B987 IRLF SB YC 16288 MEMORIAL SKETCH LIFE AND LITERARY LABORS Evert Augustus Duyckinck, READ BEFORE THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY. THE SEVENTH DAY OF JANUARY, 1879, WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER. \ \ NEW YORK : EVENING POST STEAM PRESSES, 208 BROADWAY, CORNER FULTON STREET. 1879. MEMORIAL SKETCH LIFE AND LITERARY LABORS Evert Augustus Duyckinck, RKAD BBFO&K THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, THE SEVENTH DAY OF JANUARY, 1879, WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER. V NEW YORK : NING POST STEAM PRESSES, 208 BROADWAY, CORNER FULTON STREET, 1879, At a Stated Meeting of the New York Historical Society, held in its hall, on Tuesday evening, Jannary 7, 1879. The Executive Committee reported that Mr. William Allen Butler, on the invitation of the Committee, had prepared, and would now read a paper on the life and literary labors of the late Evert A. Duyckinck. On its conclusion, Mr. John Austin Stevens submitted the following resolution : Resolved, That the thanks of the Society be and hereby are presented to Mr. Butler, for the graceful, eloquent and appro- priate tribute to our late lamented friend Mr. Duyckinck, read this evening, and that a copy be requested for the archives of the Society. Extract from the minutes. ANDREW WARNER, Recording Secretary. NOTE. Mr. ]^]dtfk^emte$ed*$$o rost, August 13th, 1878. Mr. Butler was obliged' to d&aatRse ills c::ccJlen,t paper in order that it might be printed in the Evening X>s,*V*ol. 78, January 9th, 1879, A Memorial Paper Eead Before the New York Historical Society, Tuesday, January 7, 1879, by William Allen Butler. Iu attempting a sketch of the life and literary labors of Evert A. Duyckinck I dismiss, at the outset, any misgivings as to the degree of general interest attaching to a career whose daily course came so little under public observation and whose chosen aims were so far removed from the ordinary pursuits of men. At first thought the life of a scholar passed chiefly among his books and marked by an avoidance of society, presents few points of attraction and may seem to furnish little material for even a brief biographi- cal notice. But the friend whose memory we honor was not a mere recluse, living a selfish life of intellectual ease. He was a faithful and life-long worker. If his field of labor was retired it was no less the scene of constant and patient toil ; if he pre- ferred the quiet of his books and the companion- ship of their authors to the stir of active life and the social intercourse of the world, it was not to hide or bury the talents committed to his keep- ing. In his self -chosen seclusion he was always contributing his measure of honest work to that true commonwealth of letters in which there is no conflict between the capital of intellectual gifts or acquirements and the labor of brain and hand, but where all are co-workers, each in his own sphere, for the advancement of the best thought and intelligence of the race. Evert Augustus Duyckinck, the son of Evert Duyckinck and Harriet June, was born in the city of New York November 23, 1816. His family name was conspicuous in the list of the early Dutch settlers in this part of the country. Evert Duyckinck, the second of the name, who married Elsie Meyer, February 3, 1704, settled during the later colonial times at Raritan Land- ing, New Jersey. Of the nine children of Evert and Elsie Duyckinck, the third, Christopher, was actively engaged during the Revolutionary War M165526 (Q Aid of the struggle for independence. His son 1 Evert, the eldest of seven children and the father of the subject of the present memorial sketch, became a resident of the city of New York about the beginning of the present century, and engaged in the business of a publisher and book- seller. His house, No. 9 Old Slip, and his store in Water street, adioining it in the rear, were well known to the residents of old New York, by whom he was held in high esteem during his thirty or forty years of active business life. He gave to Messrs. J. & J. Harper the first order they ever received for book-printing. It was for two thousand copies of Seneca's Morals, a large edition for the time, and considering the subject perhaps larger than could be disposed of in these degenerate days by any of our modern publishers with all their increased appliances of trade. A pleasant allusion to the veteran publisher was made in a letter of Diedrich Knickerbocker published in the American Citizen, New York, January 23, 1810, not included in any collection of Washington Irving's works, but reprinted in Mr. Stevens's .Magazine of American History for May, 1878. In this letter the veracious historian of New York expresses his regret that his work had not been published by his much esteemed friend Mr. Evert Duy- ckinck, "a lineal descendant from one of the ancient heroes of the Manhattoes whose grandfather and my