engaging,