IV

"My boat is on the shore,And my bark is on the sea.

"I forget how the song ends, but here I am at Brighton just on the point of embarkingfor France. I have dragged myself out of London, as a horse drags himself out of the slough, or a fly out of a honey-pot, almost leaving a limb behind him at every tug. Not that I have been immersed in pleasure and surrounded by sweets, but rather up to the ears in ink and harassed by printers' devils.

"I never have had such fagging in altering, adding, and correcting; and I have been detained beyond all patience by the delays of the press. Yesterday I absolutely broke away, without waiting for the last sheets. They are to be sent after me here by mail, to be corrected this morning, or else they must take their chance. From the time I first started pen in hand on this work, it has been nothing but hard driving with me.

"I have not been able to get to Tunbridge to see the Donegals, which I really and greatly regret. Indeed I have seen nobody except a friend or two who had the kindness to hunt me out. Among these was Mr. Story, and I ate a dinner there that it took me a week to digest, having been obliged toswallow so much hard-favored nonsense from a loud-talking baronet whose name, thank God, I forget, but who maintained Byron was not a man of courage, and therefore his poetry was not readable. I was really afraid he would bring John Story to the same way of thinking.

"I went a few evenings since to see Kenney's new piece, the Alcaid. It went off lamely, and the Alcaid is rather a bore, and comes near to be generally thought so. Poor Kenney came to my room next evening, and I could not believe that one night could have ruined a man so completely. I swear to you I thought at first it was a flimsy suit of clothes had left some bedside and walked into my room without waiting for the owner to get up; or that it was one of those frames on which clothiers stretch coats at their shop doors; until I perceived a thin face sticking edgeways out of the collar of the coat like the axe in a bundle of fasces. He was so thin, and pale, and nervous, and exhaustedâ€”he made a dozen difficulties in getting over a spot in the carpet, and never wouldhave accomplished it if he had not lifted himself over by the points in his shirt-collar.

"I saw Rogers just as I was leaving town. I had not time to ask him any particulars about you, and indeed he is not exactly the man from whom I would ask news about my friends. I dined tÃªte-Ã -tÃªte with him some time ago, and he served up his friends as he served up his fish, with a squeeze of lemon over each. It was very piquant, but it rather set my teeth on edge....

"Farewell, my dear Moore. Let me hear from you, if but a line; particularly if my work pleases you, but don't say a word against it. I am easily put out of humor with what I do."

Surely no more delicious bit of nonsense was ever written than the description of poor Kenney. Moore read it to a group of friends in the presence of the victimâ€”a situation which would have been too "piquant" for Irving's taste.

Moore had only the desired praise for the "Tales of a Traveler," but elsewhere it did not fare so well. Irving considered it on thewhole his best work; but though it had a large sale, its reception in England was not quite what he had hoped for; and in America it was received by the press with something like hostility. Unfortunately some busybody in America made it his concern to forward to Irving all the ill-natured flings which could be gleaned from American notices of the new book. The incidentâ€”with all its unpleasantnessâ€”was trifling enough, but to Irving's raw sensitiveness it was torture. He was overwhelmed with an almost ludicrous melancholy, could not write, could not sleep, could not bear to be alone. This petty outburst of critical spleen, backed as it evidently was by personal antagonism on the part of a few obscure journalists, actually left him dumb for more than a year.

Of course the public was right in its general estimate of the "Tales of a Traveler": they are not as good as the "Sketch Book." In kind they are similarâ€”that in itself would be enough to excite prejudice against new work from an author who had been so long before the public; but they are alsoundeniably inferior in quality. One or two of the stories are distinctly morbid in tone, several give the impression of being long drawn out. In some way the collection lacks atmosphere; Italian scenery is painted with accuracy, but not Italian life or character. Irving could draw the early Dutch in America, or the mediÃ¦val Moors in Spain, or the Englishman in England or Italy: the modern Italian on his own soil he did not know except in his melodramatic exterior.

Irving had now given his brother Peter a place in his little mÃ©nage. The steamboat scheme had failed utterly, and he had from this time on no sort of regular employment. Irving set himself cheerfully to provide for both. His goal at this time was less fame than fortuneâ€”"by every exertion to attain sufficient to make us both independent for the rest of our lives." Not for many years did he come to perceive that a life of leisure was not only impossible, but undesirable for him, and to express it as his fondest wish that he might "die in harness." The profits of the "Tales of a Traveler" went theway of most of his earningsâ€”this time to help develop a Bolivia copper mine.

He had been studying Spanish for a year or two, and had an increased desire to see Spain. As a mere aid in traveling, he asked for the nominal post of attachÃ© to the American legation at Madrid. Alexander H. Everett, then minister to Spain, at once granted the request, and in replying suggested a possible literary taskâ€”the translation of a new Spanish work, Navarrete's "Voyages of Columbus," which was shortly to make its appearance. Murray, who was then in some difficulties, did not think favorably of the project.

Irving went to Madrid, and by good fortune got lodgings with the American consul Rich, who had made an extensive private collection of documents dealing with early American history. Presently Navarrete's work was published, and found to be "rather a mass of rich materials for history than a history itself." This was in February, 1826. Irving at once began to take notes and sift materials for an original history of Columbus.For six months he worked incessantly. "Sometimes," says his biographer, "he would write all day and until twelve at night; in one instance his note-book shows him to have written from five in the morning until eight at night, stopping only for meals."

There is something interesting, and in a sense pathetic, in this sudden steady diligence from the man of desultory habits, who had never written but by whim, whose finger had always been lifted to catch the lightest literary airs. Here, at last, was the firm trade wind, and the satisfaction of steady and methodical progress. The qualified success of the "Tales of a Traveler" had led him to feel that his vein was running out. The prospect of producing a solid work gave him keen pleasure. One cannot be always building castles in the air; why not try a pyramid, if only a little one? Since the world is perfectly delighted with our pretty things, very well, let us show that we can do a sublime thing. As for historyâ€”"Whatever may be the use of this sort of composition in itself and abstractedly," saysWalter Bagehot, "it is certainly of great use relatively and to literary men. Consider the position of a man of that species. He sits beside a library fire, with nice white paper, a good pen, a capital styleâ€”every means of saying everything, but nothing to say. Of course he is an able man; of course he has an active intellect, besides wonderful culture: but still, one cannot always have original ideas. Every day cannot be an era; a train of new speculation very often will not be found: and how dull it is to make it your business to write, to stay by yourself in a room to write, and then to have nothing to say! It is dreary work mending seven pens, and waiting for a theory to 'turn up.' What a gain if something would happen! then one could describe it. Something has happened, and that something is history."

