h honor to the mere humorist and the writer of short sketches. The
conventional literary proprieties must be observed. Only some laborious,
solid, and improving work of the pen could sanction such distinction,--a
book of research or an historical composition. It need not necessarily
be dull, but it must be grave in tone and serious in intention, in order
to give the author high recognition.

Irving himself shared this opinion. He hoped, in the composition of his
"Columbus" and his "Washington," to produce works which should justify
the good opinion his countrymen had formed of him, should reasonably
satisfy the expectations excited by his lighter books, and lay for him
the basis of enduring reputation. All that he had done before was the
play of careless genius, the exercise of frolicsome fancy, which might
amuse and perhaps win an affectionate regard for the author, but could
not justify a high respect or secure a permanent place in literature.
For this, some work of scholarship and industry was needed.

And yet everybody would probably have admitted that there was but one
man then living who could have created and peopled the vast and humorous
world of the Knickerbockers; that all the learning of Oxford and
Cambridge together would not enable a man to draw the whimsical portrait
of Ichabod Crane, or to outline the fascinating legend of Rip Van
Winkle; while Europe was full of scholars of more learning than Irving,
and writers of equal skill in narrative, who might have told the story
of Columbus as well as he told it and perhaps better. The
under-graduates of Oxford who hooted their admiration of the shy author
when he appeared in the theatre to receive his complimentary degree
perhaps understood this, and expressed it in their shouts of "Diedrich
Knickerbocker," "Ichabod Crane," "Rip Van Winkle."

Irving's "gift" was humor; and allied to this was sentiment. These
qualities modified and restrained each other; and it was by these that
he touched the heart. He acquired other powers which he himself may have
valued more highly, and which brought him more substantial honors; but
the historical compositions, which he and his contemporaries regarded as
a solid basis of fame, could be spared without serious loss, while the
works of humor, the first fruits of his genius, are possessions in
English literature the loss of which would be irreparable. The world may
never openly allow to humor a position "above the salt," but it