. It is the romance
of the Continent, and not that of England, which inspires him. It is the
ruddy light upon the vines and the scraps of old _chansons_ which
enliven and decorate his pilgrimage, and through all his literary life
they have not lost their fascination. While Irving sketches "Rural Life
in England," Longfellow paints "The Village of Auteuil"; Irving gives us
"The Boar's Head Tavern," and Longfellow "The Golden Lion Inn" at Rouen;
Irving draws "A Royal Poet," Longfellow discusses "The Trouveres," or
"The Devotional Poetry of Spain." It is delightful to trace the charming
resemblance between the books and the writers, widely different as they
are. There is the same geniality, the same tender pathos, the same
lambent humor, the same delicate observation of details, the same
overpowering instinct of literary art. But Geoffrey Crayon is a
humorist, while the Pilgrim beyond the Sea is a poet. The one looks at
the broad aspects of English life with the shrewd, twinkling eye of a
man of the world; the other haunts the valley of the Loire, the German
street, the Spanish inn, with the kindling fancy of the scholar and
poet. The moral and emotional elements are quite wanting in Irving; they
are characteristic of Longfellow. But the sweetness of soul, the freedom
from cynicism or stinging satire, which is most unusual in American, or
in any humorous or descriptive literature, is remarkable in both. "I
have no wife, nor children, good or bad, to provide for," begins
Geoffrey Crayon, quoting from old Burton. But neither had he an enemy
against whom to defend himself. It was true of Geoffrey Crayon, down to
the soft autumn day on which he died, leaving a people to mourn for him.
It is true of the Pilgrim of Outre-Mer, in all the thirty years since
first he launched forth "into the uncertain current of public favor."

In this earliest book of Longfellow's the notable points are not power
of invention, or vigorous creation, or profound thought, but a
mellowness of observation, instinctively selecting the picturesque and
characteristic details, a copious and rich scholarship, and that
indefinable grace of the imagination which announces genius. The work,
like the "Sketch-Book," was originally issued in parts, and it was
hardly possible for any observer thirty years ago not to see that its
peculiar character revealed a new strain in our literature. Longfellow's
poems as yet were very few, printed in literary journals, and not