A papered chamber in a fine old farmhouse, a mile from any other
dwelling, and dipped to the eaves in foliage--surrounded by mountains,
old woods, and Indian pools,--this, surely, is the place to write of
Hawthorne. Some charm is in this northern air, for love and duty seem
both impelling to the task. A man of a deep and noble nature has seized
me in this seclusion. His wild, witch-voice rings through me; or, in
softer cadences, I seem to hear it in the songs of the hill-side birds
that sing in the larch-trees at my window.
Would that all excellent books were foundlings, without father or
mother, that so it might be we could glorify them, without including
their ostensible authors! Nor would any true man take exception to this;
least of all, he who writes, ‘When the artist rises high enough to
achieve the beautiful, the symbol by which he makes it perceptible to
mortal senses becomes of little value in his eyes, while his spirit
possesses itself in the enjoyment of the reality.’
But more than this. I know not what would be the right name to put on
the title-page of an excellent book; but this I feel, that the names of
all fine authors are fictitious ones, far more so than that of Junius;
simply standing, as they do, for the mystical ever-eluding spirit of all
beauty, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius. Purely imaginative
as this fancy may appear, it nevertheless seems to receive some warranty
from the fact, that on a personal interview no great author has ever
come up to the idea of his reader. But that dust of which our bodies are
composed, how can it fitly express the nobler intelligences among us?
With reverence be it spoken, that not even in the case of one deemed
more than man, not even in our Saviour, did his visible frame betoken
anything of the augustness of the nature within. Else, how could those
Jewish eyewitnesses fail to see heaven in his glance!
It is curious how a man may travel along a country road, and yet miss
the grandest or sweetest of prospects by reason of an intervening hedge,
so like all other hedges, as in no way to hint of the wide landscape
beyond. So has it been with me concerning the enchanting landscape in
the soul of this Hawthorne, this most excellent Man of Mosses. His Old
Manse has been written now four years, but I never read it till a day or
two since. I had seen it in the book-stores--heard of it often--even had
it recommended to me by a tasteful friend, as a rare, quiet book,
perhaps too deserving of popularity to be popular. But there are so many
books called ‘excellent,’ and so much unpopular merit, that amid the
thick stir of other things, the hint of my tasteful friend was
disregarded, and for four years the Mosses on the Old Manse never
refreshed me with their perennial green. It may be, however, that all
this while the book, likewise, was only improving in flavour and body.
At any rate, it so chanced that this long procrastination eventuated in
a happy result. At breakfast the other day, a mountain girl, a cousin of
mine, who for the last two weeks has every morning helped me to
strawberries and raspberries, which, like the roses and pearls in the
fairy tale, seemed to fall into the saucer from those strawberry-beds,
her cheeks--this delightful creature, this charming Cherry says to
me--‘I see you spend your mornings in the haymow; and yesterday I found
there Dwight’s _Travels in New England_. Now I have something far better
than that, something more congenial to our summer on these hills. Take
these raspberries, and then I will give you some moss.’ ‘Moss!’ said I.
‘Yes, and you must take it to the barn with you, and good-bye to
Dwight.’
With that she left me, and soon returned with a volume, verdantly bound,
and garnished with a curious frontispiece in green; nothing less than a
fragment of real moss, cunningly pressed to a fly-leaf. ‘Why, this,’
said I, spilling my raspberries, ‘this is the _Mosses from an Old
Manse_.’ ‘Yes,’ said cousin Cherry, ‘yes, it is that flowery Hawthorne.’
‘Hawthorne and Mosses,’ said I, ‘no more it is morning: it is July in
the country: and I am off for the barn.’
Stretched on that new-mown clover, the hill-side breeze blowing over me
through the wide barn door, and soothed by the hum of the bees in the
meadows around, how magically stole over me this Mossy Man! and how
amply, how bountifully, did he redeem that delicious promise to his
guests in the Old Manse, of whom it is written: ‘Others could give them
pleasure, or amusement, or instruction--these could be picked up
anywhere; but it was for me to give them rest--rest, in a life of
trouble! What better could be done for those weary and world-worn
spirits?... what better could be done for anybody who came within our
magic circle than to throw the spell of a tranquil spirit over him?’ So
all that day, half-buried in the new clover, I watched this Hawthorne’s
‘Assyrian dawn, and Paphian sunset and moonrise from the summit of our
eastern hill.’
