Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[70] time so much like that of Irving that it is very hard at first to convince the eye that Irving is not responsible for all. Yet for some reason or other the early copies of the Sketch Book command no high price at auction, while at the recent sale of Mr. Arnold'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 ’