Chapter Nathaniel Hawthorne of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

accepted as one of the best methods of literary art, Nathaniel Hawthorne is emphatically our greatest master in romantic fiction; and in that peculiar field in which he worked he remains unique.

The volume of his production is by no means small. We count but four successful romances completed; one of these, however, The Scarlet Letter, is acknowledged by all critics to be the strongest work of fiction yet produced in America, and two of the other three, The House of Seven Gables and The Marble Faun, are admirable examples of narrative art. But Hawthorne's numerous tales and sketches must also be taken into account. Many of them stand forth with marks of high distinction. The Gentle Boy, The Snow-Image, The Great Stone Face, The Ambitious Guest, -- these are fine examples of the short story, as then conceived, in quiet tone; Wakefield, Ethan Brand, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, Roger Malvin's Burial, Young Goodman Brown, The White Old Maid, and Rappaccini's Daughter have the weirdness and the fantasy of more pronounced romance. The historical sketches like The Gray Champion, The May-Pole of Merrymount, and the Legends of the Province House are unsurpassed in their kind. The allegories like Fancy's Show Box, theBirthmark, and Earth's Holocaust perhaps do not call for especial praise, but the sketches based on realities, of which we should note particularly A Rill from the Town Pump, Main Street,The Old Manse, and the essay on The Custom-House, are well worthy of admiration.

It is a wonderful collection -- the product of a wonderful imagination, fantastic, sometimes grotesque, always subtle, always expressing itself in a style of the utmost delicacy and charm. Hawthorne was ever an idealist. Whether it was a result of his "tendency to aloofness," his early years of solitude and contemplation, or not, he had somehow received the gift of insight which showed him the human heart. Certainly he achieved in unusual degree the story-teller's art.

Suggestions for Reading.

The reader may make his own selection from the various groups of Hawthorne's tales mentioned in preceding paragraphs; but on no account should he miss the introductory essays which accompany Mosses from an Old Manse and The Scarlet Letter; he will also find it interesting and worth while to dip here and there in the American Note-Books.

Authorities.

While Julian Hawthorne's Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife will rank as chief authority, A Study of Hawthorne, by George Parsons Lathrop, will prove more generally useful, and the admirable brief sketch of Hawthorne (in the Beacon Biographies) by Mrs. Fields may be used to good advantage. Mrs. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop's Memories of Hawthorne, and the Recollections of Hawthorne, by Horatio Bridge, are especially recommended. Henry James is the author of the Hawthorne in the English Men of Letters Series and Moncure D. Conway of that in the Great Writers Series. In Yesterdays with Authors, by James T. Fields, and the essays Hawthorne and The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, by George W. Curtis (Literary and Social Essays), will be found picturesque and suggestive glimpses of this strange personality. Professor Trent's American Literature contains a most comprehensive study of Hawthorne's literary work. The only editions of Hawthorne's complete works are published by Houghton Mifflin Company.