The soft ravishments of the man spun me round about in a web of dreams,
and when the book was closed, when the spell was over, this wizard
‘dismissed me with but misty reminiscences, as if I had been dreaming of
him.’
What a wild moonlight of contemplative humour bathes that Old
Manse!--the rich and rare distilment of a spicy and slowly-oozing heart.
No rollicking rudeness, no gross fun fed on fat dinners, and bred in the
lees of wine,--but a humour so spiritually gentle, so high, so deep, and
yet so richly relishable, that it were hardly inappropriate in an angel.
It is the very religion of mirth; for nothing so human but it may be
advanced to that. The orchard of the Old Manse seems the visible type of
the fine mind that has described it--those twisted and contorted old
trees, ‘they stretch out their crooked branches, and take such hold of
the imagination that we remember them as humorists and odd-fellows.’ And
then, as surrounded by these grotesque forms, and hushed in the noonday
repose of this Hawthorne’s spell, how aptly might the still fall of his
ruddy thoughts into your soul be symbolised by: ‘In the stillest
afternoon, if I listened, the thump of a great apple was audible,
falling without a breath of wind, from the mere necessity of perfect
ripeness.’ For no less ripe than ruddy are the apples of the thoughts
and fancies in this sweet Man of Mosses.
_Buds and Bird Voices._ What a delicious thing is that! ‘Will the world
ever be so decayed, that spring may not renew its greenness?’ And the
_Fire Worship_. Was ever the hearth so glorified into an altar before?
The mere title of that piece is better than any common work in fifty
folio volumes. How exquisite is this: ‘Nor did it lessen the charm of
his soft, familiar courtesy and helpfulness that the mighty spirit, were
opportunity offered him, would run riot through the peaceful house, wrap
its inmates in his terrible embrace, and leave nothing of them save
their whitened bones. This possibility of mad destruction only made his
domestic kindness the more beautiful and touching. It was so sweet of
him, being endowed with such power, to dwell day after day, and one long
lonesome night after another, on the dusky hearth, only now and then
betraying his wild nature by thrusting his red tongue out of the
chimney-top! True, he had done much mischief in the world, and was
pretty certain to do more; but his warm heart atoned for all. He was
kindly to the race of man; and they pardoned his characteristic
imperfections.’
But he has still other apples, not quite so ruddy, though full as
ripe:--apples, that have been left to wither on the tree, after the
pleasant autumn gathering is past. The sketch of _The Old Apple Dealer_
is conceived in the subtlest spirit of sadness; he whose ‘subdued and
nerveless boyhood prefigured his abortive prime, which likewise
contained within itself the prophecy and image of his lean and torpid
age.’ Such touches as are in this piece cannot proceed from any common
heart. They argue such a depth of tenderness, such a boundless sympathy
with all forms of being, such an omnipresent love, that we must needs
say that this Hawthorne is here almost alone in his generation,--at
least, in the artistic manifestation of these things. Still more. Such
touches as these--and many, very many similar ones, all through his
chapters--furnish clues whereby we enter a little way into the
intricate, profound heart where they originated. And we see that
suffering, some time or other, and in some shape or other,--this only
can enable any man to depict it in others. All over him, Hawthorne’s
melancholy rests like an Indian summer, which, though bathing a whole
country in one softness, still reveals the distinctive hue of every
towering hill and each far-winding vale.
But it is the least part of genius that attracts admiration. Where
Hawthorne is known, he seems to be deemed a pleasant writer, with a
pleasant style,--a sequestered, harmless man, from whom any deep and
weighty thing would hardly be anticipated--a man who means no meanings.
