In IS-11 was appointed United Slates Minister at M•drid. where he lived from ISM to 1S-111. continuing his historical writing with the work on Mahomet. He passed the rest of hi: life. with the exception of some months of travel in the \Vest, at Sunnyside, his country-seat. near Tarrytown, N. Y. Up to IS-19 his literary work was inferior to what he had previously done, and is of little value. It consists of The 1I (1q35) Astoria I 1g3f11 and The Rocky Mountains: or, Scenes. !nebbrtts, and Ad ventures in the Far Trcst (1S37). The work which came toward the end of his life. however, added to his reputation. It was chiefly bio graphical and historical: r (lob/smith 11S-191 : lIahonict and Snecessors (1S49-50) ; Wolferrs Roost IIS551: and his long-planned and affectionate Life of (1855-591, whirls 110 completed only with the year of his death. He died at Irvington. N. Y., November 2R, 1859. Posthumously there appeared The Life and Letters of Washington Irring (18Q-63) and Spanish Papers and Other Miscellanies (1866), edited by his nephew, P. M. Irving. Ili, Work$, in twenty-seven volumes, appeared in New York in I884-36. Selections from them in English and in German. with illustrations by Ritter and Camphau-en. were published in Leipzig in 1356.
Irving is significant in the history of Ameri can letters as the first American, after the in dependence of the United States, to obtain real literary recognition in England. Ills success,
both at home and abroad, he owed to the geniality of his nature, his social gifts, and his literary feeling, all of which enabled him to please an audience schooled in the manner of Addison, Johnson, and Goldsmith, and at the same time to cause no offense to the patriotic sensibilities of his countrymen. inch of his work deals directly with English life and customs. and is written in the manner of a kindly, well-bred Eng lishman. The influence of Irving upon American letters was hence, in the main, good: it enabled writers to make use of the best English tradition and helped to rid them of the provinciali-n which had characterized their work up to his coming. Ile is perhaps best as an essayist, and lie will be per manent for his charm and refinement; yet it must not be forgotten that he was practically the discoverer, for Americans at least, of the effect iveness of the short story as a form of art. Nor is Irving's place in English literature unim portant, for he was a link between Goldsmith and Dickens. Indeed, Irving seems rather like an English than like an American author; for, though there is a quaintness in his humor and freshness in his views, he is devoted to English traditions as to form. With Whitman, Bret Harte. and Mark Twain one encounters a more obviously American school.