Hawthorne relies almost
entirely for the interest of his story on what is felt and done within
the minds of his characters. Even his most picturesque descriptions and
narratives are only one-tenth matter to nine-tenths spirit. The results
that follow from one external act of folly or crime are to him enough
for an Iliad of woes. It might be supposed that his whole theory of
Romantic Art was based on these tremendous lines of Wordsworth:--
"Action is momentary,--
The motion of a muscle, this way or that:
Suffering is long, obscure, and infinite."
The second characteristic of his genius is connected with the first.
With his insight of individual souls he combines a far deeper insight
of the spiritual laws which govern the strangest aberrations of
individual souls. But it seems to us that his mental eye, keen-sighted
and far-sighted as it is, overlooks the merciful modifications of the
austere code whose pitiless action it so clearly discerns. In his long
and patient brooding over the spiritual phenomena of Puritan life, it
is apparent, to the least critical observer, that he has imbibed a deep
personal antipathy to the Puritanic ideal of character; but it is no
less apparent that his intellect and imagination have been strangely
fascinated by the Puritanic idea of justice.
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