Gladstone but may be
those of the author of "Henry Esmond" and the biographer of "Rab and his
Friends." De Quincey divides literature into two sorts, the literature
of power and the literature of knowledge. The latter is of necessity for
to-day only, and must be revised to-morrow. The definition has scarcely
De Quincey's usual verbal felicity, but we can apprehend the distinction
he intended to make.

It is to be noted also, and not with regard to Irving only, that the
attention of young and old readers has been so occupied and distracted
by the flood of new books, written with the single purpose of satisfying
the wants of the day, produced and distributed with marvelous cheapness
and facility that the standard works of approved literature remain for
the most part unread upon the shelves. Thirty years ago Irving was much
read in America by young people and his clear style helped to form a
good taste and correct literary habits. It is not so now. The
manufacturers of books, periodicals, and newspapers for the young keep
the rising generation fully occupied, with a result to its taste and
mental fibre which, to say the least of it, must be regarded with some
apprehension. The "plant," in the way of money and writing industry
invested in the production of juvenile literature, 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 thing in the world
amusing, 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 firs