grandfather were just like brothers." It appears from a passing allusion in a note-book of his son Evert that a love of do- mestic retirement and quiet was characteristic of the family. Speaking of the luxury of a wood fire in Paris, he says: " A wood fire will always be associated by me with home and my best early days by my father's and mother's fireside. My father had a Dutch tenacity to domestic habits that no friction of travel will rub out from me either. In his store in Water street he kept heaped-up fires a back log in the morning like a hogshead. In the ashes, after dinner, a a few Carolina potatoes were commonly buried, where they lay heaped up like the tombs of Ajax and Patroclus. In the evening, over the embers, my uncle Long always came to talk over the business of the day, while I kept close to the cor- ner, rarely venturing to go among the dark shades at the further end of the room." The two sons and only children of Evert Duyckinck, the publisher, were Evert Augustus and George Long, the latter named after the uncle just mentioned. The two boys grew up in that daily contact with books and literary asso- ciations which, to a mind naturally intelligent, is often the most potent influence in determining the pursuits of after years. Evert was gradu- ated from Columbia College in the class of 1835, at the age of nineteen, and afterward spent two years in the law office of the eminent jurist and practitioner John Anthou. He was admitted to the bar in 1837, but the profession of the law presented no attractions to* his retiring and contemplative nature. His strong bias for literary studies and pursuits, con- spicuous during his college course, had been shown in his contributions to leading literary journals published in New York. For Park Ben- jamin's American M onthly he wrote some charm- ing papers under the title "Felix Merry's Fire- side Essays. " He soon afterward became a regu- lar contributor to the New York Review and Quarterly Church Journal, for which he wrote reviews of the poetical works of Crabbe, Mrs. Hemans, George Herbert and Goldsmith, beside many other critical pieces. His love of old Eng- lish literature, the department of study in which he always delighted, was exhibited in an article in one of the earlier numbers of the same review, in which his name is associated as a contributor with those of Chancellor Kent and Bishop Mc- Ilvaine. In the autumn of 1838 he left home for a year of travel in Europe, which he made not merely an opportunity for gratifying the curiosity of an American, but largely a means of verifying by his own observation what he had learned in his studies of the life, manners and associations of the old world. " I desire," he says in the opening pages of the diary Irom which a quotation has already been given, " to traverse Europe and look upon it with tbe eye of the Past, as Howell, or Evelyn or Wot- ton travelled in the seventeenth century." He was most fortunate in forming the acqaintance in Paris of Mr Harmanus Bleeker of Albany, an eminent lawyer and scholar, a descendant, like himself, of a good Holland stock, who was about to visit the land of his ancestors under the most favorable auspices. He invited Mr. Duy- ckinck and his friend and fellow-traveller James W. Beekman to accompany him ; an invitation gladly accepted. Mr. Blee- ker was versed in the Dutch lan- guage and literature, and was well known in Holland, where soon afterward, during the Presidency of Mr. Van Buren, he re- presented the (Jmted States a* Minister at the Hague. " As honest as Ha rmauus Bleeker " was a phrase of John Randolph which conveyed a sincere tribute to one of whom Duyckinck says: "He follows truth fearlessly in everything." He proved a most congenial and instructive com- panion in travel, delighting his juniors with his good sense and the results of his long experience at the Bar and in public life and with his fund of 6 anecdotes, of which Duyckinck testifies '* they are always good and always new and rare, and many an" hour of travel have they beguiled on the long, straight roads of the Low Countries." The touri*ts entered Holland at Grootzun- dert, a port on the frontier of Belgium. The appearance in their passports of such honest Dutch names as ' Bleeker," ' Duyckinck" and "Beekman," aided, no doubt, by the ingenuous countenances of their proprietors, elicited a cour- teous waiver of Custom House scrutiny, and the freedom of the Netherlands seems to have been conferred upon them without any troublesome formalities. A private audience ot the King and a ball at the palace of the Prince of Orange were part of a round of entertainments and hospitali- ties from which Duyckinck was disposed, under the impulse of his retiring and independent dis- position, to draw back. " I began," he says, " to question my position when I found Mr. Bleeker received by the great lords of the state, and my- self included in the invitations. I dislike to