ional; a set phrase contents him, why should he labor to
escape the usual formula? He knew nothing of the struggle or the
reward of the artist in words, who wrestles for the exact _nuance_,
and will not let a sentence go till he has obtained its blessing.
Consequently he is never finicking in his phraseology, and seldom
final. The subtle artfulness of Stevenson is beyond him; but he has a
rarer quality--that subtler artlessness which has belonged in some
measure to all the greater writers of sentiment. It is a quality
independent of the mechanics of writing; whether the author echoes the
syntax of Addison or the diction of Goldsmith is an indifferent
question. All that we know is that, through his use of words or in
spite of it, a new melody has come into being, a golden _motif_ which
is to ring in the world's ears nobody knows how long.

It seems idle to say of such a man that because he does not concern
himself with "the mystery of existence," and "the solemn eternities,"
he has nothing to say. Surely the simple-souled artist may leave such
matters for the philosophers and theologians to deal with. Surely his
"message" is as significant as theirs. Irving is admirable not mainly
because he "wrote beautifully," but because he said something which
no one else could say: he uttered the most meaning of all
messages--himself. And if literature is really a criticism of life,
such a message from such a man has, it would seem, dignity enough.

Evidently Irving, like Goldsmith and Oliver Wendell Holmes, owed his
amazing influence largely to his cheerful and wholesome
this-worldliness. He was a sentimentalist, but obviously different in
spirit from the two great English writers of sentiment who were most
nearly his contemporaries. Thackeray is sophisticated; fortune's
buffets have left him still a tender interest in life, but pity rather
than hopefulness gives color to his mood. Dickens's sentiment seldom
rings perfectly true; too often it is sharped to flippancy, or flatted
to mawkishness. The tone of Irving, in sentiment or in humor, is the
clear and even utterance of a healthy nature. It was a period of
sickly sentimentalism in which he began to write; men drew tears
frequently and mechanically then, as they drew corks. The
sentimentalist passed easily from broad mirth to unwinking pathos.
Fortunately that weakest mood of sentiment without humor came seldom
to Irving; he wrote only one "History of Margaret Nicholson."

It