“The manner in which the work has been received, and the eulogiums that have been passed upon it in the American papers and periodical works, have completely overwhelmed me.  They go far, far beyond my most sanguine expectations, and indeed are expressed with such peculiar warmth and kindness as to affect me in the tenderest manner.  The receipt of your letter, and the reading of some of the criticisms this morning, have rendered me nervous for the whole day.  I feel almost appalled by such success, and fearful that it cannot be real, or that it is not fully merited, or that I shall not act up to the expectations that may be formed.  We are whimsically constituted beings.  I had got out of conceit of all that I had written, and considered it very questionable stuff; and now that it is so extravagantly be praised, I begin to feel afraid that I shall not do as well again.  However, we shall see as we get on.  As yet I am extremely irregular and precarious in my fits of composition.  The least thing puts me out of the vein, and even applause flurries me and prevents my writing, though of course it will ultimately be a stimulus . . . .

“I have been somewhat touched by the manner in which my writings have been noticed in the ‘Evening Post.’  I had considered Coleman as cherishing an ill-will toward me, and, to tell the truth, have not always been the most courteous in my opinions concerning him.  It is a painful thing either to dislike others or to fancy they dislike us, and I have felt both pleasure and self-reproach at finding myself so mistaken with respect to Mr. Coleman.  I like to out with a good feeling as soon as it rises, and so I have dropt Coleman a line on the subject.

“I hope you will not attribute all this sensibility to the kind reception I have met to an author’s vanity.  I am sure it proceeds from very different sources.  Vanity could not bring the tears into my eyes as they have been brought by the kindness of my countrymen.  I have felt cast down, blighted, and broken-spirited, and these sudden rays of sunshine agitate me more than they revive me.  I hope—­I hope I may yet do something more worthy of the appreciation lavished on me.”

Irving had not contemplated publishing in England, but the papers began to be reprinted, and he was obliged to protect himself.  He offered the sketches to Murray, the princely publisher, who afterwards dealt so liberally with him, but the venture was declined in a civil note, written in that charming phraseology with which authors are familiar, but which they would in vain seek to imitate.  Irving afterwards greatly prized this letter.  He undertook the risks of the publication himself, and the book sold well, although “written by an author the public knew nothing of, and published by a bookseller who was going to ruin.”  In a few months Murray, who was thereafter proud to be Irving’s publisher, undertook the publication of the two volumes of the “Sketch-Book,” and also of the “Knickerbocker” history, which Mr. Lockhart had just been warmly praising in “Blackwood’s.”  Indeed, he bought the copyright of the “Sketch-Book” for two hundred pounds.  The time for the publisher’s complaisance had arrived sooner even than Scott predicted in one of his kindly letters to Irving, “when