There is no doubt that Irving's early delicate sallies in literature represent his best. In a single department of belles-lettres he had shown mastery. During the remainder of his life he continued to work at intervals in that field with similar felicity; and, forthe rest, to write amiably and respectably upon many topics foreign to his natural bent. But his greatest work was done in odd moments and at a heat; all the method in the world could not increase his real stature by a cubit.

A word may perhaps be said here of Irving as an historian and biographer. Of course he could not write dully; his histories are just as readable as Goldsmith's, and rather more veracious. But he plainly had not the scholar's training and methods which we now demand of the historian; nor had he the larger view of men and events in their perspective. Generalization was beyond him. Fortunately to generalize is only a part of the business of the historian. To catch some dim historic figure, and give it life and color,â€”this power he had. And it was evidently this which gave him the praise of such men as Prescott and Bancroft and Motley. Washington had begun to loom vaguely and impersonally in the mind, a mere great man, when Irving with a touch turned him from cold bronze into flesh and blood again.

During the years of Irving's stay abroad other American writers had come into notice. Bryant's poetry had become well known. Cooper had produced "The Spy," "The Pilot," "The Pioneers," and "The Last of the Mohicans." In 1827 appeared the first volume of poems by Edgar Allan Poe. In this year, too, Irving's diary records a meeting with Longfellow, who was then twenty-one, and came abroad to prepare himself for his professorship at Bowdoin. Longfellow's recollection of the incident is worth quoting: "I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Irving in Spain, and found the author, whom I had loved, repeated in the man. The same playful humor; the same touches of sentiment; the same poetic atmosphere; and, what I admired still more, the entire absence of all literary jealousy, of all that mean avarice of fame, which counts what is given to another as so much taken from one's selfâ€”

"'And trembling, hears in every breezeThe laurels of Miltiades.'"

In the following summer the "History ofColumbus" was finished, and sold to Murray. It won high praise from the reviewers, especially from Alexander H. Everett, his former diplomatic chief, and at this time editor of the "North American Review."

Early in the following year he made his first visit to Andalusian Spain. In the course of his grubbing among the Columbus archives, he had found a good deal of interesting material about the Moorish occupancy. The beauty of the country and the grandeur of its Moorish relics took strong hold upon him. In April, 1828, he settled in Seville, and there the "Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada" were written. By this time the market price of his wares had gone up very much. There is no doubt that his historical work had increased his temporary reputation. Murray gave him 2000 guineas for the "Conquest of Granada;" he further offered him Â£1000 a year to edit a new literary and scientific magazine, as well as Â£100 an article for any contribution he might choose to make to the "London Quarterly." He refused the first offer on theground that he did not care to be tied in England, the second because the "Quarterly" had always been hostile to America. He continued to take an interest in affairs at home. Impatient as he was of political methods, he had opinions of his own as to candidates and measures. The election of Jackson called forth the following comment in a letter to Mr. Everett: "I was rather sorry when Mr. Adams was first raised to the presidency, but I am much more so at his being displaced; for he has made a far better president than I expected, and I am loth to see a man superseded who has filled his station worthily. These frequent changes in our administration are prejudicial to the country; we ought to be wary of using our power of changing our chief magistrate when the welfare of the country does not require it. In the present election there has, doubtless, been much honest, warm, grateful feeling toward Jackson, but I fear much pique, passion, and caprice as it respects Mr. Adams.

"Since the old general was to be the man,however, I am well pleased upon the whole that he has a great majority, as it will, for the reasons you mention, produce a political calm in the country, and lull those angry passions which have been exasperated during the Adams administration, by the close contest of nearly balanced parties. As to the old general, with all hishickorycharacteristics, I suspect he has good stuff in him, and will make a sagacious, independent, and high-spirited president; and I doubt his making so high-handed a one as many imagine."

The "Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada" were well treated by critics, but never very popular. The humor of the mythical Fray Antonio's narrative was too sly and covert; the public was mystified, and had half a notion it was being made game of. But Irving was not yet done with Granada. Presently he went back, and in the course of a solitary two months in the Alhambra, got together the materials for the most characteristic work he had published since the "Tales of a Traveler" and the strongestsince the "Sketch Book." His idyllic stay in the Alhambra was one of the pleasantest episodes of his life. When it was cut short by his appointment as secretary of legation at London, he made up his mind to leave the quiet breathing-spot with real regret. One cannot help seeing from the tone of his letter to Peter that the years have given him as much as they have taken away: "My only horror is the bustle and turmoil of the world: how shall I stand it after the delicious quiet and repose of the Alhambra? I had intended, however, to quit this place before long, and, indeed, was almost reproaching myself for protracting my sojourn, having little better than sheer self-indulgence to plead for it; for the effect of the climate, the air, the serenity and sweetness of the place, is almost as seductive as that of the Castle of Indolence, and I feel at times an impossibility of working, or of doing anything but yielding to a mere voluptuousness of sensation."

At London he found himself associated with congenial men, but tied so closely tothe legation that he could not even get away to visit his sister at Birmingham. The constraint chafed him at first, but before long his letters show him reconciled, and even interested in the practical business of diplomacy. They complain, however, of his growing stout. This, indeed, he had a perfect right to do. He was now forty-seven years old, and a man of solid reputation; weighty honors were being heaped upon him. Before leaving Spain he had been made a member of the Spanish Royal Academy of History; and in England he had just received a medal from the Royal Society of Literature, and the degree of LL. D. from Oxford. His leisure for literary work was not great in London, but he was making some progress with the Alhambra stories, and had begun to think seriously of the "Life of Washington," which was to hold the main place in his thoughts for the rest of his life.

At this time England was suffering under the double discomfort of cholera and the Reform Bill. A letter from Irving to hisbrother shows that even in the midst of his successes the popular author was subject to moods of mental gloom, and even to business difficulties: "The restlessness and uncertainty in which I have been kept have disordered my mind and feelings too much for imaginative writing, and I now doubt whether I could get the Alhambra ready in time for Christmas.... The present state of things here completely discourages the idea of publication of any kind. There is no knowing who among the booksellers is safe. Those who have published most are worst off, for in this time of public excitement nobody reads books or buys them."