re- ceive any attention to which I have not some right in myself. It sacrifices independence. But 1 was fairly invited by Mr. Bleeker to accom- pany him as a fellow- traveller. He draws these attentions upon us. For myself, I am a looker- on in Vienna." Few lookers-on ever brought to the quiet task of observation more good sense or a keener ap- preciation of whatever was worthy of note. His rare opportunities for seeing life in Holland at its best were well improved. His journal, in the neat, firm handwriting expressive of his ex- act method and nicety of taste, is a series of sketches drawn from nature and society with a vivid charm of expression in their descriptions of scenes and incidents of travel, which reminds one of the easy grace of Irving, and in their pictures of social life and personal traits of the quick vivacity of Hoi-ace Walpole. In company with Mr. Bleener, Duyckinck made a thorough exploration of all the places of inter- est to a literary man and a Hollander by de- scent. In a book of heraldry at the house of Baron Westreenan, a noted antiquarian, they found their respective coats-of-arms, and at the hospitable tables of the burghers of Amsterdam and the Hague a paternal welcome. There, as the journal attests, " eternal amity was sworn between Holland and America; and if," says Duyckinck, " the ocean that separates us were of wine (like that in the Verse Historial of Lucian) these Dutchmen would drink it up for the sake of a closer union." It is curious and pleasant to observe from these notes of travel in Holland, more than forty years ago, the high repute in which the best people there held the American authors whose works were familiar to them through their translation into Dutch. With an ignorance as to the condition of society and manners in America so profound that the ques- tion was put to Duychinck by an intelligent Hollander, at a diplomatic dinner, whether trav- ellers in his country "subsisted by the chase,'' they were yet highly appreciative of Irving's " Columbus, 3 -' Marshall's " Life of Washington " and Cooper's novels. Perhaps these last had furnished the ground for the apprehensions of the worthy diner-out that in case he visited New Amsterdam he would have to depend for his sub- sistence upon the success of the leather-stockings of Manhattan Island in bagging their daily game. However this may be, the same kindly greeting given to these well-accredited tourists was accorded to the works of their countrymen a fact which loses none of its interest in the thought that this was long before the history and the heroes of the Netherlands had received their best commemoration from tue pen of an American scholar. But pleasant as were these hospitalities, it is evident that the ideal life which our traveller had set before him was quite different from one made up of social gaieties. His longing for quiet study and for labor in his chosen lield was not dissipated. A characteristic entry in his jpiirnal betrays, perhaps quite unconsciously to himself, his ruling, hereditary passion for a sequestered life. Returning from a stroll in the deer park, a favorite resort i or his solitary rambles while a resident at the Hague, he writes: " If I were a believer in the ancient transmigration, I would sigh for the quiet, ruminating, contented ideas of a well-au tiered deer, browsing leisurely along, and watching the little business of his world around." After leaving Holland in April, 183^, he spent the summer and autumn in England and Scot- land, returned to New York late in the year and renewed at once his cherished associations with his books and literary labors. His first serious work after his return home was in the editorship in conjunction with Mr. Cornelius Matthews of a monthly journal, the Arcturus. Mr. William A. Jones was also engaged in this enterprise, and the three wrote almost all the articles. It ran through three volumes, and some of Duyckinck's best work was done in this magazine, which is not inaptly described in one of Tidgar A. Poe's brief sketches of literary men as a "little too good to enjoy extensive popularity." In April, 1840, he married Miss Margaret Wolfe Panton, and soon afterward took up his perma- nent and life-long residence at No. 20 Clinton Place, a home where the affections of wife and children and kindred, and the companionship of friends, all found their springs of happiness in his unvarying serenity of temper, his pure and elevated thought, and his devotion to duty. In the early part of 1847 Mr. Duyckinck under- took the editorship of the Literary World, a weekly journal designed as a vehicle for the best criticism on books and art and the inde- pendent and impartial treatment of all topics relating to the cultivation of letters. In the conduct of the Literary World an ele- vated and inspiring tone was conspicuous, and Mr. Duyckinck drew around him many able co- adjutors. It was at this time I saw him most