Washington Irving and Jacob Cats

This chapter discusses Jacob Cats, author of the Dutch motto on A History of New York 's title page, and pursues further evidence of Washington Irving's use of prints and text from Cats's emblem book the Spiegel (1632). Irving's use of Cats's Spiegel did not stop with the History 's title page couplet. A comparison of the two works reveals more borrowings, both in quotation and in context. The Spiegel 's emblems deepened Irving's understanding of Cats's text and enriched the History 's content. The beautiful portraits of seventeenth-century Dutch daily life must have caught his painter's eye and may have contributed as much to his detailed descriptions of clothing and other items of Dutch material culture as did his early Hudson Valley Dutch surroundings and the Dutch paintings that were available to him in his contemporary New York. Ultimately, much of Irving's use of Cats's Spiegel is reflected in Diedrich Knickerbocker's digressions and, indeed, at times seems to direct his narrative manner as he voices his thoughts on the practice and value of historiography.