This gentle and musical poem, it is curious to remember,
was written at the very period when Longfellow was singing his first
fresh carols, full of a vigorous pleasure in the beauty and inspiration
of nature, with a rising and a dying fall for April and Autumn, and the
Winter Woods. One can easily fancy that in these two lines from "Sunrise
on the Hills":--
"Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke
Through thick-leaved branches from the dingle broke,"
it was the fire of Hawthorne's fowling-piece in the woods that attracted
the young poet, from his lookout above. But Longfellow had felt in the
rhythm of these earliest poems the tide-flow of his future, and Hawthorne
had as yet hardly found his appropriate element.
In 1828, however, three years after graduating, he published an
anonymous prose romance called "Fanshawe," much more nearly approaching
a novel than his later books. It was issued at Boston, by Marsh and
Capen; but so successful was Hawthorne in his attempt to exterminate the
edition, that not half a dozen copies are now known to be extant. We
have seen that he read and admired Godwin and Scott, as a boy.
"Kenilworth," "The Pirate," "The Fortunes of Nigel," "Peveril of the
Peak," "Quentin Durward," and others of Scott's novel; had appeared
while Hawthorne was at Bowdoin; and the author of "Waverley" had become
the autocrat of fiction. In addition to this, there is an inbred analogy
between New England and Scotland. In the history and character of the
people of each country are seen the influence of Calvin, and of a
common-school system.
Pages:
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145