But there is no man, in whom humour and love, like mountain peaks, soar
to such a rapt height as to receive the irradiations of the upper
skies;--there is no man in whom humour and love are developed in that
high form called genius; no such man can exist without also possessing,
as the indispensable complement of these, a great, deep intellect, which
drops down into the universe like a plummet. Or, love and humour are
only the eyes through which such an intellect views this world. The
great beauty in such a mind is but the product of its strength. What, to
all readers, can be more charming than the piece entitled _Monsieur du
Miroir_; and to a reader at all capable of fully fathoming it, what, at
the same time, can possess more mystical depth of meaning?--yes, there
he sits and looks at me,--this ‘shape of mystery,’ this ‘identical
MONSIEUR DU MIROIR!’ ‘Methinks I should tremble now were his wizard
power of gliding through all impediments in search of me to place him
suddenly before my eyes.’
How profound, nay, appalling, is the moral evolved by the _Earth’s
Holocaust_; where--beginning with the hollow follies and affectations of
the world,--all vanities and empty theories and forms are, one after
another, and by an admirably graduated, growing comprehensiveness,
thrown into the allegorical fire, till, at length, nothing is left but
the all-engendering heart of man; which remaining still unconsumed, the
great conflagration is naught.
Of a piece with this, is the _Intelligence Office_, a wondrous
symbolising of the secret workings in men’s souls. There are other
sketches still more charged with ponderous import.
_The Christmas Banquet_, and _The Bosom Serpent_, would be fine subjects
for a curious and elaborate analysis, touching the conjectural parts of
the mind that produced them. For spite of all the Indian-summer sunlight
on the hither side of Hawthorne’s soul, the other side--like the dark
half of the physical sphere--is shrouded in a blackness, ten times
black. But this darkness but gives more effect to the ever-moving dawn,
that forever advances through it, and circumnavigates his world. Whether
Hawthorne has simply availed himself of this mystical blackness as a
means to the wondrous effects he makes it to produce in his lights and
shades; or whether there really lurks in him, perhaps unknown to
himself, a touch of Puritanic gloom,--this, I cannot altogether tell.
Certain it is, however, that this great power of blackness in him
derives its force from its appeals to that Calvinistic sense of Innate
Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or
other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free. For, in
certain moods, no man can weigh this world without throwing in
something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance. At
all events, perhaps no writer has ever wielded this terrific thought
with greater terror than this same harmless Hawthorne. Still more: this
black conceit pervades him through and through. You may be witched by
his sunlight--transported by the bright gildings in the skies he builds
over you; but there is the blackness of darkness beyond; and even his
bright gildings but fringe and play upon the edges of thunder-clouds. In
one word, the world is mistaken in this Nathaniel Hawthorne. He himself
must often have smiled at its absurd misconception of him. He is
immeasurably deeper than the plummet of the mere critic. For it is not
the brain that can test such a man; it is only the heart. You cannot
come to know greatness by inspecting it; there is no glimpse to be
caught of it, except by intuition; you need not ring it, you but touch
it, and you find it is gold.
Now, it is that blackness in Hawthorne, of which I have spoken, that so
fixes and fascinates me. It may be, nevertheless, that it is too largely
developed in him. Perhaps he does not give us a ray of light for every
shade of his dark. But however this may be, this blackness it is that
furnishes the infinite obscure of his background,--that background,
against which Shakespeare plays his grandest conceits, the things that
have made for Shakespeare his loftiest but most circumscribed renown, as
the profoundest of thinkers. For by philosophers Shakespeare is not
adored, as the great man of tragedy and comedy:--‘Off with his head; so
much for Buckingham!’ This sort of rant interlined by another hand,
brings down the house,--those mistaken souls, who dream of Shakespeare
as a mere man of Richard the Third humps and Macbeth daggers. But it is
those deep far-away things in him; those occasional flashings-forth of
the intuitive Truth in him; those short, quick probings at the very axis
of reality;--these are the things that make Shakespeare, Shakespeare.
Through the mouths of the dark characters of Hamlet, Timon, Lear, and
Iago, he craftily says, or sometimes insinuates the things which we feel
to be so terrifically true, that it were all but madness for any good
man, in his own proper character, to utter, or even hint of them.