frequently, always at his own house for even then he mixed very little in society where I was attracted by the constant presence of men of mark in letters and art, and by the friendship subsisting between the- two brothers and myself. The evenings in his library will long be remem- bered by many men whose ways in life have widely diverged in the years which followed the period to which I now advert, but who then were fond of gathering around his fireside, and there discussing the various topics of the day, or listening to the modest but always forcible expression of his critical opinions, or the quiet humor of his narrative of some incident or reminiscence which gave point to the subject of the moment. He was wholly free from the spirit of detraction. The office of the critic was not allied in his view with the partisanship of sDecial ideas or authors, nor was its chief function the suppression of rivals or the extinction of the weak and feeble. The savagery of the trenchant style of criticism was as alien to his idea of the true sphere of the literary censor as it was to the humanity of his nature, and he never turned bis pen into a bludgeon or made it the instrument of any selfish or unworthy pur- pose. His own work as a writer was always conscientious and complete. To extreme delicacy of taste he added a rare grace and nicety of ex- pression and a certain tact in the handling and exhibition of his subject which gave a peculiar charm to what he wrote. His standard both as to the style and the purpose of literary composi- tion was of the highest character. The fine phrase in which Horace describes the accomplishments of his friend, " * * * * * ad unguem Factus homo," he applied as the highest praise of a well-written book. It must be finished to the finger nail to meet the requirements of a just criticism, and to this severe test he sought to subject his own work as well as that of the authors on whom he sat in judgment. 1 have dwelt on this period of his career be- cause it marked the time not only of my closest acquaintance with him but also of the enforced cessation of our constant intercourse. To a young man called by necessity and choice to the severer studies and active duties of the bar, ambrosian nights and the society of even the choicest spirits in literature and art were temptations to be shunned, and my way of life soon ran in a very different path from his. But to know Duyckinck once was to be intimate with him always; and the infrequent meetings of later years were in- variably on the unchanged footing of our first friendship. To turn atdde at long intervals from the daily routine of life and its common round of duties to revisit him in the quiet of his studies was as when one leaves the dusty and sun-struck highway to seek in some neighboring and familiar shade and covert the spring he knows is hidden under the thicket close at hand, to thrust aside the inter- cepting branches and to find in the clear peren- nial waters the same refreshment and strength as when he drank them first. The Literary World was continued to the close of 1853. The experiment of a purely literary journal, dependent on its own merits, and ap- pealing rather to the sympathies than the needs of that very small portion of the public which took satisfaction in a weekly presentation of the progress of ideas without reference to their own party politics, their own religious de- nomination, their craving for continuous fiction or their preference for woodcuts and caricatures, had been fairly tried and the result was not en- couraging. The Duyckincks were men of too much sense and too much substance to pursue a literary enterprise for the mere sake of a small corps of contributors, however brilliant, or a select circle of readers, however appreciative. They wisely withdrew from the field of news- paper competition, recognising that inexorable law of supply and demand which less responsible projectors of like undertakings so often ignore until the very implements and paraphernalia by which they sought to enlighten the world and achieve immortality are sold under a chattel mortgage or a sheriff's execution. But although the Literary World was not a permanent success, the work done upon it was not lost. There is this difference between the failures of ventures in journalism ,md ordinary business i'e- verses, that while the types and presses and me- chanical appliances by Avhich they are carried on may figure in a bankruptcy schedule as very un- available assets, the written words to which they have given permanent form and expression on the printed page remain and become a part of the great body of literature to survive and to find their permanent place and value if they are intrin- sically worthy of preservation. Many a famous or well-deserving poem, essay or article has first seen the light as a contribution to some short-lived magazine or journal which may have served as a kind of fire-escape