READING GUIDE. The most useful general history of this entire period has been written by Moses Coit Tyler in two parts: a "History of American Literature During the Colonial Times" (Putnam), and the "Literary History of the American Revolution" (Putnam). The former of these is especially valuable, as it contains selections made from many authors who are difficult for modern readers to reach. The best collection of material for the whole range of American literature, but particularly for these first years, is Stedman and Hutchinson's "Library of American Literature," eleven volumes, the first three being devoted to this early period. A few good selections are contained in "American Prose," by G. R. Carpenter (Macmillan). Valuable historical background can be secured through the reading of selections about this period as presented in "Poems of American History," edited by B. E. Stevenson (Houghton, Mifflin). Valuable prose histories are numerous, but among the most readable are Alice Morse Earle's "The Sabbath in Puritan New England," "Home Life in Colonial Days,” and "Customs and Manners in Puritan New England"; John Fiske's "Beginnings of New England" and "New France and New England"; Edward Eggleston's "The Beginners of a Nation" and "The Transit of Civilization"; Chamberlain's "Samuel Sewall, and the World He Lived In." Reprints are easy to obtain of Franklin's "Autobiography,” and the "Letters of an American Farmer" have recently been republished.

Illustrative prose literature corresponding to the poems in American history includes Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," Mary Johnson's "To Have and to Hold," Cooper's "The Spy" and "The Pilot," Mitchell's "Hugh Wynne," Ford's "Janice Meredith,” and Churchill's "Richard Carvel."

CHAPTER II

NEW YORK AND THE KNICKERBOCKERS

I. INTRODUCTION

New York a New Literary Centre. The two centuries from 1600 to 1800 completed a period of preparation without which the pioneers of the nineteenth century could not have done their work. As Irving and Cooper were growing up, a new nation was also first becoming aware of itself. All the scattered experiences of the separate colonies were being gathered into a general fund of tradition, and rival interests were slowly giving way to the impulse of a common national pride.

One result of this unifying process was that it was possible to develop a literary centre from which something representatively national could emanate. During the Revolutionary period and immediately thereafter Philadelphia served as such a centre. Under normal circumstances the national capital attracts to itself the authors and publishers; but Washington in the District of Columbia differs from London, Paris, or Berlin in being a compromise selection. The tide of life flows by it, and as a result other cities have enjoyed what might have been its privilege of being the chief home of American letters. The first town to do this was New York, birth-place of Irving and adopted city of Cooper and Bryant. On account of the changed conditions, the work of these men was destined to be of a different stamp from that of their predecessors. Before their day, American literature was characterized by a certain degree of vigor and given almost entirely to reproducing the life of the country in rough-and-ready fashion. In the pages of these early nineteenth-century writers the pictures of life are more complete;

the artistic finish of their work is far higher in degree. All of them felt a great patriotic pride in their country, now flourishing in independence, and all of them enjoyed what is quite necessary to a full and just appreciation of the home land—varied, repeated, and long-continued travel in foreign countries.

II. WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859)

Irving's Youth.-Washington Irving was born in New York, of Scotch and English parents, in 1783. With his ten brothers and sisters he was brought up in the narrow paths of strict Presbyterianism, and by a natural reaction grew up with an abnormally developed taste for frivolity. At sixteen his formal education, at which he had but faintly applied himself, was over, and his failure to make any head-way in law during the next five years enrolled him in the distinguished company who have developed by this route into eminent men of letters. At twenty-one, threatened with consumption, he was sent abroad by his family. He jaunted about through France and Italy, seeing people and enjoying them with boyish eagerness, and carefully abstaining from conscientious sightseeing. He had more than one adventure that was moderately exciting, and barely escaped from more than one promising romance. A journal which he kept in Paris for three weeks credits him with attendance on one lecture in botany and scores up seventeen theatrical performances. After nearly two years he returned to New York, a complete dandy and an accomplished idler.

But his training for twenty-three years had been by no means useless. He had seen many peoples and had attended perhaps more freely than he was aware to their manners and their morals. In a fashion more or less similar to that of his closest model, Oliver Goldsmith, he had knocked about the world most profitably. Now he was ready to produce something worth while, as he gave evidence in the Salmagundi Papers of 1806.

"Salmagundi Papers."-These were written in the main. by Irving and J. K. Paulding, and enjoyed high popularity

for the year in which they ran. The young satirists blandly announced it as their purpose" to instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, and castigate the age." They discoursed on the American political system from election methods to the proceedings of Congress. They touched up society for many of its short-comings, and even jovially burlesqued some of the prevailing literary fashions. The whole series was done in a mood of boyishly exuberant good-humor, and it was brought to a conclusion only by the whim of its irresponsible authors. Three years later the Knickerbocker History of New York appeared in the same general vein, but from 1809 on there was an increasing element of sober dignity in Irving's work.

"The Sketch Book."-It was during a seventeen years' absence from America that The Sketch Book appeared in London in 1819, after a long and unproductive period in which Irving had been dabbling more or less in business. This, his best-known work, though written and published in England, and for the most part on English subject-matter, was very evidently from the American point of view. As a visitor from a new country, he was fascinated by the dignity and stability of English life and by the stalwart healthiness. of English traditions. But at the same time he realized the virtues of his own people keenly enough to write with honest indignation of those " British Writers on America," whom he accused of deliberately and short-sightedly provoking hostility between the two peoples. Moreover, two of his three short stories, epoch-making in their way-" Rip Van Winkle,” "Sleepy Hollow," and "The Spectre Bridegroom "-are interesting not only in themselves, but because they put upon American soil foreign traditions that endured the transplanting and have flourished marvellously ever since.

Irving's Later Works.-His career was now marked out except for the work that he was to do as a writer of history. The early period of boyish exuberance was over; The Sketch Book was to be followed by Bracebridge Hall, Wolfert's Roost, Tales of a Traveller, and The Alhambra, all collections of the same general type; and besides these and several lesser books, he was to write three notable works as a his