_BY A VIRGINIAN SPENDING JULY IN VERMONT_
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 hillside 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 flavor 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-by 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 hillside 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 humor 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 humor 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 symbolized 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 humor 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 humor 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 humor 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
symbolizing 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 Shakspeare plays his grandest conceits,
the things that have made for Shakspeare his loftiest but most
circumscribed renown, as the profoundest of thinkers. For by
philosophers Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare, Shakspeare. 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 Shakspeare, 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 Shakspeare's
tomb lies infinitely more than Shakspeare ever wrote. And if I magnify
Shakspeare, 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 Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare, who was forced
to the contrary course by circumstances, Hawthorne (either from
simple disinclination, or else from inaptitude) refrains from all
the popularizing 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
arterialized 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 Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare absolutely unapproachable. But Shakspeare has
been approached. There are minds that have gone as far as Shakspeare
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 Shakspeare 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
Shakspeare'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 Shakspeare 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 coloring. 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, Shakspeare was not Shakspeare, but only Master
William Shakspeare of the shrewd, thriving, business firm of Condell,
Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare 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 grey 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
patronizes 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 towards 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, duty recognize 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 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 honored myself, than him. For, at bottom, great excellence is
praise enough to itself; but the feeling of a sincere and appreciative
love and admiration towards it, this is relieved by utterance, and
warm, honest praise ever leaves a pleasant flavor in the mouth; and it
is an honorable thing to confess to what is honorable 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 vigor, 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 neighborhood), "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 honored 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, Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare 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.