Tormented into desperation, Lear, the frantic king, tears off the mask,
and speaks the same madness of vital truth. But, as I before said, it is
the least part of genius that attracts admiration. And so, much of the
blind, unbridled admiration that has been heaped upon Shakespeare, has
been lavished upon the least part of him. And few of his endless
commentators and critics seem to have remembered, or even perceived,
that the immediate products of a great mind are not so great as that
undeveloped and sometimes undevelopable yet dimly-discernible greatness,
to which those immediate products are but the infallible indices. In
Shakespeare’s tomb lies infinitely more than Shakespeare ever wrote. And
if I magnify Shakespeare, it is not so much for what he did do as for
what he did not do, or refrained from doing. For in this world of lies,
Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and
only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and
other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth,--even though it be
covertly and by snatches.
But if this view of the all-popular Shakespeare be seldom taken by his
readers, and if very few who extol him have ever read him deeply, or
perhaps, only have seen him on the tricky stage (which alone made, and
is still making him, his mere mob renown)--if few men have time, or
patience, or palate, for the spiritual truth as it is in that great
genius--it is then no matter of surprise, that in a contemporaneous age,
Nathaniel Hawthorne is a man as yet almost utterly mistaken among men.
Here and there, in some quiet armchair in the noisy town, or some deep
nook among the noiseless mountains, he may be appreciated for something
of what he is. But unlike Shakespeare, who was forced to the contrary
course by circumstances, Hawthorne (either from simple disinclination,
or else from inaptitude) refrains from all the popularising noise and
show of broad farce and blood-besmeared tragedy; content with the still,
rich utterance of a great intellect in repose, and which sends few
thoughts into circulation, except they be arterialised at his large warm
lungs, and expanded in his honest heart.
Nor need you fix upon that blackness in him, if it suit you not. Nor,
indeed, will all readers discern it; for it is, mostly, insinuated to
those who may best understand it, and account for it; it is not obtruded
upon every one alike.
Some may start to read of Shakespeare and Hawthorne on the same page.
They may say, that if an illustration were needed, a lesser light might
have sufficed to elucidate this Hawthorne, this small man of yesterday.
But I am not willingly one of those who, as touching Shakespeare at
least, exemplify the maxim of Rochefoucauld, that ‘we exalt the
reputation of some, in order to depress that of others’;--who, to teach
all noble-souled aspirants that there is no hope for them, pronounce
Shakespeare absolutely unapproachable. But Shakespeare has been
approached. There are minds that have gone as far as Shakespeare into
the universe. And hardly a mortal man, who, at some time or other, has
not felt as great thoughts in him as any you will find in Hamlet. We
must not inferentially malign mankind for the sake of any one man,
whoever he may be. This is too cheap a purchase of contentment for
conscious mediocrity to make. Besides, this absolute and unconditional
adoration of Shakespeare has grown to be a part of our Anglo-Saxon
superstitions. The Thirty-Nine Articles are now forty. Intolerance has
come to exist in this matter. You must believe in Shakespeare’s
unapproachability, or quit the country. But what sort of a belief is
this for an American, a man who is bound to carry republican
progressiveness into Literature as well as into Life? Believe me, my
friends, that men not very much inferior to Shakespeare are this day
being born on the banks of the Ohio. And the day will come when you
shall say, Who reads a book by an Englishman that is a modern? The great
mistake seems to be, that even with those Americans who look forward to
the coming of a great literary genius among us, they somehow fancy he
will come in the costume of Queen Elizabeth’s day; be a writer of dramas
founded upon old English history or the tales of Boccaccio. Whereas,
great geniuses are parts of the times, they themselves are the times,
and possess a corresponding colouring. It is of a piece with the Jews,
who, while their Shiloh was meekly walking in their streets, were still
praying for his magnificent coming; looking for him in a chariot, who
was already among them on an ass. Nor must we forget that, in his own
lifetime, Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, but only Master William
Shakespeare of the shrewd, thriving, business firm of Condell,
Shakespeare and Co., proprietors of the Globe Theatre in London; and by
a courtly author, of the name of Chettle, was looked at as an ‘upstart
crow,’ beautified ‘with other birds’ feathers.’ For, mark it well,
imitation is often the first charge brought against originality. Why
this is so, there is not space to set forth here. You must have plenty
of sea-room to tell the Truth in; especially when it seems to have an
aspect of newness, as America did in 1492, though it was then just as
old, and perhaps older than Asia, only those sagacious philosophers, the
common sailors, had never seen it before, swearing it was all water and
moonshine there.