In 1831, Van Buren was nominated as Minister to the Court of St. James, and at once took charge of his diplomatic duties. His nomination was rejected by the Senate, however; and Irving determined to take advantage of the incident to make his own escape from the service, and return at last to America.

In May, 1831, he arrived in New York. He had been a young man when he leftAmerica; he was now leaning toward the farther verge of his prime. In character he had refined and sobered greatly; and he had more than fulfilled his promise of literary excellence. He had still twenty-six years to live, and was to do much useful service in life and letters; but he could do nothing in that time to alter his reputation; he could merely confirm it. Irving had grown immensely, too, in the favor of his countrymen. He was welcomed back with extravagant effusion by his old friends and by the country at large. He had in fact come to be regarded as one of the chief glories of America; for he had been the first to make her a world-power in literature.

During those seventeen years New York had changed almost beyond recognition in size, in appearance, in the tone of its life; but Irving was delighted with everything and everybody. All that he had to regret was the ordeal of a great public dinner in his honor, at which, after a great deal of preliminary nervousness, he made the one speech of his life. It was a good speech, buthe could never be prevailed upon to repeat the experiment. He was always at his worst in a large company. The sight of a great number of unknown or half-known faces confused his thoughts and clogged his tongue. His intimates knew him for a brilliant and ready talker, full of easy fun and unaffected sentiment.

Not long after his return, the "Tales of the Alhambra" were published. In the somewhat florid concert of critical praises which greeted the book, a simple theme is dominant. Everybody felt that in these stories Irving had come back to his own. The material was very different from that of the "Sketch Book," yet it yielded to similar treatment. The grace, romance, humor, of this "beautiful Spanish Sketch Book," as the historian Prescott called it, appealed at once to an audience which had listened somewhat coldly to the less spontaneous "Tales of a Traveler," and had given a formal approbation to the "History of Columbus," without finding very much Irving in it.

A visit to Washington to clear up variousodds and ends of his diplomatic experience resulted in an interview with President Jackson, which he reported in a letter to Peter Irving, now living alone in Paris: "I have been most kindly received by the old general, with whom I am much pleased as well as amused. As his admirers say, he is truly anold Romanâ€”to which I could add,with a little dash of the Greek; for I suspect he is asknowingas I believe he ishonest. I took care to put myself promptly on a fair and independent footing with him; for, in expressing warmly and sincerely how much I had been gratified by the unsought but most seasonable mark of confidence he had shown me, when he hinted something about a disposition to place me elsewhere, I let him know emphatically that I wished for nothing moreâ€”that my whole desire was to live among my countrymen, and to follow my usual pursuits. In fact, I am persuaded that my true course is to be master of myself and of my time. Official station cannot add to my happiness or respectability, and certainly would stand in the way of myliterary career." This disinclination to take office he never got over, although he was frequently approached with offers of place. In 1834, he was offered a nomination for Congress by the Jackson party; in 1838, he was offered the Tammany nomination as mayor of New York, and the secretaryship of the navy by Van Buren. And when three years later he was given a still more important post, it was only the evident spontaneity of the choice, and the feeling that in taking the office he should be representing country rather than party, which led him to accept it.

Impatient as he was of political methods, he had opinions of his own on specific questions, and a broad political platform which he once stated in a letter to his old friend Kemble:â€”

"As far as I know my own mind, I am thoroughly a republican, and attached, from complete conviction, to the institutions of my country; but I am a republican without gall, and have no bitterness in my creed. I have no relish for puritans either in religionor politics, who are for pushing principles to an extreme, and for overturning everything that stands in the way of their own zealous career. I have, therefore, felt a strong distaste for some of those loco-foco luminaries who of late have been urging strong and sweeping measures, subversive of the interests of great classes of the community. Their doctrines may be excellent in theory, but, if enforced in violent and uncompromising opposition to all our habitudes, may produce the most distressing effects. The best of remedies must be cautiously applied, and suited to the state and constitution of the patient; otherwise, what is intended to cure, may produce convulsion. The late elections have shown that the measures proposed by Government are repugnant to the feelings and habitudes or disastrous to the interests of great portions of our fellow citizens. They should not, then, be forced home with rigor. Ours is a government of compromise. We have several great and distinct interests bound up together, which, if not separately consulted and severallyaccommodated, may harass and impair each other. A stern, inflexible, and uniform policy may do for a small compact republic, like one of those of ancient Greece, where there is a unity of character, habits, and interests; but a more accommodating, discriminating, and variable policy must be observed in a vast republic like ours, formed of a variety of states widely differing in habits, pursuits, characters, and climes, and banded together by a few general ties.

"I always distrust the soundness of political councils that are accompanied by acrimonious and disparaging attacks upon any great class of our fellow citizens. Such are those urged to the disadvantage of the great trading and financial classes of our country. You yourself know, from education and experience, how important these classes are to the prosperous conduct of the complicated affairs of this immense empire. You yourself know, in spite of all the commonplace cant and obloquy that has been cast upon them by political spouters and scribblers, what general good faith and fair dealing prevails throughout these classes."

At this time he was studying with increasing interest the shifting spectacle of American life. The openings of the West especially caught his imagination, and when the chance came to travel on what was then the frontier, the trans-Mississippi territories, he was quick to accept it. As guest of one of the members of a commission appointed to treat with several Indian tribes, he went as far as Fort Gibson on the Arkansas. The literary fruits of this journey were "A Tour on the Prairies," and "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville."

In April, 1833, he bought the little estate of Sunnyside, near the Sleepy Hollow which he had made famous. His first name for it was "The Roost" (Dutch for "Rest"), which he changed for reasons which are not recorded; possibly the little nieces who became regular inmates may have thought the old name not dignified enough. This he regarded as his home for the rest of his life. He set to work at once to enlarge the old Dutch stone cottage which stood upon the place; and from this time on he iscontinually "puttering" about the estate, building a poultry-yard here, planting trees there, with the full zeal of the rural landlord. His family letters are given to accounts of little country doings: "The goose war is happily terminated: Mr. Jones' squadron has left my waters, and my feathered navy now plows the Tappan Sea in triumph. I cannot but attribute this great victory to the valor and good conduct of the enterprising little duck, who seems to enjoy great power and popularity among both geese and ganders, and absolutely to be the master of the fleet.... I am happy to inform you that, among the many other blessings brought to the cottage by the good Mr. Lawrence is a pig of first-rate stock and lineage. It has been duly put in possession of the palace in the rear of the barn, where it is shown to every visitor with as much pride as if it was the youngest child of a family. As it is of the fair sex, and in the opinion of the best judges a pig of peerless beauty, I have named it 'Fanny.' I know it is a name which with Kate and you has aromantic charm, and about the cottage everything, as old Mrs. Marthing says, must be romance." This was during the vogue of Fanny Kemble.

