The data of Irving's literary achievements have been brought near a conclusion; what remains to be said may now deal less with what he wrote, and more with what he did and was. It is luckily unnecessary to try for a sharply drawn distinction between his popularity as a writer and as a man. In his home, in society, and in literature the single charm of his personality had made him beloved in the same way. And he had become, in the best sense of the term, a public character. For many years his name had been better known abroad than that of any other living American; and his reception at home after an absence of seventeen years showed in what regard his countrymen had come to hold him. Their pride in his success and gratitude for the new fame he had given a country which was still felt to be on probation, can hardly account for it; only the confidence of affection could have excused so prolonged an absenteeism. His peculiar hold upon popular affection cannot be better suggested than by the tone of a letter written by the only Englishman who during Irving's life could pretend to rival him in his peculiar field. In 1841, Irving wrote to Dickens, expressing pleasure in his work. Dickens replied: "There is no man in the world who could have given me the heartfelt pleasure you have, by your kind note of the 13th of last month. There is no living writer, and there are very few among the dead, whose approbation I should feel so proud to earn. And with everything you have written upon my shelves, and in my thoughts, and in my heart of hearts, I may honestly and truly say so.... I wish I could find in your welcome letter some hint of an intention to visit England. I can't. I have held it at arm's length, and taken a bird's eye view of it, after reading it a great many times, but there is no greater encouragement in it this way than on a microscopic inspection. I should love to go with you--as I have gone, God knows how often--into Little Britain, and Eastcheap, and Green Arbor Court, and Westminster Abbey. I should like to travel with you, outside the last of the coaches, down to Bracebridge Hall. It would make my heart glad to compare notes with you about that shabby gentleman in the oilcloth hat and red nose, who sat in the nine-cornered back parlor of the Masons' Arms; and about Robert Preston, and the tallow chandler's widow, whose sitting-room is second nature to me; and about all those delightful places and people that I used to walk about and dream of in the daytime, when a very small and not over-particularly-taken-care-of boy. I have a good deal to say, too, about that dashing Alonzo de Ojeda, that you can't help being fonder of than you ought to be; and much to hear concerning Moorish legend and poor, unhappy Boabdil. Diedrich Knickerbocker I have worn to death in my pocket, and yet I should show you his mutilated carcass with a joy past all expression."