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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 Irving--a mere
loiterer in the field of letters--is at best a creditable product of
artifice. To him even so much credit has not been always allowed; the
clever imitator of Addison--or, as some sager say, of Goldsmith--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 only conscious Americanism in motive--to
speak of him merely as an artist--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 that his
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 clos