at deal of Lovers' Latin in them--enough to have admitted the writer
into Yale College if this were a qualification. The letters she received
were equally learned, and the fragments Mrs. Farquhar was permitted to
hear were so interrupted by these cabalistic expressions that she finally
begged to be excused. She said she did not doubt that to be in love was
a liberal education, but pedantry was uninteresting. Latin might be
convenient at this stage; but later on, for little tiffs and
reconciliations, French would be much more useful.

One of these letters southward described a wedding. The principals in it
were unknown to King, but in the minute detail of the letter there was a
personal flavor which charmed him. He would have been still more charmed
could he have seen the girl's radiant face as she dashed it off. Mrs.
Farquhar watched her with a pensive interest awhile, went behind her
chair, and, leaning over, kissed her forehead, and then with slow step
and sad eyes passed out to the piazza, and stood with her face to the
valley and the purple hills. But it was a faded landscape she saw.

WASHINGTON IRVING

By Charles Dudley Warner

1891

EDITOR'S NOTE

WASHINGTON IRVING, the first biography published in the American Men of
Letters Series, came out in December, 1881. It was an expansion of a
biographical and critical sketch prefixed to the first volume of a new
edition of Irving's works which began to appear in 1880. It was entitled
the Geoffrey Crayon edition, and was in twenty-seven volumes, which were
brought out, in most cases, in successive months. The first volume
appeared in April. The essay was subsequently published during the same
year in a volume entitled "Studies of Irving," which contained also
Bryant's oration and George P. Putnam's personal reminiscences.

"The Work of Washington Irving" was published early in August, 1893.
Originally it was delivered as a lecture to the Brooklyn Institute of
Arts and Sciences on April 3, 1893, the one hundred and tenth anniversary
of Irving's birth.

T. R. L.

WASHINGTON IRVING

I

PRELIMINARY

It is over twenty years since the death of Washington Irving removed that
personal presence which is always a powerful, and sometimes the sole,
stimulus to the sale of an author's books, and which strongly affects the
contemporary judgment of their merits. It is nearly a century since his
birth, which was almost coeval with that of the Republ