for the genius imperilled by its destruction. After the Literary World had ceased to exist Duyckinck turned, doubtless with a sense of re- lief, to the more congenial labors to which the rest of his life was devoted and in which he found his best sphere as a scholar and expert in English and American literature the editing of books of per- manent value and the preparation of works of his- tory and biography. In 1854 he undertook, with his brother and under arrangements with Mr. Charles Scribner as its publisher, the preparation of the Cyclopaedia of American Literature, a work of large proportions, demanding most extensive researches and a thorough ac- quaintance with the works of American authors. The design of the Cyclopaedia was to bring to- gether, as far as possible, memorials and records of the writers of the country and their works from the earliest period to the present day. " The voice of two centuries of American literature," says the preface, u may well be worth listening to." Two years of faithful and diligent work were ex- pended upon the CydopEedia, many difficulties were surmounted, and when it was finally com- pleted and published it took its place at once as the standard exposition of the history < growth and development of literature in America, and as a monument of the good taste, judgment and dis- crimination of its editors. A supplement was added by Mr. Duyckinck in 18t>5. after the death of his brother, bringing the work down to that date. I can only mention briefly the leading literary labors which followed the completion of the Cyclo- paedia. In 185ti Duyckinck edited the " Wit and Wisdom of Sydney Smith, with a biographical me- moir and notes," In 1862 he undertook the task of reparing the letter-press for the " National Por- rait Gallery of Eminent Americans," published by Messrs. Johnson, Fry & Co., a series of bio- graphical sketches and portraits forming two quarto volumes. This work had a very extended circulation, the number of copies sold having long since exceeded 10 one hundred thousand. A contemporary "History of the War for the Union " in three quarto vol- umes, and another extensive work, " Biographies of Eminent Men and Women of Europe and America," were written by him for the same pub- lishers. He also edited for them a " History of the World" in four quarto volumes, compiled chiefly from the Encyclopaedia Britannica and in great part by his son George. Less elaborate works were the editing 1 , with a memoir and notes, of the "Poems of Philip Frenau," the American edition of the "Poets of the Nineteenth Century," a memorial of John Allan, the well-known \c\v York book collector (printed by the Bradford Club), commemoration sketches of the Rev. Dr. Hawks, Henry T. Tuckennan and James W. Beek- man, read before the New York Historical society and printed by it, and similar memorials of John David Wolfe and Samuel G. Drake, the last named for the American Ethnological Society. Immedi- ately after the death of Washington Irving he gathered together and published in a single vol- ume an interesting collection of anecdotes and traits of the great author under the title " Irvingi- ana." He was fully equipped for the best critical and biographical work. He knew the whole field of English literature " as seamen know the sea." The authors of the Elizabethan age were as familiar to him as any of their successors of the Victorian era. Those "old fields," out of which comes so much of the " new corn " of modern thought and expression were to him like the woodland and meadows around an ancestral homestead. In the general range of literature and on most of its special sub- jects his knowledge was complete as to siuthors and the prooer critical estimate of their works and the various editions through which they had passed: and thus as scholar, critic and bibliograph- er he was a standard authority. I know of no one to whom any vexed questions on points of litenirv inquiry could have been as safely referred for de- cision without further appeal as in a tribunal of last resort. Nor do 1 know any scholar of our country better fitted by natural disposition and temperament, by study and rese-.vrch, by constant practice as a writer, by experience as journalist and editor, and by thorough magnanimity and im- partiality of judgment, to discharge the"dutv and fulfil the trust of a literary critic. His collection of books and his use of them was characteristic of the man anu indicated at once his Catholic and conservative taste, embracing rare and particular editions of books of which he knew the history and contents, special volumes to be prized for their peculiar place in literary annals, illustrated works, selected not so much for their artistic merit as with reference to the aid which the pencil brought to the text of the author. He was careful as to the condition and binding of his books, less as a matter of taste than with reference to the desert