In this quiet retreat the next five uneventful years were passed, with occasional excursions to New York or farther, which only served to make the seclusion of the country home more inviting. Peter Irving spent his last days at the Roost; and Ebenezer Irving and his family gave up their New York house to make their home with the now famous brother. While this arrangement greatly increased Irving's satisfaction in life, it made heavy demands upon his purse. One cannot be a country gentleman for nothing. The cottage had to be enlarged repeatedly, the grounds cared for; and the mere running expenses were a considerable matter for a man without dependable income. Irving had by this time received a great deal of money for his books, but an unfortunate "knack of hoping" had locked up most of it in unprofitable land speculations.

In 1835 the three volumes of the "CrayonMiscellanies," were published. The "Tour on the Prairies" was especially palatable to Americans. Edward Everett said of it, in the highly colored style of the period: "We are proud of Mr. Irving's sketches of English life, proud of the gorgeous canvas upon which he has gathered in so much of the glowing imagery of Moorish times. We behold with delight his easy and triumphant march over these beaten fields; but we glow with rapture as we see him coming back, laden with the poetical treasures of the primitive wilderness, rich with spoil from the uninhabited desert."

The second volume, containing "Abbotsford" and "Newstead Abbey," naturally gained special praise in England; the third, "Legends of the Conquest of Spain," had comparatively little success.

Of "Astoria" (1836) it is hard to know what to say; on the whole, it seems the most doubtful of his works in motive and quality. John Jacob Astor, now an old man, was anxious to perpetuate the fame of his commercial exploits, and was luckyenough to subsidize for this purpose the most prominent American writer of the day. The adventures of the various expeditions sent out to found an American trading company on the Pacific coast are interesting; but one puts down Irving's account of them with the feeling that it reflects rather more credit on Mr. Astor than on the writer. The truth is, Irving, like many less successful literary men, was constantly in need of money; and he had begun to be in some difficulty for subjects upon which to exercise his craft. The "Adventures of Captain Bonneville" (1837) was also a piece of skillful book-making rather than an original creative work; and after that nearly two years passed without his writing anything.

At last, toward the close of 1838, he hit upon a subject which attracted him greatlyâ€”a "History of the Conquest of Mexico." He began at once upon preliminary studies, and had made considerable progress when he learned by chance that Prescott, who had recently made a name for himself by his"Ferdinand and Isabella," was at work upon the same subject. Irving immediately retired from the field, and conveyed a courteous assurance to Prescott of his satisfaction in leaving the theme to such hands. He felt this sacrifice keenly, however; the project had appealed to him peculiarly, and he had no other in mind to take its place. For lack of other literary work, therefore, he presently engaged to write a monthly article for the New York "Knickerbocker," at a salary of $2000 a year. The arrangement was just not too irksome to continue for two years.

It is easy to see, then, that at fifty-five Irving was pretty well written out. In the twenty years that remained to him he produced nothing of account except the "Life of Washington," which, like his other works in biography and history, may be regarded as atour de forcerather than a spontaneous outcome of his genius.

The data of Irving's literary achievements have been brought near a conclusion; what remains to be said may now deal less with what he wrote, and more with what he did and was. It is luckily unnecessary to try for a sharply drawn distinction between his popularity as a writer and as a man. In his home, in society, and in literature the single charm of his personality had made him beloved in the same way. And he had become, in the best sense of the term, a public character. For many years his name had been better known abroad than that of any other living American; and his reception at home after an absence of seventeen years showed in what regard his countrymen had come to hold him. Their pride in his success and gratitude for the new fame he had given a country which was still felt to be on probation,can hardly account for it; only the confidence of affection could have excused so prolonged an absenteeism.

His peculiar hold upon popular affection cannot be better suggested than by the tone of a letter written by the only Englishman who during Irving's life could pretend to rival him in his peculiar field. In 1841, Irving wrote to Dickens, expressing pleasure in his work. Dickens replied: "There is no man in the world who could have given me the heartfelt pleasure you have, by your kind note of the 13th of last month. There is no living writer, and there are very few among the dead, whose approbation I should feel so proud to earn. And with everything you have written upon my shelves, and in my thoughts, and in my heart of hearts, I may honestly and truly say so.... I wish I could find in your welcome letter some hint of an intention to visit England. I can't. I have held it at arm's length, and taken a bird's eye view of it, after reading it a great many times, but there is no greater encouragement in it this way than on a microscopicinspection. I should love to go with youâ€”as I have gone, God knows how oftenâ€”into Little Britain, and Eastcheap, and Green Arbor Court, and Westminster Abbey. I should like to travel with you, outside the last of the coaches, down to Bracebridge Hall. It would make my heart glad to compare notes with you about that shabby gentleman in the oilcloth hat and red nose, who sat in the nine-cornered back parlor of the Masons' Arms; and about Robert Preston, and the tallow chandler's widow, whose sitting-room is second nature to me; and about all those delightful places and people that I used to walk about and dream of in the daytime, when a very small and not over-particularly-taken-care-of boy. I have a good deal to say, too, about that dashing Alonzo de Ojeda, that you can't help being fonder of than you ought to be; and much to hear concerning Moorish legend and poor, unhappy Boabdil. Diedrich Knickerbocker I have worn to death in my pocket, and yet I should show you his mutilated carcass with a joy past all expression."

Not long afterward Dickens visited America. Irving and he saw much of each other, though they did not meet many times. Irving presided at a great dinner given to Boz in New York, broke down in his introductory speech, and otherwise endeared himself to his brother author. When presently Dickens went back, he wrote, "I did not come to see you, for I really have not the heart to say 'good-by' again, and felt more than I can tell you when we shook hands last Wednesday."

