He was Regent of the University of the State of New York ; member, and afterwards Warden, of the Vestry of Trinity Church; President of the Century Clul:); President of the Board of Emigration; and chairman of various charitable bodies. To the task of editing the edition of Shakespeare that bears his name, he added that of making a strenuous and successful fight for the extension of the copyright law^ from twenty-eight to fortyeight years. An entertaining anecdote of Verjdanck's reception of Irving 's Knickerbocker well illustrates the temper of his mind. In 181 8, during an address before the New York Historical vSociety, he took occasion to deprecate

266 The Hudson River

the injustice done to the Dutch character by Knickerbocker :

It is painful [he said] to see a mind as admirable for its exquisite perception of the beautiful as it is for its quick sense of the ridiculous wasting the riches of its fancy on an ungrateful theme, and its exuberant humour in a coarse caricature.

Commenting on this, Irving wrote to his brother, Ebenezer :

I have seen what Verplanck says of my work. ... He is one of the honestest men I know of in speaking his opinion. . . . I am sure he wishes me well . . . 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.