Admirably a modern artist in this respect, his old-fashionedness, so often dilated upon, can easily be overstated. He not only left charming work in the tale, but helped others who came after to use their tools, furthering their art by the study of a good model.
Nothing was more inevitable then that Cooper when he began fiction in mid-manhood should have written the romance: it was the dominant form in England because of Scott. But that he should have realized the unused resources of America and produced a long series of adventure stories, taking a pioneer as his hero and illustrating the western life of settlement in his career, the settlement that was to reclaim a wilderness for a mighty civilization—that was a thing less to be expected, a truly epic achievement. The Leather Stocking Series was in the strictest sense an original performance—the significance of Fenimore Cooper is not likely to be exaggerated; it is quite independent of the question of his present hold upon mature readers, his faults of technique and the truth of his pictures. To have grasped such an opportunity and so to have used it as to become a great man-of-letters at a time when literature was more a private employ than the interest of the general—surely it indicates genuine personality, and has the mark of creative power. To which we may add, that Cooper is still vital in his appeal, as the statistics of our public libraries show.
Moreover, incorrigible romancer that he was, he is a man of the nineteenth century, as was Irving, in the way he instinctively chose near-at-hand native material: he knew the Mohawk Valley by long residence; he knew the Indian and the trapper there; and he depicted these types in a setting that was to him the most familiar thing in the world. In fact, we have in him an illustration of the modern writer who knows he must found his message firmly upon reality. For both Leather-stocking and Chingachgook are true in the broad sense, albeit the white trapper's dialect may be uncertain and the red man exhibit a dignity that seems Roman rather than aboriginal. The Daniel Boone of history must have had, we feel, the nobler qualities of Bumpo; how otherwise did he do what it was his destiny to do? In the same way, the Indian of Cooper is the red man in his pristine home before the day of fire-water and Agency methods. It may be that what to us to-day seems a too glorified picture is nearer the fact than we are in a position easily to realize. Cooper worked in the older method of primary colors, of vivid, even violent contrasts: his was not the school of subtleties. His women, for example, strike us as somewhat mechanical; there is a sameness about them that means the failure to differentiate: the Ibsenian psychology of the sex was still to come. But this does not alter the obvious excellencies of the work. Cooper carried his romanticism in presenting the heroic aspects of the life he knew best into other fields where he walked with hardly less success: the revolutionary story illustrated by "The Spy," and the sea-tale of which a fine example is "The Pilot." He had a sure instinct for those elements of fiction which make for romance, and the change of time and place affects him only in so far as it affects his familiarity with his materials. His experience in the United States Navy gave him a sure hand in the sea novels: and in a book like "The Spy" he was near enough to the scenes and characters to be studies practically contemporary. He had the born romanticist's natural affection for the appeal of the past and the stock elements can be counted upon in all his best fiction: salient personalities, the march of events, exciting situations, and ever that arch-romantic lure, the one trick up the sleeve to pique anticipation. Hence, in spite of descriptions that seem over-long, a heavy-footed manner that lacks suppleness and variety, and undeniable carelessness of construction, he is still loved of the young and seen to be a natural raconteur, an improviser of the Dumas-Scott lineage and, even tested by the later tests, a noble writer of romance, a man whom Balzac and Goethe read with admiration: unquestionably influential outside his own land in that romantic mood of expression which, during the first half of the nineteenth century, was so widespread and fruitful.
