terests of life, and it may even seem
trivial amid the tremendous energies applied to immediate affairs; but it
is the point of view that endures; if its creations do not mold human
life, like the Roman law, they remain to charm and civilize, like the
poems of Horace. You must not ask more of them than that. This attitude
toward life is defensible on the highest grounds. A man with Irving's
gifts has the right to take the position of an observer and describer,
and not to be called on for a more active participation in affairs than
he chooses to take. He is doing the world the highest service of which
he is capable, and the most enduring it can receive from any man. It is
not a question whether the work of the literary man is higher than that
of the reformer or the statesman; it is a distinct work, and is justified
by the result, even when the work is that of the humorist only.
We recognize this in the case of the poet. Although Goethe has been
reproached for his lack of sympathy with the liberalizing movement of his
day (as if his novels were quieting social influences), it is felt by
this generation that the author of "Faust" needs no apology that he did
not spend his energies in the effervescing politics of the German states.
I mean, that while we may like or dislike the man for his sympathy or
want of sympathy, we concede to the author the right of his attitude;
if Goethe had not assumed freedom from moral responsibility, I suppose
that criticism of his aloofness would long ago have ceased. Irving did
not lack sympathy with humanity in the concrete; it colored whatever he
wrote. But he regarded the politics of his own country, the revolutions
in France, the long struggle in Spain, without heat; and he held aloof
from projects of agitation and reform, and maintained the attitude of an
observer, regarding the life about him from the point of view of the
literary artist, as he was justified in doing.

Irving had the defects of his peculiar genius, and these have no doubt
helped to fix upon him the complimentary disparagement of "genial."
He was not aggressive; in his nature he was wholly unpartisan, and full
of lenient charity; and I suspect that his kindly regard of the world,
although returned with kindly liking, cost him something of that respect
for sturdiness and force which men feel for writers who flout them as
fools in the main. Like Scott, he belonged to the idealists, and not to
the realists, whom our generatio