Paulding. The three started a
semi-monthly periodical called _Salmagundi_, fashioned after Addison's
_Spectator_ and Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_. The first number was
published January 24, 1807, and the twentieth and last, January 25, 1808.
"In Irving's contributions to it," says his biographer, "may be traced the
germs of nearly everything he did afterwards."
The year 1809 was the most important in Irving's young life. In that year
Matilda Hoffman, to whom he was engaged, died in her eighteenth year.
Although he outlived her fifty years, he remained a bachelor, and he
carried her _Bible_ with him wherever he traveled in Europe or America. In
the same year he finished one of his masterpieces, Diedrich Knickerbocker's
_History of New York_. Even at this time he had not decided to follow
literature as a profession.
In 1815 he went to England to visit his brother, who was in business there.
It was not, however, until the failure of his brother's firm in 1818 that
Irving determined to make literature his life work. While in London he
wrote the _Sketch Book_ (1819), which added to his fame on both sides of
the Atlantic. This visit abroad lasted seventeen years.
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