and in England, Lowell in Spain and in England, and Bayard Taylor in Germany. In the fall of 1846 Irving returned to America, being then sixty-three years old.

In 1849 he amplified his earlier brief biography of Oliver Goldsmith, a charming writer whose spirit was closely akin to his own; and he also published an account of "Mahomet and his Successors." In 1855 he gathered together various essays and sketches into another volume of the "Sketch-Book" type, which he published under the title of "Wolfert's Roost." In 1855 also began to appear his "Life of George Washington," the longest and most serious of all his works. With characteristic modesty Irving had grave doubts about this biography, but his fellow-historians encouraged him with warm praise, and the public showed a hearty appreciation of it.

The last years of his life seem to have been happy, like the last years of most other American authors. He was comfortably settled in the home he had chosen, near the city of his birth, where he had many friends. He was a familiar figure in the streets of New York; and the late George William Curtis has left us an admirable description of his appearance:

"Forty years ago, upon a pleasant afternoon, you might have seen tripping with an elastic step along Broadway, in New York, a figure which even then would have been called quaint. It was a man of about sixty-six or sixty-seven years old, of a rather solid frame, wearing a Talma, as a short cloak of the time was called, that hung from the shoulders, and low shoes, neatly tied, which were observable at a time when boots were generally worn. The head was slightly declined to one side, the face was smoothly shaven, and the eyes twinkled with kindly humor and shrewdness. There was a chirping, cheery, old-school air in the whole appearance, an undeniable Dutch aspect, which, in the streets of New Amsterdam, irresistibly recalled Diedrich Knickerbocker. The observer might easily have supposed that he saw some later descendant of the renowned Wouter Var Twiller refined into a nineteenth-century gentleman.

The occasional start of interest as the figure was recogcized by some one in the passing throng, the respectful bow, and the sudden turn to scan him more closely, indicated that he was not unknown. Indeed, he was the American of his time universally known. This modest and kindly man was the creator of Diedrich Knickerbocker and Rip Van Winkle. He was the father of our literature, and at that time its patriarch. He was Washington Irving."

He lived to publish the last volume of his "Washington" and to revise a new and complete edition of his works. Then, on November 28, 1859, he died, in the seventy-seventh year of his age. He was buried near the Sunnyside he loved and near the Sleepy Hollow he had made famous. His life had spanned a complete period of American history, for he had been born just before the close of the Revolution, and he died just before the outbreak of the Civil War.

II. THE BOOK

It is as interesting as it is instructive to try to trace the pedigrees of books, and to see whence a masterpiece derived its form and what later works it influenced in its turn. The "Sketch-Book" owed much to the chief of the English essayists, to Steele and Addison, to the Tatler and the Spectator; and perhaps its debt was as great to the "Citizen of the World" of Goldsmith, a man of letters with whom Irving had much in common. But it had also an originality of its own in so far as it was frankly a miscellany, the separate papers in which pretended to no other bond than that provided by the fact that they were all written by the same author. A "Geoffrey Crayon" was thus at liberty to enrich this sketch-book of his with a story or with an essay; he was free to describe a scene at will or to depict a character. The volume might be long or it might be short; it might be grave or it might be gay; it might be sad or it might be satiric; it might be what

ever the author chose to make it, and the reader could not reasonably complain.

The Spectator of Steele and Addison, as we have it now, not in the original numbers, issued twice a week, but bound in a series of volumes, bears an obvious likeness to our modern magazines. We find in it essays on men and on manners, obituary articles, book-reviews, and comments on current plays. We discover not only brief tales which are the forerunners of our latter-day short stories and character sketches; but we remark also the series of papers, published at irregular intervals, outlining the career and the character of Sir Roger de Coverley; and we can accept this as an early attempt at our more modern serial story continued from month to month. This variety is one of the characteristics of the Spectator borrowed by Irving in the "Sketch-Book," which thus stands midway between the periodical papers of the eighteenth-century essayists and the more elaborate monthly magazines of the twentieth century.

A framework as flexible as this was exactly suited to a writer like Irving, and it is not to be wondered at that he modified the form but little in the two works he wrote next after the "Sketch-Book." Like the contents of that, the contents of "Bracebridge Hall" and the contents of the "Tales of a Traveller" were papers picked out of his portfolio and arbitrarily sent forth as a book. So undecided was he as to what he should put into one work or the other, that the account of "Buckthorne" in the "Tales of a Traveller" was originally a part of "Bracebridge Hall." In both of the later books we find little that is not contained in germ, at least, in the first of the three. In "Bracebridge Hall" we can see a continuation of the sketches of English life and English manners and English scenery, of which the papers in the "Sketch-Book" on "Christmas" and the "Stage Coach" had given a foretaste. In the "Tales of a Traveller" we find stories touched with mystery and tinged with humor, not unlike the "Spectre Bridegroom" and the "Legend of Sleepy

Hollow" in the original collection. All three books purport to be written by "Geoffrey Crayon"; and every one of them is what "Bracebridge Hall" was styled on its title-page, "a medley."

The "Sketch-Book" itself was originally issued, not in a single volume, but in seven parts, of which the first appeared in May, 1819, and the seventh in September, 1820. The entire collection was sent forth as a book not long after the publication of the last of the separate parts. Many of the several stories and essays had been reprinted in British periodicals; and Irving was encouraged to have the book published in London also, where it was issued in two volumes. Its success seems to have been instantaneous on both sides of the Atlantic; and it is not too much to say that Irving was the earliest American author to achieve popularity in Great Britain, a popularity almost equal to that he attained in the United States. Perhaps his welcome in England was due to the American flavor of "Rip Van Winkle" and the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," perhaps it was rather the result of the cordiality with which he depicted English shrines and English customs. To a casual reader even it was obvious that Irving remained a good American, although he had made himself at home in Great Britain. He liked the British; but he did not flatter them, as the character of "John Bull" proves plainly enough, even if the frank warning to "English Writers on America" had not been printed in the second part to show exactly where he stood.

Some of the papers which Irving drew out of his portfolio may have been written in America, but the most of them were evidently the result of his sojourn in England in the years immediately preceding the publication. His aim in sending forth the book is plainly stated in a letter to one of his friends in New York:

"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 feeling and fancy of the reader, more than to his judgment. My writings, therefore, may appear 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 French horn." 1

To the first number there was prefixed a prospectus, which the author did not reprint when he collected his sketches into a book,-probably because the success of the work was then already assured. But the modesty with which Irving presented himself is so characteristic that the passage deserves quotation here:

"The following writings are published on experiment; should they please they may be followed by others. The writer will have to contend with some disadvantages. He is unsettled in his abode, subject to interruptions, and has his share of cares and vicissitudes. He cannot, therefore, promise a regular plan, nor regular periods of publication. Should he be encouraged to proceed, much time may elapse between the appearance of his numbers; and their size will depend on the materials he may have on hand. His writings will partake of the fluctuations of his own thoughts and feelings-sometimes treating of scenes before him, sometimes of others purely imaginary, and sometimes wandering back with his recollections to his native country. He will not be able to give them that tranquil attention necessary to finished composition; and as they must be transmitted across the Atlantic for publication, he will have to trust to others to correct the frequent errors of the press. Should his writings, however, with all their imperfections, be well received, he cannot conceal that it would be a source of the purest gratification; for though he does not aspire to those high honors which are the rewards of loftier intellects, yet it is the dearest wish of his heart to have a secure and

1 Life and Letters of Washington Irving, Edition of 1869, vol, i., page 415.