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Matilda Hoffman was a girl of seventeen, pretty, amiable, and clever. She died of quick consumption in April, 1809. It is certain that they loved each other very much, and that Irving never forgot her. The claim put forth by his nephew and biographer that he gave up marriage for her sake, and was romantically scrupulous in his faithfulness to her memory, seems hardly borne out by the facts. He was crushed for the moment, but not heartbroken. The truth is Irving's nature was sentimental rather than passionate. His love for Miss Hoffman appears to have been the deepest feeling of his life, but it did not absorb his whole nature. The first effect of her loss was to fill him with a sort of horror—the rebellion of a young and sensitive health against the tyranny of death. It was enough to show that the mourner was by no means in desperate case, for extreme grief is not afraid. In after life he never mentioned her name, and wrote of her only once. At the same time pretty faces and the charm of womanly companionship continued to attract him; indeed, a few years later he openly expressed his expectation of some time marrying. That he did not was clearly due to temper and circumstance rather than to romantic fidelity or abnegation. In the end his susceptibility became purely impersonal; his satisfaction in the exercise of a gentle old-school gallantry did much to take the sting from his life-long bachelorhood. Plainly, Irving was the sort of man who finds a grace in every feminine presence.

It is encouraging to find him in a few months at work again upon the Knickerbocker history. Its appearance was cleverly heralded by a series of preliminary advertisements, announcing the disappearance of one Diedrich Knickerbocker, and the finding of a manuscript history by his hand. The book was published in December, 1809, and made a remarkable impression, in England as well as in America. Henry Brevoort, a close friend of Irving's, in 1813 sent a copy of the second edition to Walter Scott, who wrote at once: "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 have never read anything so closely resembling the style of Dean Swift as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker. I have been employed these few evenings in reading them aloud to Mrs. Scott and two ladies who are our guests, and our sides have been absolutely sore with laughing. 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."

The work in its completed form is a history of the three Dutch governors of New York, whom Irving uses as a stalking-horse for purposes of satire. Everybody laughed at it except a few descendants of the old Dutch worthies with whose names and characters he had made free. As late as the year 1818, G. C. Verplanck, a personal friend of Irving's, called him to account in an address before the New York Historical Society, to which the first edition of Knickerbocker was gravely dedicated, for "wasting the riches of his fancy on an ungrateful theme, and his exuberant humor in a coarse caricature." One of his brothers wrote to Irving, deprecating the attack. Irving replied: "I have seen what Verplanck said of my work. He did me more than justice in what he said of my mental qualifications; and he said nothing of my work that I have not long thought of it myself.... I am sure he wishes me well, and his own talents and acquirements are too great to suffer him to entertain jealousy; but were I his bitterest enemy, such an opinion have I of his integrity of mind, that I would refer any one to him for an honest account of me, sooner than to almost any one else."

Soon after Knickerbocker came out, Irving went to Albany in the fruitless pursuit of a minor court appointment. There he found his name come not altogether pleasantly before him. "I have somehow or another formed acquaintance with some of the good people," he wrote, "and several of the little Yffrouws, and have even made my way and intrenched myself strongly in the parlors of several genuine Dutch families, who had declared utter hostility to me." One lady had said that if she were a man she would horsewhip him; but an hour with Irving, who had made a point of meeting her, left her resigned to be a woman.

Irving had now scored his first great literary success. He had proved himself master of a fluent humorous style which might have been applied indefinitely to the treatment of similar themes. He was twenty-seven years old, and there was no reason why the next ten years should not be a most fruitful period. Unfortunately, during most of that time life was made too easy for him. He knew now that he could write, but he had no desire to write for a living. Probably he felt that such a course would be in some way not quite suitable for a man of fashion. At all events, ten years passed, and middle age was at hand before the promising author began to fulfill his promise. Not till 1819 appeared his next literary venture, conceived in a more serious spirit, and launched with many misgivings as the first performance of the professional man of letters.

He had by this time pretty much given up any notion he may have had of living by the law. His attempts to gain civil appointments were not successful. The brilliant younger brother must be provided for; presently Peter and Ebenezer, who were proprietors of a fairly prosperous hardware business, offered him a partnership, with nominal duties and one fifth of the profits. His connection with the firm was at first a sinecure. Later, and when the business had come to the brink of failure, the burden fell upon him, and absorbed his whole time and energies for nearly two years. His literary idling cannot be said to have been due to this entanglement. In his view writing was apparently little more than an agreeable indulgence which had brought him some half-deserved praise, and a pleasant social recognition in desirable quarters. One of the first results of his new connection was a visit to Washington, ostensibly in the interests of the business. The character of his services may be surmised from the fact that his journey from New York to Washington, via Philadelphia and Baltimore, consumed nineteen days; and that was when the affairs of the firm were in some straits, and supposed to be particularly in need of representation at Washington.

In 1812 he accepted the editorship of a periodical called "Select Reviews," to which during the next two years he contributed various critical and biographical articles. He found little to his liking in the editorial and still less in the critical part of his work. "I do not profess," he wrote, "the art and mystery of reviewing, and am not ambitious of being wise or facetious at the expense of others." He was never a good critic, for he was too soft-hearted, and too little in conceit with his own judgment to give an unfavorable opinion. And this was in the period of "slashing" criticism, when it was the proper thing, unless an author could show good reason for being declared the greatest man of the age, to hang, draw, and quarter him on the spot. At about this time, Jeffrey of the "Edinburgh Review," a critic who made the most of his prerogative, visited America. His coming was heralded by Irving's friend Brevoort in a letter whose ludicrous climax is worth quoting: "It is essential that Jeffrey may imbibe a just estimate of the United States and its inhabitants.... Persuade him to visit Washington and by all means to see the falls of Niagara." Apparently Irving received the great