of the books themselves, and nothing in his library was for show. In fact no one but n intimate friend knew the number of his books or their value. They were kept in various rooms of his house, and many of them out of sight ; but they were always at hand when needed for reference, or in aid of anv theme of discussion or of the offices of friendship, and as occasion required he would, like the householder ~of the Scripture, bring forth " out of his treasure things new and old." It is characteristic of the modesty of the man that his library, the object of his constant solicitude and of his just pride, should receive special and fitting recognition only after his death. He knew the great im- portance of preserving intact a collection which had grown up as the result of the judicious and careful selection of books in this country and in Europe by himself and his brother 1 1 during a period of nearly forty years, and he wisely determined to provide for their permanent deposit in the alcoves of the fine public library with which Mr. Lenox has enriched the city. There the spirit of the gentle and refined scholar will seem to abide among the the books he loved, which will perpetuate his name and be the lasting memorial of his taste and learning The home of which I have spoken as the centre of so many domestic affections was visited by re- peated and gi-ievous sorrows. All the younger members ot the household were, one by one, re- moved by death ; the sisters by marriage to whom he was as an elder brother, the brother to whom he was as a second father and whose fine reveren- tial spirit arid intellectual taste found expression in the memoirs of the English Church worthier, Kerr and Latimer and Herbert, and the three sons whose promise and performance were full of satisfaction. The youngest, already al- luded to, for his share in the preparation of the "History of the World," died in the twenty-sev- enth year of his age. The oldest, Evert, lived only sixteen years : he had developed a fine taste and manly spirit and was the constant companion of his father, to whom he was specially endeared. The second son, Henry,a graduate of Columbia Col- It -ire and a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was cut off in his early prime at the post of duty, a victim to his intrepid devotion to the work of beneficence and Christian philanthropy, to which he had consecrated himself. These heavy burdens of domestic grief were borne with a soirit of Christian fortitude. Mr Duyckinck's religious views were simple and firm, resting on a thorough acquiescence in the verities of the Christian faith as expressed by the church he revered and of which he was a devout mem- ber. ''The trreat background of his character," writes the Rev. Dr. Morgan, the rector of St. Thomas's Church, in which he was many years a vestryman, "was his purity or exquisite deli- cacy of organization. It led to extreme modesty and a want of even moderate self-assertion, but for the most part it was his glory. His pure mind and taste marked him in everything. The thing which fell specially under my notice was his pains- taking diligence and fidelity in common, humdrum duties. He was Clerk of the Vestry of St. Thomas's, and I have still in my possession some of the blank books which he filled with minutes and memoran- da. It must have cost him a great deal of labor, and consumed much precious time, but it was con- scientiously done, even to the copying of long specifications. But after all the mind reverts to his quiet, studious habits, and his long communion with the bestmen and minds of "all time." In a like view the Rev. Dr. Rylance, rector of St. Mark's Church, where ho worshipped up to the time of his last illness, speaks of him as a " rare illustration of what Wordsworth calls 'natural piety' beautified and hallowed by the wisdom which is from above. My visits to him as a pastor," he writes, " were always rewarded by some in- crease of light or inspiration to my own mind or heart. But only as the last mortal hour approacned did the singular excellence of Mr. Duyckinck's Christian character reveal itself. Through the long and painful decay of the outer man the inner man was renewed day by day. No complaint or murmur did I ever hear from his lips, but the same chastened resignation ever showed itself as I approached the sufferer to minister what little comfort I could in his time of need. He would speak naturally and with an earnestness of manner not usual with him of the future life and of the good hope guarantied by the Gospel." In the last literary work undertaken by Mr. Duyckinck, and which was completed only a short 12 time before illness prevented him from further labor, he was associated with Mr. Bryant. The same publisher, for whom he had been engaged on the most important works already noticed, pro- jected a popular edition of the " Plays of Shake- speare," and the work of preparing- and anno- tating- the