Such a
moral, in any case, must necessarily have been very delicately advanced,
in order not to becloud the artistic atmosphere; but a person of
searching dramatic genius would have found means to emphasize it without
injury to art, just as it has been done on the stage. Imagine what
divine vibrations of emotion Hawthorne would have smitten out of this
theme, had he been the originator of it. Certainly we should, as the
case stands, have missed the whole immortal figment, had not Irving
given it to us in germ; the fact that our playwright and our master
comedian have made it so much greater and more beautiful does not annul
that primary service; but, looking at the matter historically, we must
admit that Irving's share in the credit is that of the first projector
of a scientific improvement, and the latter sort of person always has to
forego a great part of his fame in favor of the one who consummates the
discovery. I am willing to believe that there was a peculiar advantage
in Irving's treatment; namely, that he secured for his story a quicker
and more general acceptance than might have been granted to something
more profound; but this does not alter the critical judgment that we
have to pass upon it. If Irving had grasped the tragic sphere at all, he
would have shone more splendidly in the comic. But the literary part of
him, at least, never passed into the shade: it somehow contrived to be
always on that side of the earth which was towards the sun.
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