SKETCH BOOK, The. 'The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent,' the .work by which Washington Irving is best known, was published at New York in seven numbers dur ing 1819 and 1820. The collected edition brought out in 1820 in London contained two earlier essays— 'Traits of Indian Character> and (Philip of Polcanoket)—which have been in cluded in all subsequent editions. The entire collection was revised andgiven its final form in 1848. 'I have preferred)) Irving later ex plained, °adopting the mode of sketches and short tales rather than long works, because I choose to take a line of writing peculiar to my self.* More explicitly, he wrote brief pieces to keep himself from the contagious and over whelming influence of Scott. In a miscellany like 'The Sketch Book' Irving could, and did, attempt several varieties of manner. 'The Wife,' 'The Broken Heart,' 'The Widow and Her Son,' and 'The Pride of the Village' fell in with a lachrymose tendency of the day and were long popular but have since lost most of their power to move. (Rural Life in Eng land,' 'The Country Church,' 'Rural Funerals,' and 'The Angler' are based upon actual ob servation; while not without sentimentalism they have still a pleasant faded charm. The charm has not faded from such essays as 'Westminster Abbey> and 'Stratford-on-Avon,' clear, affectionate pictures of honorable places. But Irving is at his best as essayist when, his eye keenly on the object, he discards sentiment alism and speaks in his natural idiom —humor: this he does in 'The Boar's Head Tavern, East cheap,' Britain,' 'John Bull.) and above
all in the dainty series recounting the Christ mas ceremonies at Bracebridge Hall. About the whole book there is a delicate flavor of the past which has led some readers to think that past and present were confused in Irving's mind. The truth, however, is merely that his imagination was highly susceptible to history and tradition, and he was as naturally a maker of legends as a humorist. This is borne out by the tales in 'The Sketch Book' : 'The Spectre Bridegroom,' a merry parody, even to its bungling plot, of the horrific narratives then lately brought from Germany; and the masteieces of the volume, 'Rip Van Winkle' and Legend of Sleepy Hollow.' The cen tral incidents of (Rip' and the 'Legend' Irving did not invent; one came from a German, one from an American, source. Yet the two stories are as firmly localized in the Hudson Valley as if they had been founded on indigenous folk legends. Both are ascribed to Diedrich Knick erbocker. Both are mellow and rich in style, kindly and chuckling in humor, happy in char acterization, and picturesque in description; the plots move with the accomplished ease of per fect leisure, and the landscapes have the golden look of perpetual autumns. Easily the two best short stories in English for the first three decades• of the 19th century, they still unques tionably stand, after a hundred years busily given to the development of the short story type, among its undimmed triumphs.