It does not profess to be a
satisfactory statement of the whole, nor is there the least ground for
assuming that it does so. Its very absorption in certain phases
constitutes its value,--a value unspeakably greater than that of any
other presentation of the Puritan life, because it rests upon the
insight of a poet who has sounded the darkest depths of human nature.
Had Hawthorne passed mutely through life, these gloomy-grounded pictures
of Puritanism might have faded from the air like the spectres of things
seen in dazzling light, which flit vividly before the eye for a time,
then vanish forever.
But in order to his distinctive coloring, no distortion had to be
practised; and I do not see why Hawthorne should be reckoned to have had
no sight for that which he did not record. With his unique and
penetrating touch he marked certain salient and solemn features which
had sunk deep into his sensitive imagination, and then filled in the
surface with his own profound dramatic emanations. But in his subtle and
strong moral insight, his insatiable passion for truth, he surely
represented his Puritan ancestry in the most worthy and obviously
sympathetic way. No New-Englander, moreover, with any depth of feeling
in him, can be entirely wanting in reverence for the nobler traits of
his stern forefathers, or in some sort of love for the whole body of
which his own progenitors formed a group. Partly for his romantic
purposes, and merely as an expedient of art, Hawthorne chose to treat
this life at its most picturesque points; and to heighten the elements
of terror which he found there was an aesthetic obligation with him.
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