Masters Of Doom Epub

[Tiffany Crutch]

CreditsCharlene Taylor, Charlie Howard, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

At the time of his marriage William Irving wasa petty officer on an armed packet-ship plying betweenFalmouth and New York. Two years later(1763) he gave up seafaring, settled in New York,and started a mercantile business. He enjoyed acompetency, but like other patriotic citizens sufferedfrom the demoralization of trade during the4Revolution. His character suggested that of theold Scotch covenanter. Though not without tenderness,he was in the main strict and puritanical.

On his return home Irving passed his examinations(November, 1806), and was admitted to thebar with but slender legal outfit, as he frankly confessed.He was enrolled among the counsel for thedefence at the trial of Aaron Burr at Richmond.There was no thought of taxing his untried legalskill; he was to be useful to the cause as a writer incase his services were needed.

Peter Irving had been ill, and in consequencehis affairs had fallen into disorder. Washingtonundertook to disentangle them. He was unsuccessful.To the intense mortification of the brothersthey were compelled to go into bankruptcy(1818), and Washington began casting about fora way to supplement his slender income. Herefused an advantageous offer at home, and determinedto remain in England. A literary projecthad taken shape in his mind, and he proceeded tocarry it out.

In 1829 Irving became Secretary of the AmericanLegation in London. The Royal Society of9Literature voted him one of their fifty guinea goldmedals, in recognition of his services to the studyof history. The honor, distinguished in itself,became doubly so to the recipient because theother of the two awards for that year was bestowedon Hallam. In June, 1830, the University ofOxford conferred on Irving the degree of LL. D.In April, 1832, he sailed for America. He hadbeen absent seventeen years.

Yet there is a want of ruggedness, the style is almosttoo perfectly controlled. It lacks the strengthand energy born of deep thought and passionateconviction, and it must be praised (as it may bewithout reserve) for urbanity and masculine grace.

In Bracebridge Hall Geoffrey Crayon returnsto the English country house where he had spenta Christmas, to enjoy at leisure old manners, oldcustoms, old-world ideas and people. Never weresimpler materials used in the making of a book;never was a more entertaining book compoundedof such simple materials. The incidents are of themost quiet sort, a walk, a dinner, a visit to a neighboringgrange or to a camp of gypsies, a readingin the library or the telling of a story after dinner.The philosophy is nave, but the humor is exquisiteand unflagging.

While making collateral studies bearing on thelife of Columbus, Irving became so captivated withthe romantic and chivalrous story of the fall ofGranada that he found himself unable to completehis more sober task until he had sketched a roughoutline of the new book. When the Columbus wassent to the press, Irving made a tour of Andalusia,visited certain memorable scenes of the war, andon his return to Seville elaborated his sketchinto the ornate and glowing picture known as AChronicle of the Conquest of Granada, by Fray AntonioAgapida.

The Legends serves a double purpose. As abook of entertainment pure and simple it is unsurpassed.It is also a spur to the reader to makehis way into wider fields, and to learn yet more ofthat people whose history could give rise to thesebeautiful illustrations of chivalry and courage.

Of two notable characteristics of this book, thefirst is its extraordinary readableness. To be surethe Revolution was a great event, and Irving wasa gifted writer. Nevertheless for a historian whodelights in movement, color, variety, the RevolutionaryWar must often seem no better than adesert of tedious fact relieved now and then by anoasis of brilliant exploit. Irving complained ofthe dulness of many parts of the theme. Notwithstandingthis he brought to the work so muchof his peculiar winsomeness that the Washingtonis a book always to be taken up with pleasure andlaid down with regret.

Irving perfected the short story. His geniuswas fecundative. Many a writer of gift and taste,and at least one writer of genius, owes Irving adebt which can be acknowledged but which cannotbe paid. Deriving much from his literary predecessors,and gladly acknowledging the measureof his obligation, Irving by the originality of hiswork placed fresh obligations on those who cameafter him.

His friendships were strong and abiding. Hehad an inflexible will and a keen sense of justice,so keen that it drove him out of the law. Nothought of personal ease or advantage could turnhim from a course he had mapped out as right.46He was generous. His benefactions were manyand judicious, and the manner of their bestowalas unpretending as possible.

He was perfectly simple-minded, incapable ofassuming the air of famous poet or successful manof the world. Doubtless he relished praise, but hehad an adroit way of putting compliments to oneside, tempering the gratitude he really felt with anironical humor.

