Edited by Bliss Perry WASHINGTON IRVING ས་ RIP VAN WINKLE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER THE VOYAGE WESTMINSTER ABBEY STRATFORD-ON-AVON THE STOUT GENTLEMAN' NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY & MCCLURE CO: Acknowledgment is due to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's LIBRARY OF CONGRESS APR 21 1934. DUPLICATE- ARTE LIBRA UNIVE Introduction IN "The Author's Account of Himself," which prefaces "The Sketch-Book," Geoffrey Crayon compares himself with the unlucky landscape painter who had sketched in nooks and corners and by-places, but had neglected to paint St. Peter's and the Coliseum, and had not a single glacier or volcano in his whole collection. This restriction in theme, which Irving whimsically confesses, was in part, no doubt, as he would have us believe, the result of following the bent of a vagrant inclination, but it was also an evidence of the happiest artistic instinct. One of Irving's most intimate friends has noted his "wonderful knack at shutting his eyes to the sinister side of anything." To ignore the sinister side of life is to restrict one's art; but Irving was led by a faultless taste to those subjects that lay well within his powers. Better than most authors of equal rank, he knew what to avoid. In his unfailing sense of proportion, purity of feeling, and fine re |