rapid sale surprised Irving, and sent his spirits up, but success had the
effect on him that it always has on a fine nature. He writes to Leslie:
"Now you suppose I am all on the alert, and full of spirit and
excitement. No such thing. I am just as good for nothing as ever I was;
and, indeed, have been flurried and put out of my way by these pufflngs.
I feel something as I suppose you did when your picture met with success,
--anxious to do something better, and at a loss what to do."

It was with much misgiving that Irving made this venture. "I feel great
diffidence," he writes Brevoort, March 3, 1819, "about this reappearance
in literature. I am conscious of my imperfections, and my mind has been
for a long time past so pressed upon and agitated by various cares and
anxieties, that I fear it has lost much of its cheerfulness and some of
its activity. I have attempted no lofty theme, nor sought to look wise
and learned, which appears to be very much the fashion among our American
writers at present. I have preferred addressing myself to the feelings
and fancy of the reader more than to his judgment. My writings may
appear, therefore, light and trifling in our country of philosophers and
politicians. But if they possess merit in the class of literature to
which they belong, it is all to which I aspire in the work. I seek only
to blow a flute accompaniment in the national concert, and leave others
to play the fiddle and Frenchhorn." This diffidence was not assumed.
All through his career, a breath of criticism ever so slight acted
temporarily like a boar-frost upon his productive power. He always saw
reasons to take sides with his critic. Speaking of "vanity" in a letter
of March, 1820, when Scott and Lockhart and all the Reviews were in a
full chorus of acclaim, he says: "I wish I did possess more of it, but it
seems my curse at present to have anything but confidence in myself or
pleasure in anything I have written."