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. He had out a drag-net that seemed not to have missed even the smallest fry; but he was

Literary Associations of the Hudson 271

not the less appreciative of the merits of the abler men of successive generations, and was in close friendshi]) with nearly all those of his own time. Mr. Du>-ckinck's biographer writes of him as " a scholar of singularlv 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 Tarrytown, 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 Duyckinck and his brother, and was considered by the ]]»oet Dana to be the best journal of its kind ever published in America. One of the bibliographer's associates and warm admirers was William Allen Butler, the author of Nothing to Wear, who pronounced an eulogy upon his memory at a meeting of the New York Historical Society in 1879. Mr. Butler, himself a member of the bar, was of a well-known Hudson River family.