Pretty soon Irving himself was leaving America. In February, 1842, he was startled from the home quiet of Sunnyside by a summons which he could not disregard. Daniel Webster, then Secretary of State, had secured his appointment as Minister to Spain. The Senate confirmed it almost by acclamation, and letters came from various quarters urging him to accept it. He could not doubt that the wish was general. But it was very hard for him to leave home and America again. For some time after accepting the post he was plunged into adejection which seemed laughable to himself. "The crowning honor of his life," he admitted, had come to him, and he could only groan under it.

"'It is hard, very hard,' he half murmured to himself, half to me; yet he added whimsically enough, being struck with the seeming absurdity of such a view, 'I must try to bear it. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb'" (P. M. Irving).

In April he sailed from New York, and made a leisurely journey by way of England and France, not reaching Madrid till the end of July. Europe had lost its old charm. Many places reminded him painfully of the favorite brother Peter who had shared his first impressions of them, and whose loss was one of the keenest griefs of his life. "My visit to Europe has by no means the charm of former visits," he wrote from Paris; "scenes and objects have no longer the effect of novelty with me. I am no longer curious to see great sights or great people, and have been so long accustomed to a life of quiet, that I find the turmoil of the world becomes irksometo me. Then I have a house of my own, a little domestic world, created in a manner by my own hand, which I have left behind, and which is continually haunting my thoughts, and coming in contrast with the noisy, tumultuous, heartless world in which I am called to mingle. However, I am somewhat of a philosopher, and can accommodate myself to changes, so I shall endeavor to resign myself to the splendor of courts and the conversation of courtiers, comforting myself with the thought that the time will come when I shall once more return to sweet little Sunnyside, and be able to sit on a stone fence, and talk about politics and rural affairs with Neighbor Forkel and Uncle Brom."

At Madrid he very soon found himself too much occupied for the literary work he had counted on. He had accepted the place under the impression that his duties would not greatly interfere with the writing of the "Life of Washington," on which he was then fairly launched. But from the beginning he found the situation in Spain unexpectedlyabsorbing. It was the usual Spanish situation, to be sure: a designing pretender, a child monarch, a court honeycombed with intrigue, and a people ready for anything spectacular. When Irving was presented to the young queen, she was closely guarded. "On ascending the grand staircase, we found the portal at the head of it, opening into the royal suite of apartments, still bearing the marks of the midnight attack upon the palace in October last, when an attempt was made to get possession of the persons of the little queen and her sister, to carry them off.... The marble casements of the doors had been shattered in several places, and the double doors themselves pierced all over with bullet-holes, from the musketry that played upon them from the staircase during that eventful night. What must have been the feelings of those poor children, on listening from their apartment to the horrid tumult, the outcries of a furious multitude, and the reports of fire-arms, echoing and reverberating through the vaulted halls and spacious courts of the immenseedifice, and dubious whether their own lives were not the object of the assault!" Such an appeal to Irving's sympathy and chivalry was enough to deprive the situation of its quality of opÃ©ra-bouffe.

Presently an insurrection takes place in Barcelona. The regent hurries off to quell it, and Irving's letters are full of the pomp and circumstance of war. The regent is successful, and returns apparently firmer than ever in power. But a few months later the trouble breaks out again, more seriously; Madrid is placed in a state of siege, and martial law declared. The life of the queen is thought to be in danger, and the diplomatic corps, headed by Irving, offers its services for her protection. Finally the regent is driven out of power, and blows are once again succeeded by intrigue. Such, briefly, was the character of the little drama in which the quiet American author was to take a significant part, during his whole ministry. This Spanish experience is fully recorded in his family letters. He was always a voluminous letter-writer; duringthis period he is fairly encyclopedic. A single letter to his sister fills thirteen closely printed pages of his nephew's biography. His official dispatches, too, were very full and thorough. Webster valued them particularly, and remarked that he "always laid aside every other correspondence to read a diplomatic dispatch from Mr. Irving." He had time, too, for many charming chatty letters to the nieces at Sunnyside. Here is a Thackerayish passage from one of them: "You seem to pity the poor little queen, shut up with her sister like two princesses in a fairy tale, in a great, grand, dreary palace, and wonder whether she would not like to change her situation for a nice little cottage on the Hudson? Perhaps she would, Kate, if she knew anything of the gayeties of cottage life; if she had ever been with us at a picnic, or driven out in the shandry-dan with the two roans, and James, in his slipshod hat, for a coachman, oryottedin the Dream, or sang in the Tarrytown choir, or shopped at Tommy Dean's; but, poor thing! shewould not know how to set about enjoying herself. She would not think of appearing at church without a whole train of the Miss â€”â€”s and the Miss â€”â€”s, and the Miss â€”â€”s, as maids of honor, nor drive through Sleepy Hollow except in a coach and six, with a cloud of dust, and a troop of horsemen in glittering armor. So I think, Kate, we must be content with pitying her, and leaving her in ignorance of the comparative desolateness of her situation."

In 1842, Irving suffered another of those petty persecutions which he was not thick-skinned enough to endure without suffering, nor confident enough to ignore. The charges were of the most ordinary sort, and advanced by men of little weight: he had appropriated material without giving due credit for it, and he had puffed his own work. Their only claim upon our notice lies in the fact that Irving thought it worth while to confute them at length. He was perhaps especially sensitive to critical attacks at this time. His income from literary property had nearly ceased. Some of his books wereout of print, and the rest were having comparatively little sale. A wave of indifference had overtaken his public. "Everything behind me seems to have turned to chaff and stubble," he wrote. "And if I desire any further profits from literature, it must be by the further exercise of my pen." It is characteristic of his modesty that he was disposed to accept this momentary neglect as final. He planned to revise all his works, in the hope of finding a renewed market for them later, but evidently expected little.

A letter to Brevoort from Bordeaux dated November, 1843, accounts for the first break in his Madrid residence: "I am now on my way back to my post, after between two and three months' absence. I set out in pursuit of health, and thought a little traveling and a change of air would 'make me my own man again'; but I was laid by the heels at Paris by a recurrence of my malady, and have just escaped out of the doctor's hands.... This indisposition has been a sad check upon all my plans. I had hoped, by zealous employment of all the leisure affordedme at Madrid, to accomplish one or two literary tasks which I have in hand.... A year, however, has now been lost to me, and a precious year, at my time of life. The 'Life of Washington,' and indeed all my literary tasks, have remained suspended; and my pen has remained idle, excepting now and then in writing a dispatch to Government, or scrawling a letter to my family. In the mean time the income which I used to derive from farming out my writings has died away, and my moneyed investments yield scarce any interest.... However, thank God, my health and with it my capacity for work are returning. I shall soon again have pen in hand, and hope to get two or three good years of literary labor out of myself."

