s of Columbus_,
and the _Alhambra_, all published between 1828-32. From 1842 to 1846
he was again in Spain as American Minister at Madrid.

Irving was the last and greatest of the Addisonians. His boyish
letters, signed "Jonathan Oldstyle," contributed in 1802 to his
brother's newspaper, the _Morning Chronicle_, were, like Franklin's
_Busybody_, close imitations of the _Spectator_. To the same family
belonged his _Salmagundi_ papers, 1807, a series of town-satires on New
York society, written {409} in conjunction with his brother William and
with James K. Paulding. The little tales, essays, and sketches which
compose the _Sketch Book_ were written in England, and published in
America, in periodical numbers, in 1819-20. In this, which is in some
respects his best book, he still maintained that attitude of
observation and spectatorship taught him by Addison. The volume had a
motto taken from Burton, "I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to
provide for--a mere spectator of other men's fortunes," etc.; and "The
Author's Account of Himself" began in true Addisonian fashion: "I was
always fond of visiting new scenes and observing strange characters and
manners."

But though never violently "American," like some later writers who have
consciously sought to throw off the trammels of English tradition,
Irving was in a real way original. His most distinct addition to our
national literature was in his creation of what has been called "the
Knickerbocker legend." He was the first to make use, for literary
purposes, of the old Dutch traditions which clustered about the
romantic scenery of the Hudson. Col. T. W. Higginson, in his _History
of the United States_, tells how "Mrs. Josiah Quincy, sailing up that
river in 1786, when Irving was a child three years old, records that
the captain of the sloop had a legend, either supernatural or
traditional, for every scene, and not a mountain reared its head
unconnected with some marvelous {410} story.'" The material thus at
hand Irving shaped into his _Knickerbocker's History of New York_, into
the immortal story of _Rip Van Winkle_, and the _Legend of Sleepy
Hollow_ (both published in the _Sketch Book_), and in later additions
to the same realm of fiction, such as Dolph Heyliger in _Bracebridge
Hall_, the _Money Diggers_, _Wolfert Webber_, and _Kidd the Pirate_, in
the _Tales of a Traveler_, and in some of the miscellanies from the
_Knickerbocker Magazine_, collected into a