Yet such changes as these in literary fashion scarcely
affect the permanent service of Irving to our literature. He
immortalized a local type--the New York Dutchman--and local
legends, like that of Rip van Winkle; he used the framework of
the narrative essay to create something almost like the perfected
short story of Poe and Hawthorne; he wrote prose with unfailing
charm in an age when charm was lacking; and, if he had no
message, it should be remembered that some of the most useful
ambassadors have had none save to reveal, with delicacy and tact
and humorous kindness, the truth that foreign persons have
feelings precisely like our own.
Readers of Sir Walter Scott's "Journal" may remember his account
of an evening party in Paris in 1826 where he met Fenimore
Cooper, then in the height of his European reputation. "So the
Scotch and American lions took the field together," wrote Sir
Walter, who loved to be generous. "The Last of the Mohicans,"
then just published, threatened to eclipse the fame of "Ivanhoe."
Cooper, born in 1789, was eighteen years younger than the Wizard
of the North, and was more deeply indebted to him than he knew.
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