Now I do not say that Nathaniel of Salem is a greater man than William
of Avon, or as great. But the difference between the two men is by no
means immeasurable. Not a very great deal more, and Nathaniel were
verily William.
This, too, I mean, that if Shakespeare has not been equalled, give the
world time, and he is sure to be surpassed in one hemisphere or the
other. Nor will it at all do to say that the world is getting gray and
grizzled now, and has lost that fresh charm which she wore of old, and
by virtue of which the great poets of past times made themselves what we
esteem them to be. Not so. The world is as young to-day as when it was
created; and this Vermont morning dew is as wet to my feet, as Eden’s
dew to Adam’s. Nor has nature been all over ransacked by our
progenitors, so that no new charms and mysteries remain for this latter
generation to find. Far from it. The trillionth part has not yet been
said; and all that has been said, but multiplies the avenues to what
remains to be said. It is not so much paucity as superabundance of
material that seems to incapacitate modern authors.
Let America, then, prize and cherish her writers; yea, let her glorify
them. They are not so many in number as to exhaust her goodwill. And
while she has good kith and kin of her own to take to her bosom, let her
not lavish her embraces upon the household of an alien. For believe it
or not, England after all, is in many things an alien to us. China has
more bonds of real love for us than she. But even were there no strong
literary individualities among us, as there are some dozens at least,
nevertheless, let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children,
before she praises (for everywhere, merit demands acknowledgment from
every one) the best excellence in the children of any other land. Let
her own authors, I say, have the priority of appreciation. I was much
pleased with a hot-headed Carolina cousin of mine, who once said,--‘If
there were no other American to stand by, in literature, why, then, I
would stand by Pop Emmons and his _Fredoniad_, and till a better epic
came along, swear it was not very far behind the _Iliad_.’ Take away the
words, and in spirit he was sound.
Not that American genius needs patronage in order to expand. For that
explosive sort of stuff will expand though screwed up in a vice, and
burst it, though it were triple steel. It is for the nation’s sake, and
not for her authors’ sake, that I would have America be heedful of the
increasing greatness among her writers. For how great the shame, if
other nations should be before her, in crowning her heroes of the pen!
But this is almost the case now. American authors have received more
just and discriminating praise (however loftily and ridiculously given,
in certain cases) even from some Englishmen, than from their own
countrymen. There are hardly five critics in America; and several of
them are asleep. As for patronage, it is the American author who now
patronises his country, and not his country him. And if at times some
among them appeal to the people for more recognition, it is not always
with selfish motives, but patriotic ones.
It is true, that but few of them as yet have evinced that decided
originality which merits great praise. But that graceful writer, who
perhaps of all Americans has received the most plaudits from his own
country for his productions,--that very popular and amiable writer,
however good and self-reliant in many things, perhaps owes his chief
reputation to the self-acknowledged imitation of a foreign model, and to
the studied avoidance of all topics but smooth ones. But it is better to
fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never
failed somewhere, that man cannot be great. Failure is the true test of
greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a
man wisely knows his powers,--it is only to be added, that, in that
case, he knows them to be small. Let us believe it, then, once for all,
that there is no hope for us in these smooth, pleasing writers that know
their powers. Without malice, but to speak the plain fact, they but
furnish an appendix to Goldsmith, and other English authors. And we want
no American Goldsmiths, nay, we want no American Miltons. It were the
vilest thing you could say of a true American author, that he were an
American Tompkins. Call him an American and have done, for you cannot
say a nobler thing of him. But it is not meant that all American writers
should studiously cleave to nationality in their writings; only this, no
American writer should write like an Englishman or a Frenchman; let him
write like a man, for then he will be sure to write like an American.
Let us away with this leaven of literary flunkeyism toward England. If
either must play the flunkey in this thing, let England do it, not us.
