Springfield [Mass.] Republican, 9 July 1856

The Piazza Tales of Herman Melville, published in New York by Dix & Edwards form one of the most delightful books of the season. Marked by a delicate fancy, a bright and most fruitful imagination, a pure and translucent style, and a certain weirdness of conceit, they are not unlike, and seem to us not inferior, to the best things of Hawthorne. The introduction is one of the most graceful specimens of writing we have seen from an American pen. It is a poem--essentially a poem--lacking only rhythm and form. The remainder of the volume is occupied by five stories, respectively entitled "Bartleby," "Benito Cereno," "The Lightning-rod Man," "The Encantadas," and "The Bell Tower."