. Backgrounds of literature. eginning, finally effected our liberation. This deferential attitude, this imitative spirit,had nothing in common with that assimilationof the experience, sentiment, poetic association,and historic charm of the older civilization whichIrving and Longfellow effected. They assistedin the emancipation from servile imitation bygreatly forwarding the equalization of the con-ditions of culture between the Old World andthe New, and by bringing the New into spiritualsympathy with the Old. This work was differ-ent from that of Emerson and Poe, but Irvingand Longfellow share
. Backgrounds of literature. eginning, finally effected our liberation. This deferential attitude, this imitative spirit,had nothing in common with that assimilationof the experience, sentiment, poetic association,and historic charm of the older civilization whichIrving and Longfellow effected. They assistedin the emancipation from servile imitation bygreatly forwarding the equalization of the con-ditions of culture between the Old World andthe New, and by bringing the New into spiritualsympathy with the Old. This work was differ-ent from that of Emerson and Poe, but Irvingand Longfellow share the distinction of break-ing the formal while reuniting the vital ties, andthus preparing the way for the free interchangeof influence on a basis of equality which to-dayconstitutes the rich spiritual commerce betweenthe Old World and the New. To this great endCooper was also a strenuous and effectiveworker; failing dismally when he tried the roleof interpreter in Precaution, succeeding on 102 Jhe Entrance to Sleep\ -Hollow. i^-5-4 ?1 i^ ^Hl^ g^^BH k\ mm m^ m w^ ^H ^ & 5? WIB / ^ ^^ p 1 r^ •.4- • , ^ t WASHINGTON IRVING COUNTRY original lines when he portrayed the fresh expe-riences and characteristic types of the new so-ciety in The Spy and The Leatherstock-ing Tales. But while Irving and Longfellow were trans-lators in a high sense and with fresh feeling ofthe Old World to the New, they were also origi-nal forces in the literature of the new urbanity, geniality, hospitality of mind,and sweetness of nature gave them rare sensi-tiveness of feeling for things old and ripe andbeautiful and a winning quality of style; quali-ties which, among a people whose literature, dur-ing its first important period, was to carry sug-gestions of the pulpit with it, have tendedsomewhat to obscure their originality and sig-nificance. Longfellow was so gentle a preacherthat, aside from a few poems so frankly didac-tic that we forgive their exhortations for the sakeof the pur
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