That the young professor rose very early for literary work, even in November, we know by his own letters, and we also know that he then as always took this work very seriously and earnestly. What his favorite employment was, we learn by a letter to his friend George W. Greene (March 9, 1833) about a book which he proposes to publish in parts, and concerning which he adds, “I find that it requires little courage to publish grammars and school-books; but in the department of fine writing—or attempts at fine writing—it requires vastly more.” As a matter of fact, he had already published preliminary sketches of “Outre-Mer” in the “New England Magazine,” a Boston periodical just undertaken, putting them under the rather inappropriate title of “The Schoolmaster,” the first appearing in the number for July 18, 1831,[16] and the sixth and last in the number for February, 1833.[17] He writes to his sister (July 17, 1831), “I hereby send you 68 a magazine for your amusement. I wrote ‘The Schoolmaster’ and the translation from Luis de Gongora.”[18] It is worth mentioning that he adds, “Read ‘The Late Joseph Natterstrom.’ It is good.” This was a story by William Austin, whose “Peter Rugg, the Missing Man,” has just been mentioned as an early landmark of the period.[19] It is fair to say, however, that the critic of to-day can hardly see in these youthful pages any promise of the Longfellow of the future. The opening chapter, describing the author as a country schoolmaster, who plays with his boys in the afternoon, is only a bit of Irving diluted,—the later papers, “A Walk in Normandy,” “The Village of Auteuil,” etc., carrying the thing somewhat farther, but always in the same rather thin vein. Their quality of crudeness was altogether characteristic of the period, and although Holmes and Whittier tried their ’prentice hands with the best intentions in the same number of the “New England Magazine,” they could not raise its level. We see in these compositions, as in the “Annuals” of that day, that although Hawthorne had begun with his style already formed, yet that of Longfellow was still immature. This remark does not, indeed, apply to a version of a French 69 drinking song,[20] which exhibits something of his later knack at such renderings. There was at any rate some distinct maturity in the first number of “Outre-Mer,” which appeared in 1835. A notice of this book in the London “Spectator” closed with this expression of judgment: “Either the author of the ‘Sketch Book’ has received a warning, or there are two Richmonds in the field.” Literary history hardly affords a better instance of the direct following of a model by a younger author than one can inspect by laying side by side a page of the first number of “Outre-Mer” and a page of the “Sketch Book,” taking in each case the first American editions. Irving’s books were printed by C. S. Van Winkle, New York, and Longfellow’s by J. Griffin, Brunswick, Maine; the latter bearing the imprint of Hilliard, Gray & Co., Boston, and the former of the printer only. Yet the physical appearance of the two sets of books is almost identical; the typography, distribution into chapters, the interleaved titles of these chapters, and the prefix to each chapter of a little motto, often in a foreign language. It must be remembered that the “Sketch Book,” like “Outre-Mer,” was originally published in numbers; and besides all this the literary style of Longfellow’s work was at this 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 71 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, 72 omits all attempt to identify the stories by the latter which are mentioned as appearing in the annual called “The Token,” published in Boston and edited by S. G. Goodrich. This annual was the first of a series undertaken in America, on the plan of similar volumes published under many names in England. It has a permanent value for literary historians in this country as containing many of Hawthorne’s “Twice-Told Tales” in their original form, but often left anonymous, and sometimes signed only by his initial (H.). In the list of his own early publications given by Longfellow to George W. Greene under date of March 9, 1833, he includes, “7. In ‘The Token’ for 1832, a story.... 8. In the same, for 1833, a story.” To identify the contributions thus affords a curious literary puzzle. The first named volume—“The Token” for 1832—contains the tale of a domestic bereavement under the name of “The Indian Summer;” this has for a motto a passage from “The Maid’s Tragedy,” and the whole story is signed with the initial “L.” This would seem naturally to suggest Longfellow, and is indeed almost conclusive. Yet curiously enough there is in the same volume a short poem called “La Doncella,” translated from the Spanish and signed “L....,” which is quite in the line of the Spanish versions he was then writing, although not included in Mr. 73 Scudder’s list of his juvenile or unacknowledged poems. To complicate the matter still farther, there is also a story called “David Whicher,” dated Bowdoin College, June 1, 1831, this being a period when Longfellow was at work there, and yet this story is wholly remote in style from “The Indian Summer,” being a rather rough and vernacular woodman’s tale. Of the two, “The Indian Summer” seems altogether the more likely to be his work, and indeed bears a distinct likeness to the equally tragic tale of “Jacqueline” in “Outre-Mer,”—the one describing the funeral of a young girl in America, the other in Europe, both of them having been suggested, possibly, by the recent death of his own sister.
In the second volume of “The Token” (1833) the puzzle is yet greater, for though there are half a dozen stories without initials, or other clue to authorship, yet not one of them suggests Longfellow at all, or affords the slightest clue by which it can be connected with him, while on the other hand there is a poem occupying three pages and signed H. W. L., called “An Evening in Autumn.” This was never included by him among his works, nor does it appear in the list of his juvenile poems and translations in the Appendix to Mr. Scudder’s edition of his “Complete Poetical Works,” yet the initials leave hardly a doubt 74 that it was written by him. Why, then, was it not mentioned in this lis............