Excerpt
WASHINGTON IRVING, ESQ. AND HIS WORKS.
Washington Irving was born, in the State of New York, in the year 1782, and is, consequently, in his fifty-first year. His early life cannot better be told than in his own graceful language, prefixed to the most celebrated of his writings as "the author's account of himself."
"I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town-crier. As I grew into boyhood I extended the range of my observations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about the surrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famous in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had been committed, or a ghost seen. I visited the neighbouring villages, and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and customs, and conversing with their sages and great men. I even journeyed one long summer's day to the summit of the most distant hill, from whence I stretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita, and was astonished to find how vast a globe I inhabited.
"This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of voyages and travels became my passion, and in devouring their contents, I neglected the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would I wander about the pier heads in fine weather, and watch the parting ships bound to distant climes; with what longing eyes would I gaze after their lessening sails; and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth.
"Farther reading and thinking, though they brought this vague inclination into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I visited various parts of my own country; and had I been merely influenced by a love of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere its gratification; for on no country have the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with their bright aërial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad, deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine:—no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery."
Mr. Irving began his career, as an author, in periodical literature. His first work was a humorous journal, entitled "Salmagundi, or the Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Esq. and Others," originally published in numbers in New York, where it met with a very flattering reception. The date of the first paper is Saturday, January 24, 1827.
Salmagundi has been several times reprinted in this country; and it may be acceptable to know, that the cheapest, if not the most elegant, edition may be purchased for twenty-pence....