A fortnight later, he writes to the same correspondent:—

My last letter ended, I think, with the departure of the Regent to quell the insurrection in Barcelona. He travelled in his own fearless style, pushing on in a post-chaise ahead of his troops, and without escort, accompanied merely by an officer or two of his staff, and threw himself frankly among the people in the towns and villages, who showed the sense of this confidence in their loyalty, receiving him everywhere with acclamations. After his departure Madrid was full of rumors; insurrections were said to be breaking out everywhere. The downfall of Espartero and of the existing government was confidently predicted, and there were not wanting factious people and factious prints to endeavor to blow this hidden flame into a general conflagration. Thus far, however, they have been disappointed. Madrid has remained quiet under the guardianship of the national guards, and the insurrection did not extend beyond Barcelona. That factious city has once more been brought into submission to the government, but not until it had suffered a bombardment of several hours. As yet, we have no particulars of the damage done, but it must have been considerable, and I fear we shall hear of some punishments inflicted upon those who have been most active in exciting this rebellion. Barcelona has sinned so often in this way, that it is deemed necessary to treat it, in the present instance, with rigor. The bombardment, though repeatedly threatened, and the day and hour assigned, was put off from day to day and hour to hour, in the hope that the insurgent city would surrender; but a band of desperadoes had got the upper hand, who refused to submit excepting on such terms as it would have been degrading to the government to grant.

The year of Mr. Irving's departure on his interesting mission was memorable for two attacks on him, to which it is necessary to allude, to clear the way for the letters from him which I am about to quote. A writer in the

"Southern Literary Messenger," in March, 1841, had been at great pains to show that Mr. Irving's expressions of obligations to Navarrete, in the preface to his "Life of Columbus," were not sufficiently explicit, while conceding that he had performed his historical task with “accuracy, judgment, and infinite beauty." In the writer's estimation, his statements implied, though perhaps unintentionally, he admits, a more extensive search into original documents than he could have made, while the history was mainly digested from documents already collected by Navarrete.

The article was sent to Mr. Irving, and, without a perusal, handed over by him to a candid and discriminating friend, with a request that he would read it, and tell him if there was anything in it which required an answer at his hands. If so, he would notice it; otherwise he did not care to be discomposed by reading it. He claimed no immunity from critical animadversions, but it was his practice to shun the perusal of all strictures that did not involve a point of character, and demand reply.

His friend read it, and, satisfied of the unsoundness of the strictures, and that his acknowledgments to Navarrete were ample, advised him to give himself no concern about it. He dismissed it, accordingly, from his thoughts.

In the May number of 1842 of the same magazine, after Mr. Irving had left the country, the writer returns to the attack; and, as more than a year had elapsed

without any notice or refutation by the author, or his friends, of his "grave charges," he comes to the conclusion that he had preferred "the quiet disparagement of a judgment by default to the notoriety of a verdict after a fruitless contest." To this article there was a reply in the "Knickerbocker," to which Mr. Irving was in no ways privy, and a rejoinder in the "Messenger," in which the writer, with compliments to the purity and richness of his general style, still adhered to his original position that Mr. Irving had not sufficiently acknowledged his indebtedness to Navarrete.

The other attack was in Graham's "Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine," then under the editorial management of the Rev. Rufus W. Griswold, a Baptist clergyman of some six-and-twenty years, who had recently given to the world a valuable compilation, styled "The Poets and Poetry of America." The "Magazine The “Magazine" was published in Philadelphia; had a circulation, it was said, of fifty thousand subscribers, and numbered, among its regular contributors, Cooper, Bryant, Dana, and other distinguished names. In a notice of the "Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Sir Walter Scott," contained in the October number of that periodical, was a statement which, after charging Scott with numerous "puffs of himself from his own pen," proceeded in this language: "Washington Irving has done the same thing, in writing laudatory notices of his own works for the Reviews, and, like Scott, received pay for whitewashing himself."

As Mr. Irving was not in the country to meet this coarse aspersion with instant denial should he see fit to notice it, before communicating with him on the subject, I addressed a letter to Mr. Griswold, asking his authority for the statement, and requesting him to name the Reviews containing the laudatory notices in question. His reply gave a Mr. Ean English gentleman, with whom his acquaintance was limited to a single interview, as the person who informed him that "Mr. Irving wrote the articles in the Quarterly Review,' on the 'Life of Columbus,' and the Chronicles of Granada."" I replied that the "London Quarterly" contained no reviews of the "Life of Columbus," "laudatory" or otherwise, and that the review it did contain of the "Chronicles of Granada" had not a commendatory expression of the work or its author, or a single sentence that might not have come from the pen of Mr. Irving without the slightest impeachment of his delicacy. If a self-review,—and I did not then know whether it was or not,-it was not, at any rate, a self-eulogy.

Pointing out these facts to Mr. Griswold, and referring him to the files of the "Quarterly" for proof, I appealed to his sense of equity whether it were not due to Mr. Irving that he should review the grounds upon which, thus publicly and uncalled for, he had sought to bring the delicacy of his character into suspicion.

In his reply, dated October 13th, he expressed great regret for the whole matter, and said he would do Mr.

Irving justice in the December number of the "Magazine," the November number being already printed. He was as good as his word, and in that number retracted, though rather ungraciously, the pitiful charge he had been too eager to catch up and circulate. The imputation upon Scott, I presume, had as little foundation.

On the 6th of October-before, of course, the receipt of Mr. Griswold's promise of recantation of the 13th-I wrote to Mr. Irving, enclosing the leaf of "Graham's Magazine" which contained the offensive imputation, and a copy of Mr. Griswold's answer to my first letter. In his answer, which named his authority for the assumed self-laudation, he took occasion to add that he had strong ground for supposing Mr. Irving to have been a frequent contributor to the "London Quarterly," while that periodical, more than any other in Europe, was distinguished for its unprincipled hostility to the United States.

With this preface, I submit the letters of Mr. Irving on the subject of these separate charges:

MY DEAR PIERRE :

[To Pierre M. Irving.]

MADRID, November 12, 1842.

I have just received your letter of October 6th, inclosing an article from "Graham's Magazine," charging me with writing laudatory notices of my own works for the Reviews, and alluding especially to the "Quarterly." The only notice I ever took of any of my works was an article which I wrote for the "Quarterly Review" on my "Chronicle of the