Though the author
denies that he has exhibited his own individual attributes in these
"Mosses," though he professes not to be "one of those supremely
hospitable people who serve up their own hearts delicately fried, with
brain-sauce, as a titbit for their beloved public,"--yet it is none the
less apparent that he has diffused through each tale and sketch the
life of the mental mood to which it owed its existence, and that one
individuality pervades and colors the whole collection. The defect of
the serious stories is, that character is introduced, not as thinking,
but as the illustration of thought. The persons are ghostly, with a sad
lack of flesh and blood. They are phantasmal symbols of a reflective
and imaginative analysis of human passions and aspirations. The
dialogue, especially, is bookish, as though the personages knew their
speech was to be printed, and were careful of the collocation and
rhythm of their words. The author throughout is evidently more
interested in his large, wide, deep, indolently serene, and lazily sure
and critical view of the conflict of ideas and passions, than he is
with the individuals who embody them. He shows moral insight without
moral earnestness. He cannot contract his mind to the patient
delineation of a moral individual, but attempts to use individuals in
order to express the last results of patient moral perception.
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