The "Sketch-Book" is floating in his thought; but he
cannot commit its graces to paper.
The months roll on; something must be done; the secretaryship at home is
abandoned; he must try again; he does try; he sends off "Sketch-Book No.
I." to America. We know what came of it: success, delight. Number upon
number followed. There was an early republication, under the author's
auspices, in London. He was feted: it was so odd that an American should
write with such control of language, with such a play of fancy, with
such pathetic grace. There was a kind of social _furor_ to meet and to
see the man who, notwithstanding his Transatlantic birth, had conquered
all the witchery of British speech, who knew its possible delicacies of
expression, and who graced it with a humor that reminded of Goldsmith.
No American author had ever dreamed of such ovation before: an ovation
not due to any incisive thought, not due to any novelty of his
subject-matter,--but due to the fact that a man born overseas had
suddenly appeared among British writers, who could lay hold upon their
own resources of sentiment, and inwrap it in language which charmed them
by its grace and provoked them by its purity.
Mr. Murray entered upon the publication of the "Sketch-Book" in 1820,
Mr.
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