During his stay abroad he made a few other contributions to literature which have not yet been mentioned. Among these were some miscellaneous papers in the “Mirror”: “Notes from a Scrap Book” and “Fragments of Rambling Impressions,” portions of which he afterwards republished in “Ephemera.” Also a short tale of no value, “The Dilemma,” from which he rescued the verses “To Ermengarde” for his collected poems. He contributed to the London “Athenæum” for January and February, 1835, a series of four articles on American literature, which do not appear in his “Complete Works.” That pioneer of literature in the West, the Rev. Timothy Flint, some time editor of the “Cincinnati Monthly Review,” author of a novel called “Francis Berrian,” and of a work on the Mississippi Valley, had agreed to supply the required papers, but he having left New York for Louisiana Territory, and failed to come to time, Willis was invited to take his place. He wrote the articles hastily, though he asserted that he had “read the productions of two hundred poets and seventy-two prose writers whose works have been printed in America since the settlement of New England.” He made no approach to an exhaustive treatment of the subject, but gave a number of graphic personal sketches of American authors, one in particular, of Channing as a pulpit orator, which excited Lady Byron’s interest, as has been mentioned, and another of Cooper, whom he indignantly defended against the slanders of a portion of the American press. The literary judgments are not always sound (Poe said that Willis had good taste, but was not a good critic), but they were the current opinions of the day rather than of Willis individually. They were in the air. Thus he pronounces Bryant’s “Evening Wind” the best thing he had written, and prefers Percival to Bryant, saying that he is “the most interesting man in America. He has not written anything equal to the ‘Evening Wind’ of Bryant, but his birthright lies a thousand leagues higher up Parnassus.” Timothy Flint afterwards supplemented these papers by a dozen of his own, which amply made up in heaviness for any want of ballast in Willis’s, and were full of “general views,” which, if not correct, were harmless because unreadable. Willis’s “Athenæum” articles first introduced the English public to “The Culprit Fay,” long passages of which he gave from a manuscript in his possession, the poem having not as yet appeared in print. Miss Mitford, who took a warm interest in American literature, wrote him a note of thanks on the publication of this series, praising it in the highest terms. It appears by a letter to Willis from Carl August, Freiherr von Killinger, dated Carlsruhe, April 13, 1836, that some of the “Inklings” had already attained to the honors of translation. The Freiherr, it seems, was engaged in translating “Pencillings” also, and wanted material for a biographical notice.