The death of Irving’s mother in the spring of 1817 determined him to remain another year abroad.  Business did not improve.  His brother-in-law Van Wart called a meeting of his creditors, the Irving brothers floundered on into greater depths of embarrassment, and Washington, who could not think of returning home to face poverty in New York, began to revolve a plan that would give him a scanty but sufficient support.  The idea of the “Sketch-Book” was in his mind.  He had as yet made few literary acquaintances in England.  It is an illustration of the warping effect of friendship upon the critical faculty that his opinion of Moore at this time was totally changed by subsequent intimacy.  At a later date the two authors became warm friends and mutual admirers of each other’s productions.  In June, 1817, “Lalla Rookh” was just from the press, and Irving writes to Brevoort:  “Moore’s new poem is just out.  I have not sent it to you, for it is dear and worthless.  It is written in the most effeminate taste, and fit only to delight boarding-school girls and lads of nineteen just in their first loves.  Moore should have kept to songs and epigrammatic conceits.  His stream of intellect is too small to bear expansion—­it spreads into mere surface.”  Too much cream for the strawberry!

Notwithstanding business harassments in the summer and fall of 1817 he found time for some wandering about the island; he was occasionally in London, dining at Murray’s, where he made the acquaintance of the elder D’Israeli and other men of letters (one of his notes of a dinner at Murray’s is this:  “Lord Byron told Murray that he was much happier after breaking with Lady Byron—­he hated this still, quiet life"); he was publishing a new edition of the “Knickerbocker,” illustrated by Leslie and Allston; and we find him at home in the friendly and brilliant society of Edinburgh; both the magazine publishers, Constable and Blackwood, were very civil to him, and Mr. Jeffrey (Mrs. Renwick was his sister) was very attentive; and he passed some days with Walter Scott, whose home life he so agreeably describes in his sketch of “Abbotsford.”  He looked back longingly to the happy hours there (he writes to his brother):  “Scott reading, occasionally, from ‘Prince Arthur;’ telling border stories or characteristic ancedotes; Sophy Scott singing with charming ‘naivete’ a little border song; the rest of the family disposed in listening groups, while greyhounds, spaniels, and cats bask in unbounded indulgence before the fire.  Everything about Scott is perfect character and picture.”

In the beginning of 1818 the business affairs of the brothers became so irretrievably involved that Peter and Washington went through the humiliating experience of taking the bankrupt act.  Washington’s connection with the concern was little more than nominal, and he felt small anxiety for himself, and was eager to escape from an occupation which had taken all the elasticity out of his mind.  But on account of his brothers, in this dismal wreck of a family connection, his soul was steeped in bitterness.  Pending the proceedings of the commissioners, he shut himself up day and night to the study of German, and while waiting for the examination used to walk up and down the room, conning over the German verbs.