He had become so well
satisfied with his post of mediator between the writers of the two
nations, that it became paramount with him to preserve the good-will he
had won in England, and this appears in the cautious and _almost_
obsequious mien of "Bracebridge." One may trace it also, with amused
pain, in his correspondence with Paulding,--honest, pathetic Paulding, a
rabid miso-Briton who burned to write something truly American, and
couldn't; whom Drake laughingly hails as
"The bard of the backwoods,
The poet of cabbages, log-huts, and gin."
Irving was vexedly concerned at the violent outbreaks of his old
coadjutor, directed against the British; yet, though they were foolish,
they showed real pluck. But if we need other proof of the attitude which
Irving was distinctly recognized to have taken up, we may turn to a page
on which "The Edinburgh Review," unusually amiable toward him at first,
thus vented its tyrannical displeasure at his excessive complaisance:
"He gasped for British popularity [it said]: he came, and found it. He
was received, caressed, applauded, made giddy: natural politeness owed
him some return, for he imitated, admired, deferred to us.... It was
plain he thought of nothing else, and was ready to sacrifice everything
to obtain a smile or a look of approbation." In a less savage fashion
we, too, may admit the not very pleasant truth here enunciated with such
unjust extremeness. An interval of nearly forty years lies between the
date of the "Sketch-Book" and "Bracebridge" and that of "Our Old Home";
the difference in tone fully corresponds to the lapse of time.
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