A man greatly valued by his literary cotemporaries and hand in glove with the leading spirits of the Knickerbocker school was that delightful humourist, Frederick Swartw^out Cozzens, author of the Sparron'grass Papers. He was younger than Irving and Halleck, of the generation to w^hich Willis and Hoffman belonged ; a New Yorker by birth and a wine merchant b\' occupation. The Sparrowgrass Papers, which w^ere exaggerated accounts of his experiences at his country home, Chestnut Cottage, in Yonkers, were published first

270 The Hudson River

in Pittnains MontJily, and were immediately appreciated as the work of a true humovirist. Cozzens published 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 Halleck'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 collector of every printed scrap of American writing. Evart Augustus Duyckinck, compiler, with the assistance of his brother, of the monumental cyclopedia that bears his name, was the preserver of many a local reputation. There are numberless early American authors who were only rescued from drowning in the sea of oblivion by being forcibly dragged into Duyckinck s literary life-boat.