III
It is the plainer with every year that Poe's contribution to American fiction, and indeed to that of the nineteenth century, ignoring national boundaries, stands by itself. Whatever his sources—and no writer appears to derive less from the past—he practically created on native soil the tale of fantasy, sensational plot, and morbid impressionism. His cold aloofness, his lack of spiritual import, unfitted him perhaps for the broader work of the novelist who would present humanity in its three dimensions with the light and shade belonging to Life itself. Confining himself to the tale which he believed could be more artistic because it was briefer and so the natural mold for a mono-mood, he had the genius so to handle color, music and suggestion in an atmosphere intense in its subjectivity, that confessed masterpieces were the issue. Whether in the objective detail of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," with its subtle illusion of realism, or in the nuances and delicatest tonality of "Ligeia," he has left specimens of the different degrees of romance which have not been surpassed, conquering in all but that highest style of romantic writing where the romance lies in an emphasis upon the noblest traits of mankind. He is, it is not too much to say, well-nigh as important to the growth of modern fiction outside the Novel form as he is to that of poetry, though possibly less unique on his prose side. His fascination is that of art and intellect: his material and the mastery wherewith he handles it conjoin to make his particular brand of magic. While some one story of Hoffman or Bulwer Lytton or Stevenson may be preferred, no one author of our time has produced an equal number of successes in the same key. It is instructive to compare him with Hawthorne because of a superficial resemblance with an underlying fundamental distinction. One phase of the Concord romancer's art results in stories which seem perhaps as somber, strange and morbid as those of Poe: "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," "Rapacinni's Daughter," "The Birth Mark." They stand, of course, for but one side of his power, of which "The Great Stone Face" and "The Snow Image" are the brighter and sweeter. Thus Hawthorne's is a broader and more diversified accomplishment in the form of the tale. But the likeness has to do with subject-matter, not with the spirit of the work. The gloomiest of Hawthorne's short stories are spiritually sound and sweet: Poe's, on the contrary, might be described as unmoral; they seem written by one disdaining all the touchstones of life, living in a land of eyrie where there is no moral law. He would no more than Lamb indict his very dreams. In the case of Hawthorne there is allegorical meaning, the lesson is never far to seek: a basis of common spiritual responsibility is always below one's feet. And this is quite as true of the long romances as of the tales. The result is that there is spiritual tonic in Hawthorne's fiction, while something almost miasmatic rises from Poe, dropping a kind of veil between us and the salutary realities of existence. If Poe be fully as gifted, he is, for this reason, less sanely endowed. It may be conceded that he is not always as shudderingly sardonic and removed from human sympathy as in "The Cask of Amontillado" or "The Black Cat"; yet it is no exaggeration to affirm that he is nowhere more typical, more himself. On the contrary, in a tale like "The Birth Mark," what were otherwise the horror and ultra-realism of it, is tempered by and merged in the suggestion that no man shall with impunity tamper with Nature nor set the delight of the eyes above the treasures of the soul. The poor wife dies, because her husband cares more to remove a slight physical defect than he does for her health and life. So it cannot be said of the somber work in the tale of these two sons of genius that,
"A common grayness silvers everything,"
since the gifts are so differently exercised and the artistic product of totally dissimilar texture. Moreover, Poe is quite incapable of the lovely naivete of "The Snow Image," or the sun-kissed atmosphere of the wonder-book. Humor, except in the satiric vein, is hardly more germane to the genius of Hawthorne than to that of Poe; its occasional exercise is seldom if ever happy.
Although most literary comparisons are futile because of the disparateness of the things compared, the present one seems legitimate in the cases of Poe and Hawthorne, superficially so alike in their short-story work.
IV
In the romances in which he is, by common consent, our greatest practitioner, to be placed first indeed of all who have written fiction of whatever kind on American soil, Hawthorne never forsakes—subtle, spiritual, elusive, even intangible as he may seem—the firm underfooting of mother earth. His themes are richly human, his psychologic truth (the most modern note of realism) unerring in its accuracy and insight. As part of his romantic endowment, he prefers to place plot and personages in the dim backward of Time, gaining thus in perspective and ampleness of atmosphere. He has told us as much in the preface to "The House of The Seven Gables," that wonderful study in subdued tone-colors. That pronunciamento of a great artist (from which in an earlier chapter quotation has been made) should not be overlooked by one who essays to get a hint of his secret. He is always exclusively engaged with questions of conscience and character; like George Meredith, his only interest is in soul-growth. This is as true in the "Marble Faun" with its thought of the value of sin in the spiritual life, or in "The Blithedale Romance," wherein poor Zenobia learns how infinitely hard it is for a woman to oppose the laws of society, as it is in the more obvious lesson of "The Scarlet Letter." In this respect the four romances are all of a piece: they testify to their spiritual parentage. "The Scarlet Letter," if the greatest, is only so for the reason that the theme is deepest, most fundamental, and the by-gone New England setting most sympathetic to the author's loving interest. Plainly an allegory, it yet escapes the danger of becoming therefore poor fiction, by being first of all a study of veritable men and women, not lay-figures to carry out an argument. The eyes of the imagination can always see Esther Prynne and Dimmesdale, honest but weak man of God, the evil Chillingworth and little Pearl who is all child, unearthly though she be, a symbol at once of lost innocence and a hope of renewed purity. No pale abstractions these; no folk in fiction are more believed in: they are of our own kindred with whom we suffer or fondly rejoice. In a story so metaphysical as "The House of The Seven Gables," full justice to which has hardly been done (it was Hawthorne's favorite), while the background offered by the historic old mansion is of intention low-toned and dim, there is no obscurity, though plenty of innuendo and suggestion. The romance is a noble specimen of that use of the vague which never falls into the confusion of indeterminate ideas. The theme is startlingly clear: a sin is shown working through generations and only to find expiation in the fresh health of the younger descendants: life built on a lie must totter to its fall. And the shell of all this spiritual seething—the gabled Salem house—may at last be purified and renovated for a posterity which, because it is not paralyzed by the dark past, can also start anew with hope and health, while every room of the old home is swept through and cleansed by the wholesome winds of heaven.