The crickets, sliding through the grass,
Shall pipe for her an evening mass.
His highest flights are represented by ‘The Chambered Nautilus’ and ‘Musa,’ by the quaint and fanciful ‘Homesick in Heaven,’ and by the simple and pathetic little lament entitled ‘Martha.’ His claim to the name of poet must rest on these, on his fine setting of the romance of Agnes Surriage, and on his tributes to Bryant and to Everett.
VI
FICTION AND BIOGRAPHY
Holmes wrote three novels. Although readable, original, based on a thorough comprehension of the scenes described, the life, antecedents, prejudices, habits, and manners of the people portrayed, nevertheless they strike one as being experiments in fiction rather than true novels. They may be classed with similar attempts by J. G. Holland and Bayard Taylor. Each of these writers was a practised craftsman. The trained man of letters can write a volume which he, his friends, his publishers, the public, and many fair-minded critics agree in calling a novel. But the book in question does not become a novel from having been cast in the orthodox form. It resembles a novel more nearly than it resembles anything else, nevertheless it is not a veritable novel. Any reader can feel it, though he may not be able to say just where the difference lies, or how there happens to be a difference. Many a writer, it would seem, has only to continue his efforts to arrive finally at the making of a true novel. He falls short because his mind is working in an unwonted medium rather than because he lacks inventive ability.
If Elsie Venner and The Guardian Angel fail of being true novels, they are at least highly successful studies in fiction and have given and will continue to give a world of pleasure. If A Mortal Antipathy falls short of the excellence attained by the other two, it has at least the virtue of having been written by a man who could not be uninteresting, no matter what was his age or his humor.
Elsie Venner is a study in prenatal influences. The motive is gruesome enough. A young woman, bitten by a snake, transmits certain tendencies thus derived to her child. The subject was better adapted to Hawthorne’s pen than to the Autocrat’s. A man of science knows too much. Imagination is hampered. ‘What is’ and ‘What might be’ are in perpetual conflict. A poet (such as Hawthorne essentially was) throws science to the winds. Holmes goes at the problem in a brisk, business-like way. Hawthorne would have treated it as a mystery, not dragging it into broad light.
Elsie Venner was dramatized and staged. Holmes went to see it. What he thought of the play at the time is not recorded, but in after years he pronounced it ‘bad, very bad.’
The Guardian Angel also deals with the question of heredity. The problem of how many of our ancestors come out in us, and just how they make themselves felt, was always fascinating to Holmes. There are no snakes in this story to account for Myrtle Hazard’s peculiarities, but something quite as enigmatical, namely, an Indian. One character in The Guardian Angel has come near to achieving immortality—Gifted Hopkins, the minor poet, whose name was an inspiration. He represents a harmless and much-abused race. The successful in his own craft are even more impatient with him than the mockers among the laity, probably because Gifted, in the innocence of his heart, desires to have his verses read, and sends them to eminent poets under the mistaken impression that they will be welcome. Holmes confessed that he had been hard on Gifted Hopkins.
The memoir of John Lothrop Motley, in addition to being a formal record of personal history and literary achievement, is a spirited defence of a proud, a gifted, and (in the biographer’s opinion) an ill-used man, a man who, after years of successful public service, was needlessly and wantonly humbled and mortified. Hence the note of fine indignation which vibrates through the narrative.