After his return to Spain he was again laid by. He was disappointed, but not discouraged, for the self-pity of the invalid never deprived him of his strong man's humor. "When I drive out and notice the opening of spring, I feel sometimes almost moved to tears at the thought that ina little while I shall again have the use of my limbs, and be able to ramble about and enjoy these green fields and meadows. It seems almost too great a privilege. I am afraid when I once more sally forth and walk the streets, I shall feel like a boy with a new coat, who thinks everybody will turn around to look at him. 'Bless my soul, how that gentleman has the use of his legs!'" A few days after this was written, he got word that one of his friends had just undergone a successful surgical operation. "God bless these surgeons and dentists!" he exclaims. "May their good deeds be returned upon them a thousand fold! May they have the felicity, in the next world, to have successful operations performed upon them to all eternity!"

By this time he had come to take Spanish politics rather too seriously. The insincerity and profligacy of the Spanish character, the corruption of the court and state, fairly sicken him: "The last ten or twelve years of my life," he writes, "have shown me so much of the dark side of human nature, that Ibegin to have painful doubts of my fellow men, and look back with regret to the confiding period of my literary career, when, poor as a rat, but rich in dreams, I beheld the world through the medium of my imagination, and was apt to believe men as good as I wished them to be." His sense of responsibility for the young queen oppressed him, and he looked forward impatiently to the hour of his release.

A year later he had gained far better health and spirits. On his sixty-second birthdayâ€”"I caught myself bounding upstairs three steps at a time, to the astonishment of the porter, and checked myself, recollecting that it was not the pace befitting a minister and a man of my years." His mental life had, however, caught the sober tone of age. "I am now at that time of life when the mind has a stock of recollections on which to employ itself; and though these may sometimes be of a melancholy nature, yet it is a 'sweet-souled melancholy,' mellowed and softened by the operation of time, and has no bitterness in it....When I was young, my imagination was always in the advance, picturing out the future, and building castles in the air; now memory comes in the place of imagination, and I look back over the region I have traveled. Thank God, the same plastic feeling, which used to deck all the future with the hues of fairyland, throws a soft coloring over the past, until the very roughest places, through which I struggled with many a heartache, lose all their asperity in the distance."

In July, 1846, his successor arrived, and Irving was free to leave Europe for the last time. His services in Spain had brought nothing but honor to himself and his country; he had earned a right to the quiet years that followed in his favorite home nook at Sunnyside.

Soon after his return he began to busy himself with the revised edition of his works which he had projected in Spain. It was disheartening to find his old publishers dubious about undertaking the republication, and for a time the work went hard. "I amgrowing a sad laggard in literature," he wrote to his nephew, "and need some one to bolster me up occasionally. I am too ready to do anything else rather than write." For more than a year his time was largely devoted to overseeing an enlargement of the cottage, and a renovation of the grounds, at Sunnyside. At last he got it all into satisfactory order. "My own place has never been so beautiful as at present. I have made more openings by pruning and cutting down trees, so that from the piazza I have several charming views of the Tappan Zee and the hills beyond, all set, as it were, in verdant flames; and I am never tired of sitting there in my old Voltaire chair of a long summer morning with a book in my hand, sometimes reading, sometimes musing, and sometimes dozing, and mixing all up in a pleasant dream." As for New York, "For my part, I dread the noise and turmoil of it, and visit it but now and then, preferring the quiet of my country retreat; which shows that the bustling time of life is over with me, and that I am settling downinto a sober, quiet, good-for-nothing old gentleman."

This was all very wellâ€”for a mood. He spent the next winter in town, moving freely in society, and "not missing a single performance" of the opera. "One meets all one's acquaintances at the opera, and there is much visiting from box to box, and pleasant conversation, between the acts. The opera house is in fact the great feature of polite society in New York, and I believe is the great attraction that keeps me in town. Music is to me the great sweetener of existence, and I never enjoyed it more abundantly than at present." Clearly, the old social instinct was by no means dead in him, however he might express himself in less buoyant moods.

Two years after his return from Spain the house of Putnam agreed to publish the revised edition of his works on very liberal termsâ€”a twelve and a half per cent. royalty. The result of the enterprise was a surprise to author and publisher, for during the ten remaining years of his life the royaltiesamounted to more than $88,000. The arrangement brought about an immediate accession of courage and power, and he returned with fresh zeal to the "Life of Washington." "All I fear," he said, "is to fail in health, and fail in completing this work at the same time. If I can only live to finish it, I would be willing to die the next moment. I think I can make it a most interesting book. If I had only ten years more of life! I never felt more able to write. I might not conceive as I did in earlier days, when I had more romance of feeling, but I could execute with more rapidity and freedom." The consciousness of approaching age grew stronger in him, but without weakening his capacity for enjoyment or his turn for humorous expression. Early in 1850, George Ticknor sent him a copy of his "History of Spanish Literature." Irving dipped into it, liked it, and "When I have once read it through," he wrote, "I shall keep it by me, like a Stilton cheese, to give a dig into whenever I want a relishing morsel. I began to fear it would never seethe light in my day, or that it might fare with you as with that good lady who went thirteen years with child, and then brought forth a little old man, who died in the course of a month of extreme old age. But you have produced three strapping volumes, full of life and freshness and vigor, that will live forever." This sounds well for Ticknor; but it needs only a glance at Irving's recorded correspondence to see that he was inclined to overestimate the work of others. That kind heart must needs assume the functions of a head which was very well able to take care of itself.

In larger matters his judgment was often colored, but seldom warped, by feeling. The line between sentiment and common sense is clearly drawn in his comment upon the Kossuth obsession which held New York in 1852. "I have heard and seen Kossuth both in public and private, and he is really a noble fellow, quite the beau ideal of a poetic hero.... He is a kind of man that you would idolize. Yet, poor fellow, he has come here under a great mistake, and is doomed to bedisappointed in the high-wrought expectations he had formed of coÃ¶peration on the part of our government in the affairs of his unhappy country. Admiration and sympathy he has in abundance from individuals; but there is no romance in councils of state or deliberative assemblies. There, cool judgment and cautious policy must restrain and regulate the warm impulses of feeling. I trust we are never to be carried away, by the fascinating eloquence of this second Peter the Hermit, into schemes of foreign interference, that would rival the wild enterprises of the Crusades." The letter concludes in a minor strain: "It is now half-past twelve at night, and I am sitting here scribbling in my study, long after the family are abed and asleepâ€”a habit I have fallen much into of late. Indeed, I never fagged more steadily with my pen than I do at present. I have a long task in hand, which I am anxious to finish, that I may have a little leisure in the brief remnant of life that is left to me. However, I have a strong presentiment that I shall die in harness; and I amcontent to do so, provided I have the cheerful exercise of intellect to the last."

