These
characters, with far more vivid presence and clear definition than those
of the other two writers, are at the same time based on large and
elementary forces, like theirs. They are for the most part embodied
moods, or emotions expanded to the stature of an entire human being, and
made to endure unchanged for years together. Thus, while Hawthorne, as
we shall see more fully further on, is essentially a dramatic genius,
Bunyan a simple allegorist, and Milton an odic poet of unparalleled
strength,--who, taking dramatic and epic subjects and failing to fill
them, makes us blame not _his_ size and shape, but the too minute
intricacies of the theme,--there is still a sort of underground
connection between all three. It is curious to note, further, the
relation of Milton's majestic and multitudinous speech, the
chancellor-like stateliness of his wit, in prose, to Hawthorne's
resonant periods, and dignity that is never weakened though admirably
modified by humor. Altogether, if one could compound Bunyan and Milton,
combine the realistic imagination of the one with the other's passion
for ideas, pour the ebullient undulating prose style of the poet into
the veins of the allegorist's firm, leather-jerkined English, and make a
modern man and author of the whole, the result would not be alien to
Hawthorne.
Yet that native love of historic murkiness and mossy tradition which we
have been learning to associate with Salem would have to be present in
this compound being, to make the likeness complete.
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