this is a line of writing in which I have not hitherto
ascertained my own powers. Could I afford it, I should like to
write, and to lay my writings aside when finished. There is an
independent delight in study and in the creative exercise of the
pen; we live in a world of dreams, but publication lets in the noisy
rabble of the world, and there is an end of our dreaming."

In a letter to Brevoort, February 23, 1828, he fears that he can never
regain:

"that delightful confidence which I once enjoyed of not the good
opinion, but the good will, of my countrymen. To me it is always
ten times more gratifying to be liked than to be admired; and I
confess to you, though I am a little too proud to confess it to the
world, the idea that the kindness of my countrymen toward me was
withering caused me for a long time the most weary depression of
spirits, and disheartened me from making any literary exertions."

It has been a popular notion that Irving's career was uniformly one of
ease. In this same letter he exclaims: "With all my exertions, I seem
always to keep about up to my chin in troubled water, while the world, I
suppose, thinks I am sailing smoothly, with wind and tide in my favor."

In a subsequent letter to Brevoort, dated at Seville, December 26, 1828,
occurs almost the only piece of impatience and sarcasm that this long
correspondence affords. "Columbus" had succeeded beyond his expectation,
and its popularity was so great that some enterprising American had
projected an abridgment, which it seems would not be protected by the
copyright of the original. Irving writes:

"I have just sent to my brother an abridgment of 'Columbus' to be
published immediately, as I find some paltry fellow is pirating an
abridgment. Thus every line of life has its depredation. 'There be
land rats and water rats, land pirates and water pirates,--I mean
thieves,' as old Shylock says. I feel vexed at this shabby attempt
to purloin this work from me, it having really cost me more toil and
trouble than all my other productions, and being one that I trusted
would keep me current with my countrymen; but we are making rapid
advances in literature in America, and have already attained many of
the literary vices and diseases of the old countries of Europe.
We swarm with reviewers, though we have scarce original works
sufficient