As far as the external features of his style are concerned, he has had praise enough, and more than enough. Clearness, ease, a certain Gallic grace it has; the ink flows readily, the thing says itself without crabbedness or constraint. On the other hand this ready writer is often conventional; 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 was his nature to be achingly considerate of others, so that he was a better friend than critic; and he was as careful of their good opinion as of their comfort. Always doubtful what treatment his work would meet, and even what it deserved, he would ask his friends to say nothing about it, unless they liked it. "One condemning whisper," said one of them, "sounded louder in his ear than the plaudits of thousands." Socially, on the other hand, he never had the least doubt of himself. The tastes and manner of a gentleman did not need to be acquired; there was no question of his fitness for any society. During his whole career, thrown as he was into the choicest company of two continents, there was evidently not the least suspicion of embarrassment or awkwardness in his quiet bearing.
He was in the largest sense of the word a generous man; and even in the smaller sense his generosity has distinction and significance. Addison we know to have been a little on the hither side of open-handedness. Goldsmith was by his own satirical confession the "good-natured man," to whom giving was a conscious indulgence. Irving was simply not aware that he gave; to share his best was a natural function. And it is our sense of this, of being admitted as a matter of course to share in all that he is and has, which largely explains his delightfulness as man and author.
Citizen of the world as he was in his literary character, in practical life his Americanism was real and potent. He deplored the War of 1812 and the war with Mexico, but believed firmly that it was no man's duty to go back of the government's decision. In the conduct of his mission to Spain he showed the utmost steadiness, loyalty, and self-possession in many trying situations. He was, in short, a valuable citizen, to whom honors came unsought, and who, out of office, and not desirous of political power, was trusted by all parties, and tempted by none. The mere existence of such a figure, calm, simple, incorruptible, honored wherever he was known, and known prominently throughout Europe, was a valuable stay to the young republic in that purgatorial first half of the nineteenth century.
One fact about him will perhaps bear emphasis; that with all his gentlenesses he was strong and firm and full of spirit. He was susceptible to advice, yet nobody ever forced him to do a thing that was against his mind or conscience. That he was amiable, congenial, companionable—we do not forget these traits of his; we should remember, too, that he never faced an emergency to which he did not prove himself equal. His personal hold upon his contemporaries was plainly due to the fact that their confidence in him as a man was as perfect as their delight in him as an artist. What he did was, after all, only a little part of what he was.