volume, in 1855, under the
title of _Wolfert's Roost_.

The book which made Irving's reputation was his _Knickerbocker's
History of New York_, 1809, a burlesque chronicle, making fun of the
old Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam, and attributed, by a familiar and
now somewhat threadbare device,[1] to a little old gentleman named
Diedrich Knickerbocker, whose manuscript had come into the editor's
hands. The book was gravely dedicated to the New York Historical
Society, and it is said to have been quoted, as authentic history, by a
certain German scholar named Goeller, in a note on a passage in
Thucydides. This story, though well vouched, is hard of belief: for
_Knickerbocker_, though excellent fooling, has nothing of the grave
irony of Swift in his _Modest Proposal_ or of Defoe in his _Short Way
with Dissenters_. Its mock-heroic intention is as transparent as in
Fielding's parodies of Homer, which it somewhat resembles, {411}
particularly in the delightfully absurd description of the mustering of
the clans under Peter Stuyvesant and the attack on the Swedish Fort
Christina. _Knickerbocker's History of New York_ was a real addition
to the comic literature of the world; a work of genuine humor, original
and vital. Walter Scott said that it reminded him closely of Swift,
and had touches resembling Sterne. It is not necessary to claim for
Irving's little masterpiece a place beside _Gulliver's Travels_ and
_Tristram Shandy_. But it was, at least, the first American book in
the lighter departments of literature which needed no apology and stood
squarely on its own legs. It was written, too, at just the right time.
Although New Amsterdam had become New York as early as 1664, the
impress of its first settlers, with their quaint conservative ways, was
still upon it when Irving was a boy. The descendants of the Dutch
families formed a definite element not only in Manhattan, but all up
along the kills of the Hudson, at Albany, at Schenectady, in
Westchester County, at Hoboken, and Communipaw, localities made
familiar to him in many a ramble and excursion. He lived to see the
little provincial town of his birth grow into a great metropolis, in
which all national characteristics were blended together, and a tide of
immigration from Europe and New England flowed over the old landmarks
and obliterated them utterly.

Although Irving was the first to reveal to his countrymen the literary
possibilities of their early {412} histo