But they have in mind the Rip Van Winkle of Jefferson and Boucicault, not the rather attenuated story of Irving, which--as far as the twenty years of sleep went--was borrowed from an old German legend.
Mark Twain and Bret Harte, however, will always be bracketed with Washington Irving.

Of the three I incline to the opinion that Mark Twain did the broadest and strongest work.

His imagination had wider reach than Irving's.

There is nowhere, as there is in Harte, the suspicion either of insincerity or of artificiality.

Irving's humor was the humor of Sir Roger de Coverley and the Vicar of Wakefield.