of belles-lettres he had
shown mastery. During the remainder of his life he continued to work
at intervals in that field with similar felicity; and, for the rest,
to write amiably and respectably upon many topics foreign to his
natural bent. But his greatest work was done in odd moments and at a
heat; all the method in the world could not increase his real stature
by a cubit.

A word may perhaps be said here of Irving as an historian and
biographer. Of course he could not write dully; his histories are just
as readable as Goldsmith's, and rather more veracious. But he plainly
had not the scholar's training and methods which we now demand of the
historian; nor had he the larger view of men and events in their
perspective. Generalization was beyond him. Fortunately to generalize
is only a part of the business of the historian. To catch some dim
historic figure, and give it life and color,--this power he had. And
it was evidently this which gave him the praise of such men as
Prescott and Bancroft and Motley. Washington had begun to loom vaguely
and impersonally in the mind, a mere great man, when Irving with a
touch turned him from cold bronze into flesh and blood again.

During the years of Irving's stay abroad other American writers had
come into notice. Bryant's poetry had become well known. Cooper had
produced "The Spy," "The Pilot," "The Pioneers," and "The Last of the
Mohicans." In 1827 appeared the first volume of poems by Edgar Allan
Poe. In this year, too, Irving's diary records a meeting with
Longfellow, who was then twenty-one, and came abroad to prepare
himself for his professorship at Bowdoin. Longfellow's recollection of
the incident is worth quoting: "I had the pleasure of meeting Mr.
Irving in Spain, and found the author, whom I had loved, repeated in
the man. The same playful humor; the same touches of sentiment; the
same poetic atmosphere; and, what I admired still more, the entire
absence of all literary jealousy, of all that mean avarice of fame,
which counts what is given to another as so much taken from one's
self--

"'And trembling, hears in every breeze
The laurels of Miltiades.'"

In the following summer the "History of Columbus" was finished, and
sold to Murray. It won high praise from the reviewers, especially from
Alexander H. Everett, his former diplomatic chief, and at this time
editor of the "North American Review."

Early in the following year he made his first visit to Andalu