Coming now to his verse, we find that his poeticflights, though lofty, were neither frequent nor longcontinued. Apparently he was incapable of writingmuch or often. This seems true even after allowanceis made for his busy and exacting life as ajournalist. For years together he composed but afew lines in each year.

If much writing has its drawbacks, it also has itsvalue. And the poet who sings frequently cannotoffer as a reason for not performing, the excuse thathis lyre has not been out of the case for weeks, andthat in all probability a string is broken.

As the poet looks abroad over the vast andglowing fields, there sweeps by him a vision of the52races that have peopled these solitudes and perishedto make room for races to come. It is magnificenteven if it is not scientific. In the sense itgives of the spaciousness of the prairies with themyriad sounds of life projected on the great elementalsilence, it is a true American poem.

Such was the temper of men who had lookedwith philosophic composure and curiosity on the57movements of the sometimes well-nigh frenziedabolitionists. The blow at the integrity of thenation fired their cool patriotism to white heat.

While the detachment was not complete, Bryantundoubtedly kept his poetic apart from his secularlife in a way to command admiration. This heaccomplished by extraordinary self-restraint. As apart of the varied and long-continued disciplineto which he subjected himself, the self-restraintmade for character. The question, however, ariseswhether the poetry did not, in certain ways, sufferunder the very discipline by which the characterdeveloped.

At the close of the Revolutionary War, WilliamCooper acquired large tracts of land on OtsegoLake in New York, settled there in 1790, foundedthe village still known as Cooperstown, and built66for himself a stately home to which he gave thename of Otsego Hall. He was the first judge ofthe county and a member of Congress, a manof strong character and agreeable address.7

He left the service on his betrothal with MissSusan DeLancey of Mamaroneck, New York,whom he married on January 1, 1811. For a fewyears he lived the life of a landed proprietor, dividinghis time between Cooperstown, Scarsdale, andMamaroneck. The dulness of a novel he was readingaloud to his wife provoked him to say that hecould write a better one himself. Challenged toprove it, he produced Precaution (1820), a story ofEnglish life, following conventional lines. It wasapprentice work. The effort of composition taughtCooper that he could write, but not that he couldwrite well. He had no conceit of the book, andrefused it a place in his collected writings.

In 1821 The Spy, a Tale of the Neutral Ground,was published; its unqualified good fortune madeCooper a professed man of letters. From that timeon until his death, twenty-nine years later, he producedbooks with uninterrupted regularity.

The hostility provoked by his energetic criticismssubsided in time. There was even a projecton foot in New York to pay him the complimentof a public dinner as a proof of returning confidence.His untimely illness put to one side thequestion of honors of this poor sort.

A philosopher divides famous men into twoclasses: those who are admired in their own homes(as well as in the world), and those who are admiredanywhere but at home. Cooper belongedto the first class rather than the second. Thisproud, irascible, contentious, dogmatic man ofletters enjoyed the unswerving loyalty and deepaffection of every member of his family. Andfrom this his biographer argues an essential sweetnessof nature.

If The Last of the Mohicans suffers from onefault more than another, it is from a superabundanceof hair-breadth escapes. The novelist heapsdifficulties on difficulties, all of which appear insurmountable,and are presently surmounted withan ease that makes the reader half angry with himselffor having worried.

Afloat and Ashore and Miles Wallingford forma continuous story of almost a thousand pages.There is a mixture of love and adventure, the lovebeing depicted as Cooper usually does it, neitherbetter nor worse, and the sea-episodes as onlyCooper could do them.

Jacopo comes too near to being a saint. Hewould have been more lifelike had he been guiltyof one at least of the twenty-five murders laid athis door. Even a hired assassin of the FifteenthCentury might show filial piety.

That the story contains anachronisms admits ofno doubt. It may be that the arraignment of theoligarchy is too unrelieved. On the other hand,the virtues of the narrative are many. The movementis rapid, the sentences clear, the various91strands of interest artfully woven, and the conclusioninevitable and dramatic.

The Heidenmauer deals with the manners andthe antagonisms of the time when the schism ofLuther was undermining the Church. Far less engrossingthan its predecessor and weighted witha cumbrous style, the book has its right valiantwarriors and militant churchmen, its burghers,peasants, and other dramatis person of Germanromance. There are characters like Gottlob andold Ilse whose speech is always fresh and agreeable.The French abb is voluble and might havebeen wittier. That one does not sit down to a tablespread with an intellectual feast like that servedin The Monastery or The Abbot, is no reason fordisdaining the fare served in The Heidenmauer.

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