he openly
expressed his expectation of some time marrying. That he did not was
clearly due to temper and circumstance rather than to romantic
fidelity or abnegation. In the end his susceptibility became purely
impersonal; his satisfaction in the exercise of a gentle old-school
gallantry did much to take the sting from his life-long bachelorhood.
Plainly, Irving was the sort of man who finds a grace in every
feminine presence.

It is encouraging to find him in a few months at work again upon the
Knickerbocker history. Its appearance was cleverly heralded by a
series of preliminary advertisements, announcing the disappearance of
one Diedrich Knickerbocker, and the finding of a manuscript history by
his hand. The book was published in December, 1809, and made a
remarkable impression, in England as well as in America. Henry
Brevoort, a close friend of Irving's, in 1813 sent a copy of the
second edition to Walter Scott, who wrote at once: "I beg you to
accept my best thanks for the uncommon degree of entertainment which
I have received from the most excellently jocose History of New
York.... I have never read anything so closely resembling the style of
Dean Swift as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker. I have been
employed these few evenings in reading them aloud to Mrs. Scott and
two ladies who are our guests, and our sides have been absolutely sore
with laughing. I think, too, there are passages which indicate that
the author possesses powers of a different kind, and has some touches
which remind me much of Sterne."

The work in its completed form is a history of the three Dutch
governors of New York, whom Irving uses as a stalking-horse for
purposes of satire. Everybody laughed at it except a few descendants
of the old Dutch worthies with whose names and characters he had made
free. As late as the year 1818, G. C. Verplanck, a personal friend of
Irving's, called him to account in an address before the New York
Historical Society, to which the first edition of Knickerbocker was
gravely dedicated, for "wasting the riches of his fancy on an
ungrateful theme, and his exuberant humor in a coarse caricature." One
of his brothers wrote to Irving, deprecating the attack. Irving
replied: "I have seen what Verplanck said of my work. He did me more
than justice in what he said of my mental qualifications; and he said
nothing of my work that I have not long thought of it myself.... I am
sure he wishes me well, and his own talent