Irving himself shared this opinion. He hoped, in the composition of his
"Columbus" and his "Washington," to produce works which should justify
the good opinion his countrymen had formed of him, should reasonably
satisfy the expectations excited by his lighter books, and should lay for
him the basis of enduring reputation. All that he had done before was
the play of careless genius, the exercise of frolicsome fancy, which
might amuse and perhaps win an affectionate regard for the author, but
could not justify a high respect or secure a permanent place in
literature. For this, some work of scholarship and industry was needed.
And yet everybody would probably have admitted that there was but one man
then living who could have created and peopled the vast and humorous
world of the Knickerbockers; that all the learning of Oxford and
Cambridge together would not enable a man to draw the whimsical portrait
of Ichabod Crane, or to outline the fascinating legend of Rip Van Winkle;
while Europe was full of scholars of more learning than Irving, and
writers of equal skill in narrative, who might have told the story of
Columbus as well as he told it and perhaps better. The under-graduates
of Oxford who hooted their admiration of the shy author when he appeared
in the theater to receive his complimentary degree perhaps understood
this, and expressed it in their shouts of "Diedrich Knickerbocker,"
"Ichabod Crane," "Rip Van Winkle.
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