By this time some of his Western investments had begun to make handsome returns. With an easy pocket, and a single congenial task for his leisure, it seemed that Irving's last years were certain to be peacefully rounded. Unfortunately his health did not hold; all his former ailments came back upon him, and the "Life of Washington" became an Old Man of the Sea, which one wishes heartily he might have been rid of. A visit to Saratoga in the summer of 1852, and the company of many pretty women, seemed for the moment to lift the years from his shoulders. "No one seemed more unconscious of the celebrity to which he had attained," wrote one of his Saratoga acquaintances, long after. "In this there was not a particle of affectation. Nothing he shrank from with greater earnestness and sincerity and (I may add) pertinacity, than any attempt to lionize him." His name was used to conjure with too often for his comfort. An "Irving Literary Union" had beenformed in New York. Irving's attitude toward it was amusing and characteristic; he was always invited to attend the anniversary meeting, always accepted, and always stayed away.

Events abroad continued to interest him. His sister had sent an account from Paris of the marriage of Louis Napoleon. "Louis Napoleon and EugÃ©nie Montijo, Emperor and Empress of France!" he wrote. "One of whom I have had a guest at my cottage on the Hudson; the other of whom, when a child, I have had on my knee at Granada! It seems to cap the climax of the strange dramas of which Paris has been the theatre during my lifetime."

In 1855, "Wolfert's Roost" was published. Most of its contents had figured years before in the "Knickerbocker Magazine." It is one of the best of his miscellaneous collections, and should be better known to the modern reader of Irving. Thereafter, his work was over, except for the "Life of Washington," which was to appear in parts during the next three years. Its meritswere perhaps exaggerated at the time; to the modern critic they lie chiefly in its possession of the lucid simplicity of method without which its author could not write, and in the life which it infuses into a cold abstraction. If this is not Washington, it is at least a living and breathing person, whose interest for us lies not altogether in his career.

These closing years were sadly clouded by sleeplessness and depression of spirits, from which at times he roused himself to bursts of his old brilliancy and humor. A year before his death he said to one of the innumerable inquiries about his health, "I have a streak of old age. Pity, when we have grown old, we could not turn round and grow young again, and die of cutting our teeth." A few months later, when he had begun to be troubled with difficulty of breathing, he had a long and prosy letter from a total stranger, who proposed a call. "Oh, if he could only give me his long wind," gasped Irving, "he should be most welcome."

We need not follow here the rather pitiful struggle of those last months. "I do not fear death," said he, "but I would like to go down with all sail set." The thoughts of the gradual loss of his faculties haunted him with curious insistency. He conceived a dislike for his own room, could not bear to be alone, and hung with pathetic eagerness to the companionship of the few whom he held dearest. His fear was groundless. To the end his mind remained clear; and on the 29th of November, 1859, he "went down with all sail set."

One is tempted to ask himself, in concluding a review of this man's life and work, what it was that he peculiarly stood for; what new kind of excellence he brought into being, and how far it survived him. Oddly enough, the accident of his birthplace is made at once his chief merit, and the subtle derogation of that merit; he is the first distinguished name in American letters, and he is "the American Addison." From the outset one who wishes to study his work is hampered by the fact of place. One must be always considering solemnly, "Although he was an American, he succeeded in doing this," or, "Because he was an American, he might have done that," till one is fairly inclined to wish that his English parents had not happened to marry and settle in New York. As a matter of fact, there are fewwriters against whom the point of nationality may be pushed with less pertinence.

It is plain that earlier American writing interests us only in a local and guarded sense. The critical microscope discovers certain merits; but the least shifting of the eye-piece throws the object out of field. We value what these men wrote because of what they did as Americans, or stood for in American life. Of Irving and a few later writers this is not true. And our regard for them may lead us to suspect that from the literary point of view, it is better to be great than American; or at least that there is no formula to express the ratio between a writer's Americanism and his literary power. The historian esteems a flavor of nationality in literature; to the lover of pure letters, it is only a superior sort of local color. Irving's distinction is that he was the first prophet of pure letters in America. This is to speak thickly; and it will not help matters greatly to say that the mark of pure letters is style. The application of that foggy term to such a writer as Irving islikely to be particularly unfair; it has not been spared him. He has had more praise for his style than for anything else; indeed, it has been commonly suggested that there is little else to praise him for. This is, of course, a survival of the old notion that style is a sort of achievement in decorative art; that fine feathers may do much for the literary bird, at least. The style of a writer like Irvingâ€”a mere loiterer in the field of lettersâ€”is at best a creditable product of artifice. To him even so much credit has not been always allowed; the clever imitator of Addisonâ€”or, as some sager say, of Goldsmithâ€”has not even invented a manner; he has borrowed one.

Fortunately, novelty of form is a very different thing from literary excellence. Irving wrote like a well-bred Englishman, brought up in the sound traditions of the days of good Queen Anne. Whatever local merit his work may have, belongs to theme rather than to treatment. Its delicate humor is as far as possible from what has come to be known as American humor. His onlyconscious Americanism in motiveâ€”to speak of him merely as an artistâ€”was to show England that "an American could write decent English." At that time, it seems, Englishmen considered this to be a good thing for an American to do; and the poet Campbell's remark was thought to be high praise: that Washington Irving had "added clarity to the English tongue." This was a service of which the language just then stood sadly in need. There are always men ready enough to make English turbid, to wreak their ingenuity upon oddities of phrase and diction. At that moment, certainly, the anxious courtier of words was not so much needed as the easy autocrat, whose style, however cavalier, should have grace and firmness and clarity to commend it. When Irving began to express himself, there was very little straightforward simple writing being done, either in America or in England. The stuffed buckram of Johnsonese had been succeeded by the mincing hifalutin of Mrs. Anne Radcliffe and her like. It is at least to Irving's credit thathis taste led him back half a century to the comparative simplicity and purity of the prim Augustan style. But it is odd that it should have been for this acquired manner that the world thought it liked him while he lived, and has chiefly praised him since he died.

