rnold's collection in New York the two
parts of "Outre-Mer" brought $310. The work is now so rare that the
library of Harvard University has no copy of the second part, and only
an imperfect copy of the first with several pages mutilated, but
originally presented to Professor Felton by the author and bearing his
autograph. As to style, it is unquestionable that in "Outre-Mer" we find
Washington Irving frankly reproduced, while in "Hyperion" we are soon to
see the development of a new literary ambition and of a more imaginative
touch.
The early notices of "Outre-Mer" are written in real or assumed
ignorance of the author's name and almost always with some reference to
Irving. Thus there is a paper in the "North American Review" for
October, 1834, by the Rev. O. W. B. Peabody, who says of the book that
it is "obviously the production of a writer of talent and of cultivated
taste, who has chosen to give to the public the results of his
observation in foreign countries in the form of a series of tales and
sketches." He continues, "It is a form which, as every reader knows, had
been recommended by the high example and success of Mr. Irving.... It is
not to be supposed that in adopting the form of Mr. Irving, the author
has been guilty of any other imitation."{21} This may in some sense be
true, and yet it is impossible to compare the two books without seeing
that kind of assimilation which is only made more thorough by being
unconscious. Longfellow, even thus early, brought out more picturesquely
and vividly than Irving the charm exerted by the continent of Europe
over the few Americans who were exploring it. What Irving did in this
respect for England, Longfellow did for the continental nations. None of
the first German students from America, Ticknor, Cogswell, Everett, or
Bancroft, had been of imaginative temperament, and although their
letters, as since printed,{22} revealed Germany to America as the land
of learning, it yet remained for Longfellow to portray all Europe from
the point of view of the pilgrim. When he went to England in 1835, as we
shall see, he carried with him for English publication the two volumes
of one of the earliest literary tributes paid by the New World to the
Old, "Outre-Mer."
It is a curious fact that Mr. Samuel Longfellow, in his admirable memoir
of his brother, omits all attempt to identify the stories by the latter
which are mentioned as appearing in the annual called "The Token,"
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