There must have been some magical influence in the Old Manse or in its surrounding scenery, to have stimulated both Emerson’s and Hawthorne’s love of Nature to such a degree. Emerson’s eye dilates as he looks upon the sunshine gilding the trunks of the balm of Gilead trees on his avenue; and Hawthorne dwells with equal delight on the luxuriant squash vines which spread over his vegetable garden. Discoursing on this he says:
“Speaking of summer squashes, I must say a word of their beautiful and varied forms. They presented an endless diversity of urns and vases, shallow or deep, scalloped or plain, molded in patterns which a sculptor would do well to copy, since art has never invented anything more graceful.”
And again:
“A cabbage, too—especially the early Dutch cabbage, which swells to a monstrous circumference, until its ambitious heart often bursts asunder—is a matter to be proud of when we can claim a share with the earth and sky in producing it.”
It would seem as if no one before Hawthorne had rightly observed these common vegetables, whose external appearance is always before our eyes. He not only humanizes whatever attracts his attention, but he looks through a refining medium of his own personality. He has the gift of Midas to bring back the Golden Age for us. Who besides Homer has been able to describe a chariot-race, and who but Hawthorne could extract such poetry from a farmer’s garden?
If we compare this introductory chapter with such earlier sketches as “The Vision at the Fountain” and “The Toll-Gatherer’s Day,” we recognize the progress that Hawthorne has made since the first volume of “Twice Told Tales.” We are no longer reminded of the plain unpainted house on Lake Sebago. His style is not only more graceful, but has acquired greater fulness of expression, and he is evidently working in a deeper and richer vein of thought. Purity of expression is still his polar star, and his writing is nowhere overloaded, but it has a warmer tone, a deeper perspective, and an atmospheric quality which painters call chi-aroscuro. He charms with pleasing fancies, while he penetrates to the soul.
Hawthorne rarely repeats himself in details, and never in designs. Two of Dickens’s most interesting novels, “Oliver Twist” and “David Copperfield,” are constructed on the same theme, but each of the studies in this collection has a distinct individuality which appeals to the reader after a fashion of its own. Each has its moral, or rather central, idea to which all its component parts are related, and teaches a lesson of its own, so unobtrusively that we become possessed of it almost unawares. Some are intensely, even tragically, serious; others so light and airy that they seem as if woven out of gossamer.
There are a few, however, that do not harmonize with the general tone and character of the rest,—especially “Mrs. Bull-Frog,” which Hawthorne himself confessed to having been an experiment, and which strangely enough is much more in the style of his son Julian. “Monsieur du Miroir” and “Sketches from Memory” are relics of his earlier writings; perhaps also “Feather-Top” and “The Procession of Life.” It would have been better perhaps if “Young Goodman Brown” had been used to light a fire at the Old Manse.
“Monsieur du Miroir” is chiefly interesting as an example of Hawthorne’s faculty for elaborating the most simple subject until every possible phase of it has been exhausted. It may also throw some light scientifically on the origin of consciousness. We see ourselves reflected not only in the mirror, but on the blade of a knife, or a puddle in the road; and, if we look sharply enough, in the eyes of other men—even in the expression of their faces. In such manner does Nature force upon us a recognition of our various personalities—the nucleus of self-knowledge, and self-respect.
Whittier once spoke of “Young Goodman Brown” as indicating a mental peculiarity in Hawthorne, which like the cuttle-fish rarely rises to the surface. The plot is cynical, and largely enigmatical. The very name of it (in the way Hawthorne develops the story) is a fearful satire on human nature. He may have intended this for an exposure of the inconsistency, and consequent hypocrisy, of Puritanism; but the name of Goodman Brown’s wife is Faith, and this suggests that Brown may have been himself intended for an incarnation of doubt, or disbelief carried to a logical extreme. Whatever may have been Hawthorne’s design, the effect is decidedly unpleasant.