As "The Culprit Fay" shows, Drake's idea was to escape from the drawing-room into the open, but when in the open to weave, as it were, Gobelin tapestries for drawing-room use. He saw no gleam of essential poetry in democracy or the crowded town, yet in his vague craving for something better than Georgian iterations he showed that the revival of individualism was at work in him. The story is told that his intimacy with Halleck began in his accord with the latter's wish that he could "lounge upon the rainbow, and read 'Tom Campbell.'" In his aspirations he seems to have been nearer to the spirit of Keats and Shelley. As fate would have it, the more independent of the two was taken off before his prime, and Halleck, the survivor, settled down into complacent Knickerbockerism. With his nicety of taste, his keen eye, his fund of humor, and his frankness, he was an established literary and social favorite. He was the kind of handsome and courtly gentleman of the old school, as Irving was also, who became a friend and associate of the leading financier of the day. There was nothing restless or disconcerting about him. He was a critic of manners, but not of the social order. He probably knew little of Emerson, and he certainly disapproved of Whitman. In 1848, when less than sixty years of age, he went back to his native town in Connecticut and lived there till after the Civil War, totally unaffected as a man of letters, except as the conflict seems to have silenced him. But he was not alone, for when he sank into eclipse all the Knickerbockers disappeared with him. Their vogue was over. BOOK LIST =_Individual Authors_= WASHINGTON IRVING. First posthumous complete edition. New York, 1860-1861. 21 vols. These appeared originally as follows: Salmagundi, 1807-1808; History of New York, 1809; The Sketch Book, 1819; Bracebridge Hall, 1822; Jonathan Oldstyle, 1824; Tales of a Traveller, 1824; Columbus, 1828; Conquest of Granada, 1829; Companions of Columbus, 1831; The Alhambra, 1832; The Crayon Miscellany, 1835; Astoria, 1836; Captain Bonneville, 1837; Goldsmith, 1849; Mahomet, 1839-1850; Wolfert's Roost, 1855; Washington, 1855-1859; Uncollected Miscellanies, 1866. =Bibliography= Compiled by Shirley V. Long for Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I, pp. 510-517. =Biography and Criticism= The standard life of Washington Irving is by P. M. Irving, The Life and Letters of Washington Irving. 1862-1864. 1864, 1879, 1883. 4 vols. BOYNTON, H. W. Washington Irving. Boston, 1901. BRYANT, W. C. A Discourse on the Life, Character, and Genius of Washington Irving, 1860. CURTIS, G. W. Irving's Knickerbocker. _Critic_, Vol. III. 1883. CURTIS, G. W. Washington Irving, in _Literary and Social Essays_. 1894.