hat he has
given us, of a serene and tranquil life. As we have turned it over
delightedly, chapter after chapter, and volume upon volume, we have
wished at times that the coy biographer had been endowed with a spice of
garrulity or of egotism; for, say what we will, these qualities
contribute largely to the interest with which we follow the story of a
life about whose incidents and development the public has greed of
knowledge.

If Boswell had invariably governed his biographic record by the
instincts of a gentleman, we should have possessed far less wealth of
gossip by which to judge of the manhood and the familiar surroundings
of the great lexicographer. And we can readily imagine that a
conscientious man, in setting about the task of writing the life of a
favorite author, would ask himself, over and over, how much should be
yielded to the eager curiosity of the public, and how much a refined
courtesy of feeling should keep in reserve. There are men, indeed, whose
history, by whomsoever recorded, would suggest no such questioning,--men
who have elbowed their way through life, bent upon some single aim, with
a grand and coarse disregard of all the heart-burnings they may have
caused, and all the idols they may have brushed down. Washington Irving
was by no means such a man; he was kind-hearted to the last degree; and
yet, remembering as we do that sly look of humor which lurked always in
the corner of his eye, we cannot believe but that in his freer moments
he has pricked through many a bag of bombast, and made dashing onslaught
upon noisy literary pretension. Of all this, however, we find nothing in
the volumes before us,--nothing in his own books. Always, in his contact
with the world, he is genial; the face of every friend is beautiful to
him; every acquaintance is at the least comely; in rollicking Tom Moore
he sees (what all of us cannot see) a big heart,--in Espartero a bold,
frank, honest soldier,--in every fair young girl a charmer,--and in
almost every woman a fair young girl.

In all these respects the biography of Mr. Pierre Irving is in fitting
accord with what we had known and believed of his eminent kinsman. And
we are delighted at being confirmed in the belief. We yield all measure
of respect for the grace, the purity, the dignity, which Washington
Irving has added to our literature; and yet we honor still more that
true American heart which beams through all his writings, and throughout
this record of