While we are rapidly preparing for that political supremacy among the
nations which prophetically awaits us at the close of the present
century, in a literary point of view, we are deplorably unprepared for
it; and we seem studious to remain so. Hitherto, reasons might have
existed why this should be; but no good reason exists now. And all that
is requisite to amendment in this matter, is simply this: that while
fully acknowledging all excellence everywhere, we should refrain from
unduly lauding foreign writers, and, at the same time, duly recognise
the meritorious writers that are our own; those writers who breathe that
unshackled, democratic spirit of Christianity in all things, which now
takes the practical lead in this world, though at the same time led by
ourselves--us Americans. Let us boldly condemn all imitation, though it
comes to us graceful and fragrant as the morning; and foster all
originality, though at first it be crabbed and ugly as our own pine
knots. And if any of our authors fail, or seem to fail, then, in the
words of my Carolina cousin, let us clap him on the shoulder and back
him against all Europe for his second round. The truth is, that in one
point of view this matter of a national literature has come to such a
pass with us, that in some sense we must turn bullies, else the day is
lost, or superiority so far beyond us, that we can hardly say it will
ever be ours.
And now, my countrymen, as an excellent author of your own flesh and
blood--an unimitating, and, perhaps, in his way, an inimitable man--whom
better can I commend to you, in the first place, than Nathaniel
Hawthorne. He is one of the new, and far better generation of your
writers. The smell of young beeches and hemlocks is upon him; your own
broad prairies are in his soul; and if you travel away inland into his
deep and noble nature, you will hear the far roar of his Niagara. Give
not over to future generations the glad duty of acknowledging him for
what he is. Take that joy to yourself, in your own generation; and so
shall he feel those grateful impulses on him, that may possibly prompt
him to the full flower of some still greater achievement in your eyes.
And by confessing him you thereby confess others; you brace the whole
brotherhood. For genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and
one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.
In treating of Hawthorne, or rather of Hawthorne in his writings (for I
never saw the man; and in the chances of a quiet plantation life, remote
from his haunts, perhaps never shall); in treating of his works, I say,
I have thus far omitted all mention of his _Twice Told Tales_, and
_Scarlet Letter_. Both are excellent, but full of such manifold,
strange, and diffusive beauties, that time would all but fail me to
point the half of them out. But there are things in those two books,
which, had they been written in England a century ago, Nathaniel
Hawthorne had utterly displaced many of the bright names we now revere
on authority. But I am content to leave Hawthorne to himself, and to the
infallible finding of posterity; and however great may be the praise I
have bestowed upon him, I feel that in so doing I have served and
honoured myself, rather than him. For, at bottom, great excellence is
praise enough to itself; but the feeling of a sincere and appreciative
love and admiration toward it, this is relieved by utterance, and warm,
honest praise ever leaves a pleasant flavour in the mouth; and it is an
honourable thing to confess to what is honourable in others.
But I cannot leave my subject yet. No man can read a fine author, and
relish him to his very bones while he reads, without subsequently
fancying to himself some ideal image of the man and his mind. And if you
rightly look for it, you will almost always find that the author himself
has somewhere furnished you with his own picture. For poets (whether in
prose or verse), being painters by nature, are like their brethren of
the pencil, the true portrait-painters, who, in the multitude of
likenesses to be sketched, do not invariably omit their own; and in all
high instances, they paint them without any vanity, though at times with
a lurking something that would take several pages to properly define.
I submit it, then, to those best acquainted with the man personally,
whether the following is not Nathaniel Hawthorne;--and to himself,
whether something involved in it does not express the temper of his
mind,--that lasting temper of all true, candid men--a seeker, not a
finder yet:--
‘A man now entered, in neglected attire, with the aspect of a
thinker, but somewhat too roughhewn and brawny for a scholar. His
face was full of sturdy vigour, with some finer and keener
attribute beneath; though harsh at first, it was tempered with the
glow of a large, warm heart, which had force enough to heat his
powerful intellect through and through. He advanced to the
Intelligencer, and looked at him with a glance of such stern
sincerity, that perhaps few secrets were beyond its scope.
‘“I seek for Truth,” said he.’