text was undertaken, at their request, by Mr. Bryant and Mr. Duyckinck. The editions of Shakespeare are almost innumerable, and so are the names of Shakespearian editors and com- mentators, but seldom has the task of arranging and setting in order that vasl array of dramatic- scenes and persons whose ''infinite variety" ' age cannot wither nor custom stale," been confid- ed to scholars more competent for its worthy execu- tion. For the general supervision of the work and the special duty of scrutinizing the text when pre- pared and of its final revision, Mr. Bryant was of all American authors best fitted by his trained skill in the poetic art, his wonderful memory, em- bracing so much of literature and of literary an- nals illustrative of the Shakespearian text, his se- vere taste, his long labor in the rendering of the Homeric poems into English verse, his large ex- perience of life, his elevated and serene tempera- ment which made him so much a lover of nature and the human race and so little dependent on companionship with individual men. These were rare qualifications for the semi-judicial function of determining the best and truest rendering pf the very many obscure and douotful passages of Shakespeare over which scholars and crit- ics have so long contended. To Duyckinck was confided the severer and laborious task of the first preparation of the text, the colla- tion from the various readings and editions of the best version, and the annotation and arrangement of the whole work. The nature and extent of their respective shares in the editorial work are clearly defined in the manuscript preface by Mr. Bryant, a portion of which has recently been made public in the columns of the EVENING POST, and in which he says : " Among the variations in the text in the old copies called readings are many the genuineness of which is matter of dispute among commenta- tors. * * * In selecting the most authentic of this class I should not have been willing to rely on my own judgment and opportunity, and have, therefore, sought the co-operation of Mr. Duyck- inck, whose studious habits of research and dis- crimination fitted him in a peculiar manner for the task. With the assurance of his assistance I undertook the work, and it is due to him to say that although every syllable of this edition has passed under my eye and been considered and ap- proved by me, the preliminary labor in the re- vision and annotation has been performed by him." It is pleasant to think that his last labor was one so congenial to his tastes. Hindered by no calls to alien or disturbing duties or rough competitions in the outer world, it was pursued in the seclusion which he loved among the ample sources of aid and illu stration in the books by which he was sur- rounded. From the first scene to the last he went page by page, line by line through all the dramas which the world accepts under the name of Shake- speare, with the patient and conscientious care im- posed by the nature of the work and his sense of duty, and, as we may well imagine, with some- thing of the reverent devotion to the minutest de- tails which a mediasval monk might have given to the task of illuminating the record of the legend of a patron saint. The labor thus delighted in was often an antidote to sorrow and pain and a source of strength and comfort. He showed me on one occasion with evident satisfaction the portion of the work he had in hand, and to an intimate friend in an interview near the close of his life, when he was suffeiing great pain, his patient endurance found relief in words supplied by the great dramatist, " Come what come may Time and the hour run through the roughest day." The review thus taken of this life of literary la- bor presents a succession of unobtrusive and yet most faithful and persevering efforts. Under the spur of necessity or by the help of early associa- tion with some leading- and liberal publisher who could have discerned the practical uses of his pe- culiar gifts he might perhaps have done greater things and made his name more famous. But it was better that he should have pursued his own chosen path and left us this rare instance of an un- spoiled scholarly life, passed in the midst of a great commercial metropolis, which, with all its varied attractions and temptations, could not divert him from the pursuits to which he was devoted as by an irrevocable vow. We are under a great obliga- tion to the scholar who thus attests his fealty to the cause of letters. In a great city, with its count- less and ceaseless activities, where tjae participants in the daily round of duties, from the drudgery of the most menial service to the high- wrought schemes by which the highest material interests are served, are under the whip and spur of a necessity or a competition which suffers no choice and no cessation, the scholar and the stu- dent are indispensable. The preservation of a lit- erature is no less