American feeling, that a considerable preference would be given in the
market to the editions emanating directly from the publisher selected
by the author, and in the sale of which the author had some interest.

"If the scheme shall altogether fail, it at least infers no loss, and
therefore is, I think, worth the experiment. It is a fair and open
appeal to the liberality, perhaps in some sort to the justice, of a
great people; and I think I ought not in the circumstances to decline
venturing upon it. I have done so manfully and openly, though not
perhaps without some painful feelings, which however are more than
compensated by the interest you have taken in this unimportant matter,
of which I will not soon lose the recollection." (_Knickerbocker
Magazine_, Vol. XI, p. 380 ff., April, 1838.)]

[Footnote 330: _Knickerbocker_, Vol. XII, p. 349 ff., October, 1838.]

[Footnote 331: In a letter written in January, 1839, Sumner said,
speaking of Cooper's article, "I think a proper castigation is applied
to the vulgar minds of Scott and Lockhart." (See _Memoir and Letters
of Charles Sumner_, by Edward L. Pierce, Vol. II, p. 38; and
Lounsbury's _Cooper_, p. 160.)]

[Footnote 332: _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, pp. 163-4.]

[Footnote 333: _Ibid._, Vol. III, p. 262.]

[Footnote 334: _Ibid._, Vol. III, p. 131, note; _Fam. Let._, Vol. I,
p. 440. "Walter Scott was the first transatlantic author to bear
witness to the merit of Knickerbocker," wrote P.M. Irving in his _Life
of Washington Irving_. Henry Brevoort presented Scott with a copy of
the second edition in 1813, and received this reply: "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
am sensible that as a stranger to American parties and politics I must
lose much of the concealed satire of the piece, but I must own that
looking at the simple and obvious meaning only, I have never read
anything so closely resembling the style of Dean Swift, as the annals
of Diedrich Knickerbocker.... 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." (_Life of Irving_, Vol.
I, p. 240.) When, in 1819, Irving needed money, he wrote to Scott for
advice about publishing the _Sketch Book_ in England. "Scott was the
only litera