Twenty-four hours have elapsed since writing the foregoing. I have just
returned from the haymow, charged more and more with love and admiration
of Hawthorne. For I have just been gleaning through the Mosses, picking
up many things here and there that had previously escaped me. And I
found that but to glean after this man, is better than to be in at the
harvest of others. To be frank (though, perhaps, rather foolish),
notwithstanding what I wrote yesterday of these Mosses, I had not then
culled them all; but had, nevertheless, been sufficiently sensible of
the subtle essence in them, as to write as I did. To what infinite
height of loving wonder and admiration I may yet be borne, when by
repeatedly banqueting on these Mosses I shall have thoroughly
incorporated their whole stuff into my being--that, I cannot tell. But
already I feel that this Hawthorne has dropped germinous seeds into my
soul. He expands and deepens down, the more I contemplate him; and
further and further, shoots his strong New England roots into the hot
soil in my Southern soul.
By careful reference to the table of contents, I now find that I have
gone through all the sketches; but that when I yesterday wrote, I had
not at all read two particular pieces, to which I now desire to call
special attention--_A Select Party_ and _Young Goodman Brown_. Here, be
it said to all those whom this poor fugitive scrawl of mine may tempt to
the perusal of the Mosses, that they must on no account suffer
themselves to be trifled with, disappointed, or deceived by the
triviality of many of the titles to these sketches. For in more than one
instance, the title utterly belies the piece. It is as if rustic
demijohns containing the very best and costliest of Falernian and Tokay,
were labelled ‘Cider,’ ‘Perry,’ and ‘Elderberry wine.’ The truth seems
to be, that like many other geniuses, this Man of Mosses takes great
delight in hoodwinking the world,--at least, with respect to himself.
Personally, I doubt not that he rather prefers to be generally esteemed
but a so-so sort of author; being willing to reserve the thorough and
acute appreciation of what he is, to that party most qualified to
judge--that is, to himself. Besides, at the bottom of their natures, men
like Hawthorne, in many things, deem the plaudits of the public such
strong presumptive evidence of mediocrity in the object of them, that it
would in some degree render them doubtful of their own powers, did they
hear much and vociferous braying concerning them in the public pastures.
True, I have been braying myself (if you please to be witty enough to
have it so), but then I claim to be the first that has so brayed in this
particular matter; and, therefore, while pleading guilty to the charge,
still claim all the merit due to originality.
But with whatever motive, playful or profound, Nathaniel Hawthorne has
chosen to entitle his pieces in the manner he has, it is certain that
some of them are directly calculated to deceive--egregiously deceive,
the superficial skimmer of pages. To be downright and candid once more,
let me cheerfully say, that two of these titles did dolefully dupe no
less an eager-eyed reader than myself; and that, too, after I had been
impressed with a sense of the great depth and breadth of this American
man. ‘Who in the name of thunder’ (as the country people say in this
neighbourhood), ‘who in the name of thunder, would anticipate any marvel
in a piece entitled _Young Goodman Brown_?’ You would of course suppose
that it was a simple little tale, intended as a supplement to _Goody Two
Shoes_. Whereas, it is deep as Dante; nor can you finish it, without
addressing the author in his own words--‘It shall be yours to penetrate,
in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin.’... And with Young Goodman,
too, in allegorical pursuit of his Puritan wife, you cry out in your
anguish:--
‘“Faith!” shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and
desperation; and the echoes of the forest mocked him, crying,
“Faith! Faith!” as if bewildered wretches were seeking her all
through the wilderness.’
Now this same piece entitled _Young Goodman Brown_, is one of the two
that I had not all read yesterday; and I allude to it now, because it
is, in itself, such a strong positive illustration of the blackness in
Hawthorne, which I had assumed from the mere occasional shadows of it,
as revealed in several of the other sketches. But had I previously
perused _Young Goodman Brown_, I should have been at no pains to draw
the conclusion, which I came to at a time when I was ignorant that the
book contained one such direct and unqualified manifestation of it.
The other piece of the two referred to, is entitled _A Select Party_,
which, in my first simplicity upon originally taking hold of the book, I
fancied must treat of some pumpkin-pie party in old Salem; or some
chowder party on Cape Cod. Whereas, by all the gods of Peedee, it is the
sweetest and sublimest thing that has been written since Spenser wrote.
