The justice of such a criticism applied to Hawthorne would depend on the notion which the critic has of what constitutes excellence in kind. The ordinary demand of the mind in a work of art, serious as well on humorous, is for geniality—a demand which admits of the widest variety of kinds which can be included within a healthy and pleasurable directing sentiment. Now Hawthorne is undoubtedly exquisitely genial, at times, but in him geniality cannot be said to predominate. Geniality of general effect comes, in a great degree, from tenderness to persons; it implies a conception of individual character so intense and vivid, that the beings of the author’s brain become the objects of his love; and this love somewhat blinds him to the action of those spiritual laws which really control the conduct and avenge the crimes of individuals.
In Hawthorne, on the contrary, persons are commonly conceived in their relations to laws, and hold a second place in his mind. In “The Scarlet Letter,” which made a deeper impression on the public than any romance ever published in the United States, there is little true characterization, in the ordinary meaning of the term. The characters are not really valuable for what they are, but for what they illustrate. Imagination is predominant throughout the work, but it is imagination in its highest analytic rather than dramatic action. And this is the secret of the strange fascination which fastens attention to its horrors. It is not Hester or Dimmesdale that really interest us, but the spectacle of the human mind open to the retribution of violated law, and quivering in the agonies of shame and remorse. It is the law and not the person that is vitally conceived, and accordingly the author traces its sure operation with an unshrinking intellect that, for the time, is remorseless to persons. As an illustration of the Divine order on which our conventional order rests, it is the most moral book of the age; and is especially valuable as demonstrating the superficiality of that code of ethics, predominant in the French school of romance, which teaches obedience to individual instinct and impulse, regardless of all moral truths which contain the generalized experience of the race. The purpose of the book did not admit of geniality. Adultery has been made genial by many poets and novelists, but only by considering it under a totally different aspect from that in which Hawthorne viewed it. Geniality in “The Scarlet Letter” would be like an ice-cream shop in Dante’s Inferno.
In “The House of Seven Gables,” we perceive the same far-reaching and deep-seeing vision into the duskiest corners of the human mind, and the same grasp of objective laws, but the interest is less intense, and the subject admits of more relief. There is more of character in it, delineated however on some neutral ground between the grotesque and the picturesque, and with flashes of supernatural light darting occasionally into the picture, revealing, by glimpses, the dread foundations on which the whole rests. It contains more variety of power than “The Scarlet Letter,” and in the characters of Clifford and Phebe exhibits the extreme points of Hawthorne’s genius. The delineation of Clifford evinces a metaphysical power, a capacity of watching the most remote movements of thought, and of resolving into form the mere film of consciousness—of exhibiting the mysteries of the mind in as clear a light as ordinary novelists exhibit its common manifestations—which might excite the wonder of Kant or Hegel. Phebe, on the contrary, though shaped from the finest materials, and implying a profound insight into the subtilest sources or genial feeling, is represented dramatically, is a pure embodiment, and may be deemed Hawthorne’s most perfect character. The sunshine of the book all radiates from her; and there is hardly a “shady place” in that weird “House,” into which it does not penetrate.
“The Blithedale Romance,” just published, seems to us the most perfect in execution of any of Hawthorne’s works, and as a work of art, hardly equaled by any thing else which the country has produced. It is a real organism of the mind, with the strict unity of one of Nature’s own creations. It seems to have grown up in the author’s nature, as a tree or plant grows from the earth, in obedience to the law of its germ. This unity cannot be made clear by analysis; it is felt in the oneness of impression it makes on the reader’s imagination. The author’s hold on the central principle is never relaxed; it never slips from his grasp; and yet every thing is developed with a victorious ease which adds a new charm to the interest of the materials. The romance, also, has more thought in it than either of its predecessors; it is literally crammed with the results of most delicate and searching observation of life, manners and character, and of the most piercing imaginative analysis of motives and tendencies; yet nothing seems labored, but the profoundest reflections glide unobtrusively into the free flow of the narration and description, equally valuable from their felicitous relation to the events and persons of the story, and for their detached depth and power. The work is not without a certain morbid tint in the general coloring of the mood whence it proceeds; but this peculiarity is fainter than is usual with Hawthorne.
