Worcester daily spy., 1860-03-23


HAwTHoRNE's New BooK.-The "Marble
Faun" seems to us admirable in every respect
1t is one of the very best of Hawthorne's pro
ductions. The best notice of it we have seen
is the following, which we cut from the Satur
day Evening Post:
1t is not for us to criticise, after one hasty
reading, the work of mind SO rich and subtle
and wierdly imaginative as Hawthorne's.
Fine wine, the connoisseurs say, must be
drank slowly, drop by drop, and the judgment
lies at the bottom of the goblet. 1t is so with
a romance by Hawthorne. 1t must be read
slowly and pondered deeply to be criticised
fairly. Hawthorne'S genius is essentially alIe
gorical, and, like Spenser's, his allegories over
lay each other. They widen out circle beyond
circle, and, as in this instance, what is at first
beautiful and powerful story with an ostensi-
bic and homely moral, becomes next a parable
showing the progress of human soul from
Innocence to Nobeness through the operation
OF sin, and expands at the last into the poem
OF Mans life on earth-the old tale, retold.
OF Adams fall. The story, as story. is man
aged with singular artistic power both in re-
gard to pictorial effect and literary construc-
tlon. Nothing could be finer than the calm.
VIVID pictures OF the Roman life and land
scape, and the constructive skill employed
makes the work an organic creation, in
which the scenes, the events, and the actors
are part and parcel of each other-mutually
connected and dependent. The old power of
objective characterization, and subtle psyche
logic delineation which Hawthorne showed so
gloriously in The Scarlet Letter and 'The
House of Seven Gables is here too. in its
highest and finest operation. The conception
of Donatello is in Hawthorne's rarest imagin.
ative style, and the execution is mastery.
None but a man of genius could have so dex-
terously established in the readers mind Don
atello's llneal connection with the Arcadan
tauns, or so successfully managed his trans
formation from the innocent, sylvan creature
to the sustained, sorrow-worn man. The
entire romance is a stroke of the old Haw-
thornean magic-ot the creative and construc-
tive power which projects the dreams of the
mind into strange shapes of possible life.
Apart from the merit of the work as ro-
nance, it has the added merit of being tran.
script of Rome and Roman life in almost
all their aspects. 1t is equivalent to
tourists book on Rome, with this ad-
vantage, that all the descriptions are so close
ly interviewer with the dramatic action of
the tale, that the mind takes them less as in
formation than as experience. One seems af-
ter reading the book to have lived in Rome
Not the least pleasure in reading it is derived
from the exquisite diction-limpid, equal, and
calm even in depicting the most violent and
vivid scenes, as are the waters of some crystal
river when shadowing murder done on its
banks. We believe Hawthorne is the most
perfect master of English prose now living,
and it is peculiarity in his works that his
diction should be so distinctively prose die
ton. Most authors so royalty endowed with
imagination as he, mould their dicton by the
lyric flow Of their thought Dickens, for in
stance, when his imagination rises to passion
or pathos, becomes positively rhythmical in
his expression. Not so Hawthorne. His lam
guage has no rhythm. 1t is prose-pure,
sweet, harmonious, but still prose, and prose
in its perfection"