needful than its growth, and while the great mass of educated men must follow special callings and professions which debar them from the general studies and researches to which their tastes invite, it is a satisfaction to know that there are men qualified for the task who keep watch over the sources and springs of literature, who defend it from what is unworthy, who are the custodians of its treasures and the guardians of its permanent interests. Their service is not con- spicuous and may be lightly esteemed, for it is not performed on a wide stage nor in the glare of com- petition. They stay by the supplies, and it should be ours to see to it that in the distribution of re- wards, " as his part that goeth down to the battle so shall his part be that remaineth by the stuff." It may seem in the retrospect of the life 1 have sketched that it presents a character without a fault. If so I might plead the grateful prerogat ve and privilege of the delineator of a purely private life with no relation to public events imposing upon the biographer the duties and restraints which attach to the historian. In the portrait of the friend we love we want to see him at his best, and if it is painted by the hand of affection it may well present in a single aspect the idea of all that was most admirable in the original. The famous speech of Cromwell to Sir Peter Lely, " paint me as I am," may have been only the shrewd self- assertion of a nature which imposed its rude re- straint upon whatever was adventitious and not within the compass of its own control. And yet if I were charged, as on the oath of a witness, to testify as to the failings of this subject of my sketch, I should have to seek for them outside of any knowledge or information of my own. His was a life singularly free from blemish or blame and equally exempt from enmity or detrac- tion. It may be said that he was less exposed to temptation by reason of his seclusion from the world, but while the praises of the solitary life have been often set forth it cannot be claimed in its be- half that the infirmities of the individual man part company with him when he quits the society of his fellows. He who mixes least with the world is apt to have the worst opinion of his kind and to become querulous if not cynical, just as the citi- zen who is earliest and most frequent in his de- spair of the republic is usually the last and least serviceable in any effort for its rescue. The vo- 1 4 taries ot a pure literature are no exception to the rule. If Cowper fled from the world as the scene 'where Satan wages still his most success- ful war " it was only to find in his se- clusion new inward sources of conflict and distress from which a closer contact with the world would perhaps have been the best safe- guard. But our friend, in his self-chosen home- life, was always in sympathy with the world with- out, thoroughly patriotic and loyal as a citizen and most genial and hearty in his appreciation of whatever was deserving of general regard and esteem. Although a recluse he loved the city, its nearness to his quiet nook of study, the concourse of its streets, its public libraries and exhibitious of art, its repositories of books and engravings, its strong and busy life. He was never willingly away from it. A day's ramble in the country now and then sufficed for out-of-town enioyments. I could never persuade him to pass a night under my suburban roof. Like Madame de Stael, who preferred a fourth story in the Rue de Bac to all the glories of Switzerland, he kept to the city and shunned a change even in midsummer heats. But, unlike her. his choice was for its solitude and not for its society, and such was the purity of his character that it did not corrode or become de- based by being hidden from the light. He is buried in the graveyard at Tarrytown, be- side the old church of Sleepy Hollow. The spot was selected by himself and his brother long ago as a place of family burial on account of its loveli- ness of situation, its quaint surroundings and the associations which have been woven about it by the master hand of Irving, whose grave is near his own, Hard by this rural solitude, along the iron pathway which skirts it, the heavily freighted trains move day and night, and eager crowds hurry to and fro on their ceaseless errands, while beyond on the broad river the gathei-ed fruits of the corn- fields and prairies of the West go to seek a market in the great metropolis or beyond the sea. In this contrast of the grave with its unchanging repose beside the restless, rapid movements of the living we may find an image, not inapt, of the life we have surveyed, so near the stir and rush-of the out- ward world and yet in its calmness and serenity so far removed, and as we turn from the peaceful life and the quiet grave both alike are bright with the best memories of earth and the smile of heaven. THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY