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A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art. VOL. VI.-JULY, 1855.-NO. XXXI. BIOS IRVING'S LIFE OF WASHINGTON.* IOGRAPHY may be said to bear to history somewhat the same relation that portraiture does to historical painting. Like other comparisons, there are some points in which this one fails; but it is exact enough for purposes of illustration. The great essential requisite for historical composition, as for historical painting, is the power of grouping. If there is a failure in this respect, skillfulness and elaboration in details, so far from making up for it, may only render confusion worse confounded, and the failure more conspicuous. This power of grouping is, indeed, essential to every species of composition, whether pictorial or written; but a much less degree of it will answer for biography or portraiture than for compositions in history. Nor is this by any means the only advantage which the former possess. Though not ranked so high in the critic's scale, their merits and beauties and power of pleasing are much more level to the common apprehension, and more likely to be generally felt and appreciated. History, as it becomes more comprehensive, more scientific and abstract, giving more and more of its attention to relations and causes not accidental, but natural and necessary, comes to deal less and less with men as individuals, and to confine itself to those motives and impulses shared by groups and masses in common-motives and impulses to which, rather than to individual peculiarities. the course and order of events is every day more and more traced. It is said that in these modern times we have no heroes; but the reason, probably, is not so much that men or society are yet very different from what they have been, as that we have a different way of viewing things-perceiving that to be accomplished by the united weight of many persons acting under a common impulse, which, according to the old method of explanation, would have been regarded as the heroic work of some single individual. History, considered as a science, and historical compositions, looked upon as demonstrations, have, no doubt, gained much by this change. But, the great mass of the reading public are hardly yet prepared for this journey into the wilderness of historical speculation, even though the promised land of a reorganized and regenerated society may be alleged to lie beyond it; while fed with this philosophical manna, they do still look back with great longings and some murmurings to the flesh- pots of Egypt, breaking out into occasional complaints that they have been led into the desert to starve. Hence, the popularity of that semihistorical species of biography, of which Washington Irving, in the volume before us, has furnished the first installment of a very pleasing specimen. Biography, indeed, in this shape of it, may be said to have picked up not merely the dropped mantle, but, as it were, the cast-off body of the ascending muse of history; and, as yet, the great mass of readers seem much to prefer a Life of George Washington. By WASHINGTON IRVING. New York: G. P. Putnam & Co. Three vols., Vol. I., pp. 504 VOL. VI.-1 In the biography of Washington-a subject well worthy to be treated in more shapes than one-there is certainly ample room for such a work as that which Washington Irving, of all men in the world, is best able to produce. Parson Weems and the Rev. Mr. Headley have, indeed, made some very desperate efforts at fine writing upon this subject, but they belong too much to the spasmodic and melodramatic school to suit all tastes. The biographies of Chief Justice Marshall, and of Mr. Sparks, are highly respectable works. The latter, particularly, may share the praise which Gibbon bestows on Tillemont, of an accuracy which approaches almost to genius. There are, however, to be found in the great mass of the Washington papers— the main fund of material common to Mr. Irving and to the two biographers last above-named-a good many little traits and incidents which they would have rejected as unworthy of the dignity of Washington, whom they are hardly willing to have seen except in precise costume, but of which Mr. Irving knows how to make excellent use, thereby recommending Washington to our sympathy and affection, without in any way diminishing our respect for him. For it is among the precious gifts of Irving's genius, that he not only "Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones," but "good in every thing," even in those very things which more prosaic biographers would have carefully kept out of sight, or piously modified, lest an involuntary smile on the part of the reader, should seem to be an infraction of Washington's dignity. But, although such a work as Mr. Irving has undertaken seems to us extremely well suited to his peculiar talents, and likely to do not less credit to him as the author, than to Washington as the subject of it, still it cannot be denied, that these historical biographies have, also, their peculiar difficulties. In these compositions, as in other departments of the belles lettres, artistic effect is, of course, the first great object. The liberty taken by these biographie historians, of selecting from the rich field of events-to which, though the subject of their story did not personally participate in them, he yet had a certain relation-such as best admit of rhetorical embellishment, while they skip over or ignore the rest, is a great advantage which they possess over the general historian, who feels himself conscientiously bound to tell the whole story, and for whose end of philosophical instruction, the very dullest portion of it may be even more essential than its most stirring and romantic incidents. But this ample liberty of expatiation is not without its dangers and temptations, especially when coupled with the undertaking to fill a certain number of volumes, since it is exceedingly apt to interfere with that unity of plan and that justice of proportion, which, after all, is the crowning beauty of every work of art, and the neglect of which presents to us the best things out of place, as only so many specious deformities. Looking at the matter in this point of view, we are under the necessity of taking very decided objection to Mr. Irving's first chapter, which bears the running title of Genealogy. It is certainly a great matter, and sometimes a rather puzzling one, to know exactly where to begin. The famous History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker, has gently satirized, in its first book, the habit which historians have, or used to have, of beginning from the creation of the world. Does not Mr. Irving, in the first chapter, of which we are now speaking, expose himself a little, as sometimes will happen to wits and satirists, to be hit by his own arrows? Since the recent discoveries in geology, which carry back the creation to an indefinite period, the habit of beginning from that epoch has been pretty generally abandoned. Among English biographers and historical writers, the era of the Norman Conquest has been usually substituted; and it is from that point that Mr. Irving-with a parade of citations in this first chapter not found in the rest of the volume, and which again reminds us of the venerable Knickerbocker-has commenced his biography. Now, for English writers, treating of English subjects, to go back to the |