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[83] more heroes and generals all over town than would fill a new Iliad?

Griswold's Republican Court, p. 448.

It is worth while to lay so much stress upon the composite character of this new society because it helps to account for the sort of literature New York was to produce. These French exiles could not help imparting an additional lightness and vivacity and polish to the manners of their American hosts; and the most characteristic and genuine literary product of New York during the next half-century was to be urbane and elegant in character rather than profound or forcible — a “polite” literature in the narrower sense of the term.


The Knickerbocker School: Irving.

The father of the “Knickerbocker School,” as the most prominent group of New York authors came to be called, was Washington Irving. The one achievement of this “school” was a considerable body of light social satire in prose and verse, which is now of value to the student of past manners. It is an interesting fact that Irving's first work of merit was done in precisely this field, and that never thereafter, though he tried very hard, did he

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