" Though dealing largely in description, and with the most
accurate perceptions of outward objects, he still, to use again his own
words, gives the impression of a man "chiefly accustomed to look
inward, and to whom external matters are of little value or import,
unless they bear relation to something within his own mind." But that
"something within his own mind" was often an unpleasant something,
perhaps a ghastly occult perception of deformity and sin in what
appeared outwardly fair and good; so that the reader felt a secret
dissatisfaction with the disposition which directed the genius, even in
the homage he awarded to the genius itself. As psychological portraits
of morbid natures, his delineations of character might have given a
purely intellectual satisfaction; but there was audible, to the
delicate ear, a faint and muffled growl of personal discontent, which
showed they were not mere exercises of penetrating imaginative
analysis, but had in them the morbid vitality of a despondent mood.
Yet, after admitting these peculiarities, nobody who is now drawn to
the "Twice-Told Tales," from his interest in the later romances of
Hawthorne, can fail to wonder a little at the limited number of readers
they attracted on their original publication.
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