Evert Augustus Duyckinck commented that "the thought a national literature seems to have entered and taken possession of (Griswold's) mind with the force of monomania". Poet Philip Pendleton Cooke questioned Griswold's sincerity, saying he "should have loved  ... better than to say it". By the 1850s, Griswold's literary nationalism had subsided somewhat, and he began following the more popular contemporary trend of reading literature from England, France, and Germany. He disassociated himself from the "absurd notion ... that we are to create an entirely new literature".