The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-08-06

The rarest literary genius yet given
by America to the world is Nathan
iel Hawthorne. In his own peculiar
field, that of the psychological ro-
nance, he occupies a place not only
above but apart from all other writ
ers. Victor Hugo alone is his peer in
depicting the soul conflicts of human
ity, but the pages of ever that prince
of romancers lack the subtle and IN
defnable atmosphere which pervades
the slightest of Hawthorne's crea-
tions. The "Scarlet Letter" is not
only the greatest literary monument
of our republic, but it has become a
world-classic as well-the only one
yet sprung from American soil. All
the other writings of this reticent
New Highlander maintain a uni
formity of excellence unique in u
native fiction. Scarcely a line has
he left US that is not keenly magma
tive, delicately wrought, felicitously
worded.
AS a stylist Hawthorne deservedly
ranks among the greatest of English
fctionists-with such men as Addi-
son, Goldsmith, Irving, and Lamb.
His pose, indeed, is marked by such
exquisite purity, limpidity, and
grace, and at the same time by such
terseness, variety, and adaptability,
that there are critics not a few who
would give him precedence over
even those masters of the art of ex-
preston.
Another feature of Hawthorne's
writings is their humor-a humOr
not boisterous and obtrusive, but
gentle, pervasive, and restrained.
It is this Attic salt in them which
preserves his talents from the charge
of morbidness. Too many people
labor under the delusion that Haw-
thorne is always the sOmber, gloomy
introspeotionist, a constant dweller
on the ''night side of nature" No
novelist, indeed, has peered more
earnestly into the human soul nor
sent his plummet into prolounder
depths of life. He was one who, in
his own words, painted mot merely
a mans features, but his mind and
heart, catching the secret sentiments
and passions, and throwing them
upon the canvas Dealing thus
with the profOundest problems of
human life and thought, it was nat
ural that much of the old Puritan
ical austerity should outcrOp. New
ertheless, Hawthorne has created
things as delicate and e~vanescent as
a butter1y's wing. AS Hawthorne,
theman, smiled rather with his beat
tiful eyes than laughed with his lips,
so in Hawthorne, the writer, his
humor is rather a lambent fine
playing ~delicately over his romances
than any glorious sunburst illumi
mating them.
But the supreme quality in the
rOmances of Hawthorne is their Pc
culiar imaginative power. I know
of no novelist with fancy so purely
ethereal. His most fragile creations
are full of what some one has aptly
termed the moonlight of romance"
There is in all his writings a SDiri-
tueLIe quality which demands so
much OF imaginative insight on the
part OF the reader that they will new
er be, in a broad sense, popular.
H~awthOrne's method is rather that
of Il poet than OF the average novel
ist. 1t is 10 SO much In what he
says Ia US IA in what he awakens IN
that his strength lies. He is the
most suggestive of romancers. He
cares little for the story per Sc, be.
ing interested primarily not in Uhat
happens, but aChy. In his romances
there is little of plot or incident
action has been supplanted by mo.
tive, deed by will. There is here
none of the fire and movement of
asIvanhoe" and "ROb Roy" Haw-
thorne was not u master of the
s'great bow.wOw style" of Scott
but there is a keenness of insight