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 fiber
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 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