Hawthorne. A shallow criticism has sometimes fancied a resemblance
between him and Poe. But it seems to us that the difference between
them is the immeasurable one between talent carried to its ultimate,
and genius,--between a masterly adaptation of the world of sense and
appearance to the purposes of Art, and a so thorough conception of the
world of moral realities that Art becomes the interpreter of something
profounder than herself. In this respect it is not extravagant to say
that Hawthorne has something of kindred with Shakspeare. But that
breadth of nature which made Shakspeare incapable of alienation from
common human nature and actual life is wanting to Hawthorne. He is
rather a denizen than a citizen of what men call the world. We are
conscious of a certain remoteness in his writings, as in those of
Donne, but with such a difference that we should call the one super-
and the other subter-sensual. Hawthorne is psychological and
metaphysical. Had he been born without the poetic imagination, he would
have written treatises on the Origin of Evil. He does not draw
characters, but rather conceives them and then shows them acted upon by
crime, passion, or circumstance, as if the element of Fate were as
present to his imagination as to that of a Greek dramatist.
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