The scene of the story is laid in Blithedale, an imaginary community on the model of the celebrated Brook Farm, of Roxbury, of which Hawthorne himself was a member. The practical difficulties in the way of combining intellectual and manual labor on socialist principles constitutes the humor of the book; but the interest centres in three characters, Hollingsworth, Zenobia, and Priscilla. These are represented as they appear through the medium of an imagined mind, that of Miles Coverdale, the narrator of the story, a person indolent of will, but of an apprehensive, penetrating, and inquisitive intellect. The discerner of spirits only tells us his own discoveries; and there is a wonderful originality and power displayed in thus representing the characters. What is lost by this mode, on definite views, is more than made up in the stimulus given both to our acuteness and curiosity, and its manifold suggestiveness. We are joint watchers with Miles himself, and sometimes find ourselves disagreeing with him in his interpretation of an act or expression of the persons he is observing. The events are purely mental, the changes and crises of moods of mind. Three persons of essentially different characters and purposes are placed together; the law of spiritual influence, the magnetism of soul on soul begins to operate; and the processes of thought and emotion are then presented in perfect logical order to their inevitable catastrophe. These characters are Hollingsworth, a reformer, whose whole nature becomes ruthless under the dominion of one absorbing idea—Zenobia, a beautiful, imperious, impassioned, self-willed woman, superbly endowed in person and intellect, but with something provokingly equivocal in her character—and Priscilla, an embodiment of feminine affection in its simplest type. Westervelt, an elegant piece of earthliness, “not so much born as damned into the world,” plays a Mephistophelian part in this mental drama; and is so skillfully represented that the reader joins at the end, with the author, in praying that Heaven may annihilate him. “May his pernicious soul rot half a grain a day.”
With all the delicate sharpness of insight into the most elusive movements of Consciousness, by which the romance is characterised, the drapery cast over the whole representation, is rich and flowing, and there is no parade of metaphysical acuteness. All the profound and penetrating observation seems the result of a certain careless felicity of aim, which hits the mark in the white without any preliminary posturing or elaborate preparation. The stronger, and harsher passions are represented with the same ease as the evanescent shades of thought and emotion. The humorous and descriptive scenes are in Hawthorne’s best style. The peculiarities of New England life at the present day are admirably caught and permanently embodied; Silas Foster and Hollingsworth being both genuine Yankees and representative men. The great passage of the volume is Zenobia’s death, which is not so much tragic as tragedy itself. In short, whether we consider “The Blithedale Romance” as a study in that philosophy of the human mind which peers into the inmost recesses and first principles of mind and character, or a highly colored and fascinating story, it does not yield in interest or value to any of Hawthorne’s preceding works, while it is removed from a comparison with them by essential differences in its purpose and mode of treatment, and is perhaps their superior in affluence and fineness of thought and masterly perception of the first remote workings of great and absorbing passions.
The History of the Restoration of Monarchy in France. By Alphonse de Lamartine. Vol. 2. New York: Harper & Brothers.
This volume deals with the events of “The Hundred Days,” giving a graphic picture of the incidents which occured between the return of Napoleon from Elba and his final overthrow at Waterloo. It is much more minute than any other history of the period, and occasionally gives elaborate descriptions of persons and occurrences unworthy of being rescued from the oblivion of their unimportance. Lamartine evidently dislikes both Napoleon and Napoleonism. The leading object of the present volume is to prove that France was sick of him, and that the army alone was in his favor. One passage seems a palpable hit at the usurpation of the “Nephew of my Uncle.” “If the people,” says Lamartine, “did not protest by civic opposition, they protested very generally by their sorrow and estrangement. History never recorded more audacity in the usurpation of a throne, or a more cowardly submission of a nation to an army. France lost on that day somewhat of its character, the law or its majesty, the liberty of its respect. Military despotism was substituted for public opinion. The pretorians made a mockery of the people. The Lower Empire of Rome enacted in Gaul one of those scenes which degrade history, and humiliate human nature. The only excuse for such an event is that the people were depressed under ten years of military government, that the army was rendered frantic by ten years of prodigies, and that its idol was a hero.”
For the Bourbons, Lamartine evinces a tender regard, and narrates their flight from France in a style of mental bombast which but ill rescues it from ridicule. The description of the Congress of Vienna is very brilliant, and the sketches of Talleyrand, Fouche, and Wellington, discriminating and powerful. The sentimentality of the author gives, as usual, its peculiar perversion to the facts of the narrative; things are commonly represented in their relation to the opinions of Lamartine, rather than in their relation to each other; and occasionally gross fictions are introduced to add to the scenic effect.