Hawthorne and His Mosses
             [BY A VIRGINIAN SPENDING JULY IN VERMONT]

                          by Herman Melville

  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 ponds,--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 bookstores--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,
like wine, 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 goodbye
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
flyleaf.--"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 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 magic spirit over him?"--So all
that day, half-buried in the new clover, I watched this Hawthorne's
"Assyrian dawn, and Paphian sunset and moon-rise, 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 mild 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, "that 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 noon-day repose of this
Hawthorne's spell, how aptly might the still fall of his ruddy
thoughts into your soul be symbolized by "the thump of a great apple,
in the stillest afternoon, 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."
  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 can not 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 clews, 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 nought.
  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 his
light for every shade of his dark. But however this may be, this
blackness it is that furnishes the infinite obscure of his back-
ground,--that back-ground, 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 faraway 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 sane 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-discernable greatness, to which these
immediate products are but the infallible indices. In Shakespeare's
tomb lies infinitely more than Shakspeare 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 arm-chair 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 popularizing noise and show of broad farce, and
blood-besmeared tragedy; content with the still, rich utterances 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 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 Rochefoucault, 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 Shakespeares 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 correspondent 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, Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, but only Master William
Shakespeare of the shrewd, thriving, business firm of Condell,
Shakespeare & Co., proprietors of the Globe Theatre in London; and by
a courtly author, of the name of Greene, was hooted at, as an "upstart
crow" beautified " with other birds' feathers." For, mark it well,
imitation is often the first charge brought against real 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 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, he is
sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to
be born. For it will never do for us who in most other things out-do
as well as out-brag the world, it will not do for us to fold our hands
and say, In the highest department advance there is none. 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 today, 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 good-will. 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 bowels of real love for us than she. But even were
there no Hawthorne, no Emerson, no Whittier, no Irving, no Bryant, no
Dana, no Cooper, no Willis (not the author of the "Dashes", but the
author of the "Belfry Pigeon")--were there none of these, and others
of like calibre among us, nevertheless, let America first praise
mediocrity, even in her own 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 can not 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 can not 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 Bostonian leaven of literary flunkeyism towards England. If
either must play the flunkey in this thing, let England do it, not us.
And the time is not far off when circumstances may force her to it.
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 freely acknowledging all excellence, everywhere, we should
refrain from unduly lauding foreign writers and, at the same time,
duly 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 contemn 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 enthusiastic
Carolina cousin, let us clap him on the shoulder, and back him against
all Europe for his second round. The truth is, that in our 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 your beeches and hemlocks is upon him;
your own broad praries 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 your self, in your
own generation; and so shall he feel those grateful impulses in 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 more 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 of 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 hay mow, 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 banquetting on these Mosses, I shall have
thoroughly incorporated their whole stuff into my being,--that, I can
not 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 of 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 eagle-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 is 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", 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 that 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
Spencer wrote. Nay, there is nothing in Spencer that surpasses it,
perhaps, nothing that equals it. And the test is this: read any canto
in "The Faery Queen", and then read "A Select Party", and decide which
pleases you the most,--that is, if you are qualified to judge. Do not
be frightened at this; for when Spencer 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 this 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's when
he banquetted 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 fullness 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 Marlow, Webster,
Ford, Beaumont, Jonson, that those 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 illy 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, "The
Mosses from an Old Manse" will be ultimately accounted his
masterpiece. For there is a sure, though a secret sign in some works
which prove 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 in 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,
whom you now parade forth, as if only youself were the discoverer of
this Portuguese diamond in our 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.