the evening. We were, of course, proud to have as our own guest
for the night such an embodiment of "Charity and Humor" as Mr. Thackeray
saw in the front bench before him, but whom he considerately spared from
holding up as an illustration of his subject.

Charity, indeed, practical "good-will toward men," was an essential
part of Mr. Irving's Christianity,--and in this Christian virtue he was
sometimes severely tested. Nothing was more irksome to him than to be
compelled to endure calls of mere curiosity, or to answer letters either
of fulsome eulogy of himself or asking for his eulogy of the MSS. or new
work of the correspondent. Some letters of that kind he probably never
did answer. Few had any idea of the _fagging_ task they imposed on
the distinguished victim. He would worry and fret over it trebly in
anticipation, and the actual task itself was to him probably ten times
as irksome as it would be to most others. Yet it would be curious to
know how many letters of suggestion and encouragement he actually did
write in reply to solicitations from young authors for his criticism and
advice, and his recommendation, or, perhaps, his pecuniary aid. Always
disposed to find merit, even where any stray grains of the article lay
buried in rubbish, he would amiably say the utmost that could justly be
said in favor of "struggling genius." Sometimes his readiness to aid
meritorious young authors into profitable publicity was shamefully
abused,--as in the case of Maitland, an Englishman, who deliberately
forged an absurdly distorted paraphrase of a note of Mr. Irving's,
besides other disreputable use of the signature which he had enticed
from him in answer to urgent appeals. But these were among the penalties
of honorable fame and influence which he might naturally expect to pay.
The sunny aspect on the "even tenor of his way" still prevailed; and
until the hand of disease reached him in the last year of his life, very
few probably enjoyed a more tranquil and unruffled existence.

It became almost a proverb, that Mr. Irving was a nearly solitary
instance of a long literary career (half a century) untouched by even
a breath of ill-will or jealousy on the part of a brother-author. The
annals of the _genus irritabile_ scarcely show a parallel to such a
career. The most prominent American contemporary of Mr. Irving in
imaginative literature, I suppose, was Fenimore Cooper,--whose genius
raised the American name in Europe more effect