In facility of composition, Mr. Irving, I believe, was peculiarly
influenced by "moods." When in his usual good health, and the spirit was
on him, he wrote very rapidly; but at other times composition was an
irksome task, or even an impossible one. Dr. Peters says he frequently
rose from his bed in the night and wrote for hours together. Then again
he would not touch his pen for weeks. I believe his most rapidly written
work was the one often pronounced his most spirited one, and a model as
a biography, the "Life of Goldsmith." Sitting at my desk one day, he
was looking at Forster's clever work, which I proposed to reprint. He
remarked that it was a favorite theme of his, and he had half a mind to
pursue it, and extend into a volume a sketch he had once made for an
edition of Goldsmith's Works. I expressed a hope that he would do so,
and within sixty days the first sheets of Irving's "Goldsmith" were in
the printer's hands. The press (as he says) was "dogging at his heels,"
for in two or three weeks the volume was published.
Visiting London shortly after the "Life of Mahomet" was prepared for
the press, I arranged with Mr. Murray, on the author's behalf, for an
English edition of "Mahomet," "Goldsmith," etc., and took a request from
Mr. Irving to his old friend Leslie, that he would make a true sketch of
the venerable Diedrich Knickerbocker. Mr. Irving insisted that the great
historian of the Manhattoes was not the vulgar old fellow they would
keep putting on the omnibuses and ice-carts; but that, though quaint and
old-fashioned, he was still of gentle blood.
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