ere not cheerful ones for Irving. His
pleasant dream was over, and he had forgotten what to do with waking
moments. His memorandum-book records that he felt oppressed by "a
strange horror on his mind--a dread of future evil--of failure in
future literary attempts--a dismal foreboding that he could not drive
off by any effort of reason." "When I once get going again with my
pen," he wrote to Peter, "I mean to keep on steadily, until I can
scrape together enough to produce a regular income, however moderate.
We shall then be independent of the world and its chances." But he
could not manage to get going. For some time he could write nothing at
all. Fortunately, after an unprofitable month or two, he fell in with
John Howard Payne, now remembered only for his "Home, Sweet Home," but
then esteemed as an actor and dramatist. Irving had met him several
years before, and now became associated with him in some dramatic
translating and adapting. The results were nearly worthless from a
literary point of view, but served to keep him busy, and to put him
once more in the writing vein.

For some time Murray had been pressing him hard for copy, and in the
spring of 1824 the "Tales of a Traveler" were completed and sent to
press. After the task of proof-reading came a reaction of high spirits
which expressed itself in the most amusing letter Irving ever wrote:--

"BRIGHTON, August 14, 1824.

"My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is on the sea.

"I forget how the song ends, but here I am at Brighton just on the
point of embarking for France. I have dragged myself out of London,
as a horse drags himself out of the slough, or a fly out of a
honey-pot, almost leaving a limb behind him at every tug. Not that I
have been immersed in pleasure and surrounded by sweets, but rather up
to the ears in ink and harassed by printers' devils.

"I never have had such fagging in altering, adding, and correcting;
and I have been detained beyond all patience by the delays of the
press. Yesterday I absolutely broke away, without waiting for the last
sheets. They are to be sent after me here by mail, to be corrected
this morning, or else they must take their chance. From the time I
first started pen in hand on this work, it has been nothing but hard
driving with me.

"I have not been able to get to Tunbridge to see the Donegals, which I
really and greatly regret. Indeed I have seen nobody except a friend
or two who had the kindness to hunt