Nay, there is nothing in Spenser that surpasses it, perhaps nothing that
equals it. And the test is this. Read any canto in _The Faerie Queene_
and then read _A Select Party_, and decide which pleases you most, that
is, if you are qualified to judge. Do not be frightened at this; for
when Spenser was alive, he was thought of very much as Hawthorne is
now,--was generally accounted just such a ‘gentle’ harmless man. It may
be, that to common eyes, the sublimity of Hawthorne seems lost in his
sweetness,--as perhaps in that same _Select Party_ of his; for whom he
has builded so august a dome of sunset clouds, and served them on richer
plate than Belshazzar when he banqueted his lords in Babylon.
But my chief business now, is to point out a particular page in this
piece, having reference to an honoured guest, who under the name of the
Master Genius, but in the guise ‘of a young man of poor attire, with no
insignia of rank or acknowledged eminence,’ is introduced to the Man of
Fancy, who is the giver of the feast. Now, the page having reference to
this Master Genius, so happily expresses much of what I yesterday wrote,
touching the coming of the literary Shiloh of America, that I cannot but
be charmed by the coincidence; especially, when it shows such a parity
of ideas, at least in this one point, between a man like Hawthorne and a
man like me.
And here, let me throw out another conceit of mine touching this
American Shiloh, or Master Genius, as Hawthorne calls him. May it not
be, that this commanding mind has not been, is not, and never will be,
individually developed in any one man? And would it, indeed, appear so
unreasonable to suppose, that this great fulness and overflowing may be,
or may be destined to be, shared by a plurality of men of genius?
Surely, to take the very greatest example on record, Shakespeare cannot
be regarded as in himself the concretion of all the genius of his time;
nor as so immeasurably beyond Marlowe, Webster, Ford, Beaumont, Jonson,
that these great men can be said to share none of his power? For one, I
conceive that there were dramatists in Elizabeth’s day, between whom and
Shakespeare the distance was by no means great. Let any one, hitherto
little acquainted with those neglected old authors, for the first time
read them thoroughly, or even read Charles Lamb’s _Specimens_ of them,
and he will be amazed at the wondrous ability of those Anaks of men, and
shocked at this renewed example of the fact, that Fortune has more to do
with fame than merit,--though without merit, lasting fame there can be
none.
Nevertheless, it would argue too ill of my country were this maxim to
hold good concerning Nathaniel Hawthorne, a man who already in some few
minds has shed ‘such a light as never illuminates the earth save when a
great heart burns as the household fire of a grand intellect.’
The words are his,--in the _Select Party_; and they are a magnificent
setting to a coincident sentiment of my own, but ramblingly expressed
yesterday, in reference to himself. Gainsay it who will; as I now write,
I am Posterity speaking by proxy--and after-times will make it more than
good, when I declare, that the American who up to the present day has
evinced, in literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that
man is Nathaniel Hawthorne. Moreover, that whatever Nathaniel Hawthorne
may hereafter write, _Mosses from an Old Manse_ will be ultimately
accounted his masterpiece. For there is a sure, though secret sign in
some works which proves the culmination of the powers (only the
developable ones, however) that produced them. But I am by no means
desirous of the glory of a prophet. I pray Heaven that Hawthorne may yet
prove me an impostor in this prediction. Especially, as I somehow cling
to the strange fancy, that, in all men, hiddenly reside certain
wondrous, occult properties--as in some plants and minerals--which by
some happy but very rare accident (as bronze was discovered by the
melting of the iron and brass at the burning of Corinth) may chance to
be called forth here on earth; not entirely waiting for their better
discovery in the more congenial, blessed atmosphere of heaven.
Once more--for it is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all
subjects are infinite. By some people this entire scrawl of mine may be
esteemed altogether unnecessary, inasmuch ‘as years ago’ (they may say)
‘we found out the rich and rare stuff in this Hawthorne, who you now
parade forth, as if only you _yourself_ were the discoverer of this
Portuguese diamond in your literature.’ But even granting all this--and
adding to it, the assumption that the books of Hawthorne have sold by
the five thousand--what does that signify? They should be sold by the
hundred thousand; and read by the million; and admired by every one who
is capable of admiration.
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