But after all, as was said of Milton in a different connection, Irving has worn "the garb, but not the clothes, of the ancients." His kinship to them in temper of thought and feeling was closer than his resemblance in manner. Like Addison and Goldsmith, he wins his audience through sheer charm of personality. To open one of his books is like meeting a congenial stranger. You like his looks at first glance, you feel somehow that he likes yours; and while you may be hesitating about advances, he is at your side, and there is nothing more to be said. You do not care whether he is American or English, you are not particular what he talks about, but you do not willingly part with him.

The charm of creative genius is less thecharm of mind than of feeling. And it is to feeling refined and colored by temperament, that the more delicate modes of belles-lettres owe their whole power. That is, a writer in this sort is admirable as he subdues language and subordinates thought to his own temper, not as he gives elegant utterance to thought or feeling in their abstracted and general estate. Through a surface artificiality of style, which is far more marked in his earliest work, and from which at times he quite escapes, Irving's personality shines clearly. He has so employed a conventional medium as to make it serve his original purposes. He possessed, to be sure, a faculty of strong vernacular speech, which is little suggested in his to-be-published writing, or even in his private letters. The Oregon embroilment had led certain British journals into gross speech about America. Irving was much disturbed. What he wrote was, "A rancorous prejudice against us has been diligently inculcated of late years by the British press, and it is daily producing its fruits of bitterness." What he said was:"Bulwer,"â€”then English minister to Spain,â€”"I should deplore exceedingly a war with England, for depend upon it, if we must come to blows, it will be serious work for both. You might break our head at first, but by Heaven! we would break your back in the end!"

But one need not write in the vernacular to be sincere and effective; personality may utter itself through different media, whether in different tongues or in distinct strata of the same tongue. Just now we have a bent toward colloquialism on paper; it was not the bent of Irving's day.

As far as the external features of his style are concerned, he has had praise enough, and more than enough. Clearness, ease, a certain Gallic grace it has; the ink flows readily, the thing says itself without crabbedness or constraint. On the other hand this ready writer is often conventional; a set phrase contents him, why should he labor to escape the usual formula? He knew nothing of the struggle or the reward of the artist in words, who wrestles for the exactnuance,and will not let a sentence go till he has obtained its blessing. Consequently he is never finicking in his phraseology, and seldom final. The subtle artfulness of Stevenson is beyond him; but he has a rarer qualityâ€”that subtler artlessness which has belonged in some measure to all the greater writers of sentiment. It is a quality independent of the mechanics of writing; whether the author echoes the syntax of Addison or the diction of Goldsmith is an indifferent question. All that we know is that, through his use of words or in spite of it, a new melody has come into being, a goldenmotifwhich is to ring in the world's ears nobody knows how long.

It seems idle to say of such a man that because he does not concern himself with "the mystery of existence," and "the solemn eternities," he has nothing to say. Surely the simple-souled artist may leave such matters for the philosophers and theologians to deal with. Surely his "message" is as significant as theirs. Irving is admirable not mainly because he "wrote beautifully," butbecause he said something which no one else could say: he uttered the most meaning of all messagesâ€”himself. And if literature is really a criticism of life, such a message from such a man has, it would seem, dignity enough.

Evidently Irving, like Goldsmith and Oliver Wendell Holmes, owed his amazing influence largely to his cheerful and wholesome this-worldliness. He was a sentimentalist, but obviously different in spirit from the two great English writers of sentiment who were most nearly his contemporaries. Thackeray is sophisticated; fortune's buffets have left him still a tender interest in life, but pity rather than hopefulness gives color to his mood. Dickens's sentiment seldom rings perfectly true; too often it is sharped to flippancy, or flatted to mawkishness. The tone of Irving, in sentiment or in humor, is the clear and even utterance of a healthy nature. It was a period of sickly sentimentalism in which he began to write; men drew tears frequently and mechanically then, as they drew corks. The sentimentalist passedeasily from broad mirth to unwinking pathos. Fortunately that weakest mood of sentiment without humor came seldom to Irving; he wrote only one "History of Margaret Nicholson."

It was his nature to be achingly considerate of others, so that he was a better friend than critic; and he was as careful of their good opinion as of their comfort. Always doubtful what treatment his work would meet, and even what it deserved, he would ask his friends to say nothing about it, unless they liked it. "One condemning whisper," said one of them, "sounded louder in his ear than the plaudits of thousands." Socially, on the other hand, he never had the least doubt of himself. The tastes and manner of a gentleman did not need to be acquired; there was no question of his fitness for any society. During his whole career, thrown as he was into the choicest company of two continents, there was evidently not the least suspicion of embarrassment or awkwardness in his quiet bearing.

He was in the largest sense of the word agenerous man; and even in the smaller sense his generosity has distinction and significance. Addison we know to have been a little on the hither side of open-handedness. Goldsmith was by his own satirical confession the "good-natured man," to whom giving was a conscious indulgence. Irving was simply not aware that he gave; to share his best was a natural function. And it is our sense of this, of being admitted as a matter of course to share in all that he is and has, which largely explains his delightfulness as man and author.

Citizen of the world as he was in his literary character, in practical life his Americanism was real and potent. He deplored the War of 1812 and the war with Mexico, but believed firmly that it was no man's duty to go back of the government's decision. In the conduct of his mission to Spain he showed the utmost steadiness, loyalty, and self-possession in many trying situations. He was, in short, a valuable citizen, to whom honors came unsought, and who, out of office, and not desirous of political power, was trustedby all parties, and tempted by none. The mere existence of such a figure, calm, simple, incorruptible, honored wherever he was known, and known prominently throughout Europe, was a valuable stay to the young republic in that purgatorial first half of the nineteenth century.

One fact about him will perhaps bear emphasis; that with all his gentlenesses he was strong and firm and full of spirit. He was susceptible to advice, yet nobody ever forced him to do a thing that was against his mind or conscience. That he was amiable, congenial, companionableâ€”we do not forget these traits of his; we should remember, too, that he never faced an emergency to which he did not prove himself equal. His personal hold upon his contemporaries was plainly due to the fact that their confidence in him as a man was as perfect as their delight in him as an artist. What he did was, after all, only a little part of what he was.

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