erature, is so large and is
so permanent an interest, that it requires more discriminating
consideration than can be given to it in a passing paragraph.

Besides this, and with respect to Irving in particular, there has been
in America a criticism--sometimes called the destructive, sometimes the
Donnybrook Fair--that found "earnestness" the only amusing thing in the
world, that brought to literary art the test of utility, and disparaged
what is called the "Knickerbocker School" (assuming Irving to be the
head of it) as wanting in purpose and virility, a merely romantic
development of the post-Revolutionary period. And it has been to some
extent the fashion to damn with faint admiration the pioneer if not the
creator of American literature as the "genial" Irving.

Before I pass to an outline of the career of this representative
American author, it is necessary to refer for a moment to certain
periods, more or less marked, in our literature. I do not include in
it the works of writers either born in England or completely English in
training, method, and tradition, showing nothing distinctively American
in their writings except the incidental subject. The first authors whom
we may regard as characteristic of the new country--leaving out the
productions of speculative theology--devoted their genius to politics.
It is in the political writings immediately preceding and following the
Revolution--such as those of Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Franklin, Jefferson
that the new birth of a nation of original force and ideas is declared.
It has been said, and I think the statement can be maintained, that for
any parallel to those treatises on the nature of government, in
respect to originality and vigor, we must go back to classic times.
But literature, that is, literature which is an end in itself and not
a means to something else, did not exist in America before Irving.
Some foreshadowings (the autobiographical fragment of Franklin was not
published till 1817) of its coming may be traced, but there can be
no question that his writings were the first that bore the national
literary stamp, that he first made the nation conscious of its gift and
opportunity, and that he first announced to trans-Atlantic readers the
entrance of America upon the literary field. For some time he was our
only man of letters who had a reputation beyond seas.

Irving was not, however, the first American who made literature a
profession and attempted to live o