for them to alight and prey upon, and we closely imitate
all the worst tricks of the trade and of the craft in England.
Our literature, before long, will be like some of those premature
and aspiring whipsters, who become old men before they are young
ones, and fancy they prove their manhood by their profligacy and
their diseases."

But the work had an immediate, continued, and deserved success. It was
critically contrasted with Robertson's account of Columbus, and it is
open to the charge of too much rhetorical color here and there, and it is
at times too diffuse; but its substantial accuracy is not questioned,
and the glow of the narrative springs legitimately from the romance of
the theme. Irving understood, what our later historians have fully
appreciated, the advantage of vivid individual portraiture in historical
narrative. His conception of the character and mission of Columbus is
largely outlined, but firmly and most carefully executed, and is one of
the noblest in literature. I cannot think it idealized, though it
required a poetic sensibility to enter into sympathy with the magnificent
dreamer, who was regarded by his own generation as the fool of an idea.
A more prosaic treatment would have utterly failed to represent that
mind, which existed from boyhood in an ideal world, and, amid frustrated
hopes, shattered plans, and ignoble returns for his sacrifices, could
always rebuild its glowing projects and conquer obloquy and death itself
with immortal anticipations.

Towards the close of his residence in Spain, Irving received unexpectedly
the appointment of Secretary of Legation to the Court of St. James, at
which Louis McLane was American Minister; and after some hesitation, and
upon the urgency of his friends, he accepted it. He was in the thick of
literary projects. One of these was the History of the Conquest of
Mexico, which he afterwards surrendered to Mr. Prescott, and another was
the "Life of Washington," which was to wait many years for fulfillment.
His natural diffidence and his reluctance to a routine life made him
shrink from the diplomatic appointment; but once engaged in it, and
launched again in London society, he was reconciled to the situation.
Of honors there was no lack, nor of the adulation of social and literary
circles. In April, 1830, the Royal Society of Literature awarded him one
of the two annual gold medals placed at the disposal of the society by
George IV.,