Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[85]

The Knickerbocker history.

The Salmagundi papers amused the town for a time, and were suddenly discontinued. The Knickerbocker history of New York, published two years later, brought Irving his first real fame. He employed his theme, a burlesque history of the three Dutch governors of New York, as a stalking-horse for purposes of light satire. Everybody in New York enjoyed it except a few descendants of the old Dutch worthies with whose names he had made free; and it won high praise abroad, notably from Walter Scott. The book was a real success. Irving had proved himself master of a fluent humorous style which might have been employed indefinitely in the treatment of similar themes. But for many years he was, according to the New York standard, a man of fashion, with no need and no desire to write for a living.

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The sketch book.

Middle age was at hand, when, ten years later, the pinch of necessity forced him to begin his career as a professional man of letters. The sketch book was published in 1819. Two years later Bryant's first volume of poems was printed and Cooper's novels had begun to