Republic, for it took place the year the British troops evacuated the
city of New York, and only a few months before General Washington
marched in at the head of the Continental army and took possession of
the metropolis. For fifty years Irving charmed and instructed the
American people, and was the author who held, on the whole, the first
place in their affections. As he was the first to lift American
literature into the popular respect of Europe, so for a long time he was
the chief representative of the American name in the world of letters.
During this period probably no citizen of the Republic, except the
Father of his Country, had so wide a reputation as his namesake,
Washington Irving.

It is time to inquire what basis this great reputation had in enduring
qualities, what portion of it was due to local and favoring
circumstances, and to make an impartial study of the author's literary
rank and achievement.

The tenure of a literary reputation is the most uncertain and
fluctuating of all. The popularity of an author seems to depend quite as
much upon fashion or whim, as upon a change in taste or in literary
form. Not only is contemporary judgment often at fault, but posterity is
perpetually revising its opinion. We are accustomed to say that the
final rank of an author is settled by the slow consensus of mankind in
disregard of the critics; but the rank is after all determined by the
few best minds of any given age, and the popular judgment has very
little to do with it. Immediate popularity, or currency, is a nearly
valueless criterion of merit. The settling of high rank even in the
popular mind does not necessarily give currency; the so-called best
authors are not those most widely read at any given time. Some who
attain the position of classics are subject to variations in popular and