ce as Irving's received so prompt and triumphant
a vindication, for a year later appeared the "Sketch Book," with its
"Rip Van Winkle," its "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "The Spectre
Bridegroom"--to mention only three of the thirty-three items of its
table of contents--which proved the author to be not only a humorist of
the first order, but an accomplished critic, essayist and short-story
writer. The publication of this book marked the culmination of his
literary career. It is his most characteristic and important work, and
on it and his "History," his fame rests.

He lived for forty years thereafter, a number of which were spent in
Spain, first as secretary of legation, and afterwards as United States
minister to that country. It was during these years that he gathered
the materials for his "Life of Columbus," his "Conquest of Granada," and
his "Alhambra," which has been called with some justice, "The Spanish
Sketch Book." A tour of the western portion of the United States
resulted also in three books, "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville,"
"Astoria," and "A Tour on the Prairies." His last years were spent at
"Sunnyside," his home at Tarrytown, on the Hudson, where he amused
himself by writing biographies of Mahomet, of Goldsmith, and of George
Washington.

All of this was, for the most part, what is called "hack work," and his
turning to it proves that he himself was aware that his fount of
inspiration had run dry. This very fact marks his genius as of the
second order, for your real genius--your Shakespeare or Browning or
Thackeray or Tolstoi--never runs dry, but finds welling up within him a
perpetual and self-renewing stream of inspiration, fed by thought and
observation and every-day contact with the world.

Irving's closing years were rich in honor and affection, and found him
unspoiled and uncorrupted. He was always a shy man, to whom publicity of
any kind was most embarrassing; and yet he managed to be on the most
intimate of terms with his time, and to possess a wide circle of friends
who were devoted to him.

Such was the career of America's first successful man of letters. For,
strangely enough, he had succeeded in making a good living with his pen.
More than that, his natural and lambent humor, his charm and grace of
style, and a literary power at once broad and genuine, had won him a
place, if not among the crowned heads, at least mong the princes of
literature, side by side with Goldsmith and Addiso