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. Mr. Verplanck 's ancestral home was at Fishkill-on- the- Hudson. There his last years were spent under the roof that his grandfather erected; and there he died, a sober-minded man of many gifts. His friends included nearly all of the literary men of his day, and no citizen was more honoured. George P. Morris, the " Dear Morris" of so many of Willis's " hurrygraphs ' ' and letters from various places, belongs particularly to the Hudson. Near the village of Coldspring, his " summer seat" (as it used to be the fashion to call one's country home), commanded a noble view of the Highlands, and was the goal of many a pilgrimage. "America's best lyric poet," as Benson J. Lossing calls him, was in intimate relations with most American men of letters in his day. His long Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Literary Associations of the Hudson 269 association with The Home Journal, together with the wide popularity of his songs, made Morris's name a household word wherever our somewhat embryonic literature fpwnd its way. One of the best descriptive stanzas by a Hudson River poet was inspired by Morris's memory of his home in the Highlands: Where Hudson's wave o'er silvery sands Winds through the hills afar, Old cro'nest like a monarch stands. Crowned with a single star. One needs only to consult Griswold's Poets of Amer- ica, the best anthology of half a century ago, to appre- ciate the fact that, with few exceptions, sweetness rather than strength characterised even the best of the work of our native poets; while in prose the names of Prescott, Cooper, Hawthorne, and Irving stood like towers upon a flowery plain. A man greatly valued by his literary coternporaries and hand in glove with the leading spirits of the Knick- erbocker school was that delightful humourist, Fred- erick Swartwout Cozzens, author of the Sparrowgrass Papers. He was younger than Irving and Halleck, of the generation to which Willis and Hoffman belonged; a New Yorker by birth and a wine merchant by occu- pation. The Sparrowgrass Papers, which were exaggerated accounts of his experiences at his country home. Chestnut Cottage, in Yonkers, were published first Digitized by Microsoft® 2 70 The Hudson River in Putnam's Monthly, and were immediately appre- ciated as the work of a true humourist. Cozzens pub- lished a number of fugitive pieces, both in prose and verse, and was the writer of several books, but he will be remembered as the author of the Sparrowgrass Papers. His fame was not merely local. Thackeray, who loved a humourist with fraternal affection, was his friend and correspondent. Halleck, writing to General Wilson in 1867, says: " I have long more than fancied, I have felt, that Mr. Cozzens, in that department of genius to which Mr. Irving 's Knickerbocker belongs, is the best, or among the best writers of our time in any language." This was apropos of the work called The Sayings of Doctor Bushwacker, which, in spite of Hal- leck's eulogium, is hardly known to a generation of readers that still cherishes Knickerbocker as one of the bright examples of American genius. We cannot long dwell with the Knickerbocker group without coming in close contact with the patient col- lector of every printed scrap of American writing. Evart Augustus Duyckinck, compiler, with the assist- ance of his brother, of the monumental cyclopedia that bears his name, was the preserver of many a local reputation. There are numberless early American au- thors who were only rescued from drowning in the sea of oblivion by being forcibly dragged into Duyckinck 's literary life-boat. He had out a drag-net that seemed not to have missed even the smallest fry; but he was Digitized by Microsoft® Literary Associations of the Hudson 271 not the less appreciative of the merits of the abler men of successive generations, and was in close friendship with nearly all those of his own time. Mr. Duyck- inck's biographer writes of him as "a scholar of sin- gularly pure and stainless character." He also was a lawyer as well as a student and man of letters, and was a " Hudson- Riverite " by virtue of long residence. His grave lies in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, at Tarry- town, a short distance to the north-west of Washington Irving 's plot. For a number of years subsequent to 1847, Mr. Duyckinck conducted The Literary World. There was, however, an intermission of one year in his editorial labours, during which Hoffman was in charge of the paper. The Literary World was established by Duyck- inck and his brother, and