Again, in the "Story of the Artist of the Beautiful," we breathe not a word about the impossibility of framing out of springs and wheels so marvellous a butterfly, that the seeming creature shall not only fly and move its antennæ, and fold and display its wings like the living insect, but shall even surpass the living insect by showing a fine sense of human character, and refusing to perch on the hand of those who had not a genuine sentiment of beauty. The novelist shall put what springs and wheels he pleases into his mechanism, but the springs and wheels he places in the mechanist himself, must be those of genuine humanity, or the whole fiction falls to the ground. Now the mechanist, the hero of the story, the "Artist of the Beautiful," is described throughout as animated with the feelings proper to the artist, not to the mechanician. He is a young watchmaker, who, instead of plodding at the usual and lucrative routine of his trade, devotes his time to the structure of a most delicate and ingenious toy. We all know that a case like this is very possible. Few men, we should imagine, are more open to the impulse of emulation, the desire to do that which had never been done before, than the ingenious mechanist; and few men more completely under the dominion of their leading passion or project, because every day brings some new contrivance, some new resource, and the hope that died at night is revived in the morning. But Mr Hawthorne is not contented with the natural and very strong impulse of the mechanician; he speaks throughout of his enthusiastic artisan as of some young Raphael intent upon "creating the beautiful." Springs, and wheels, and chains, however fine and complicate, are not "the beautiful." He might as well suppose the diligent anatomist, groping amongst nerves and tissues, to be stimulated to his task by an especial passion for the beautiful.
The passion of the ingenious mechanist we all understand; the passion of the artist, sculptor, or painter, is equally intelligible; but the confusion of the two in which Mr Hawthorne would vainly interest us, is beyond all power of comprehension. These are the improbabilities against which we contend. Moreover, when this wonderful butterfly is made—which he says truly was "a gem of art that a monarch would have purchased with honours and abundant wealth, and have treasured among the jewels of his kingdom, as the most unique and wondrous of them all,"—the artist sees it crushed in the hands of a child and looks "placidly" on. So never did any human mechanist who at length had succeeded in the dream and toil of his life. And at the conclusion of the story we are told, in not very intelligible language,—"When the artist rose high enough to achieve the Beautiful, the symbol by which he made it perceptible to mortal senses became of little value to his eyes, while his spirit possessed itself in the enjoyment of the reality."
It is not, perhaps, to the stories we should be disposed to refer for the happier specimens of Mr Hawthorne's writing, but rather to those papers which we cannot better describe than as so many American Spectators of the year 1846—so much do they call to mind the style of essay in the days of Steele and Addison.
We may observe here, that American writers frequently remind us of models of composition somewhat antiquated with ourselves. While, on the one hand, there is a wild tendency to snatch at originality at any cost—to coin new phrases—new probabilities—to "intensify" our language with strange "impulsive" energy—to break loose, in short, from all those restraints which have been thought to render style both perspicuous and agreeable; there is, on the other hand—produced partly by a very intelligible reaction—an effort somewhat too apparent to be classical and correct. It is a very laudable effort, and we should be justly accused of fastidiousness did we mention it as in the least blameworthy. We would merely observe that an effect is sometimes produced upon an English ear as if the writer belonged to a previous era of our literature, to an epoch when to produce smooth and well modulated sentences was something rarer and more valued than it is now. It will be a proof how little of censure we attach to the characteristic
we are noticing, when we point to the writings of Dr Channing for an illustration of our meaning. They have to us an air of formality, a slight dash of pedantry. We seem to hear the echo, though it has grown faint, of the Johnsonian rhythm. They are often not ineloquent, but the eloquence seems to have passed under the hands of the composition-master. The clever classical romance, called "The Letters from Palmyra," has the same studied air. It is here, indeed, more suited to the subject, for every writer, when treating of a classical era, appears by a sort of intuitive propriety to recognise the necessity of purifying to the utmost his own style.
In some of Mr Hawthorne's papers we are reminded, and by no means disagreeably, of the manner of Steele and Addison. "The Intelligence Office" presents, in some parts, a very pleasing imitation of this style. This central intelligence office is one open to all mankind to make and record their various applications. The first person who enters inquires for "a place," and when questioned what sort of place he is seeking, very naïvely answers, "I want my place!—my own place!—my true place in the world!—my thing to do!" The application is entered, but very slender hope is given that he who is running about the world in search of his place, will ever find it.
"The next that entered was a man beyond the middle age, bearing the look of one who knew the world and his own course in it. He had just alighted from a handsome private carriage, which had orders to wait in the street while its owner transacted his business. This person came up to the desk with a quick determined step, and looked the Intelligencer in the face with a resolute eye, though at the same time some secret trouble gleamed from it.
"'I have an estate to dispose of,' said he with a brevity that seemed characteristic.
"'Describe it,' said the Intelligencer.
"The applicant proceeded to give the boundaries of his property, its nature, comprising tillage, pasture, woodland, and pleasure ground, in ample circuit; together with a mansion-house replete with gorgeous furniture and all the luxurious artifices that combined to render it a residence where life might flow onward in a stream of golden days.