"
Everything in these two volumes illustrates forcibly the brevity, the
absolutely right proportion of language to idea, which from the first
had marked Hawthorne with one trait, at least, quite unlike any
displayed by the writers with whom he was compared, and entirely foreign
to the mood of the present century. This _sense of form_, the
highest and last attribute of a creative writer, provided it comes as
the result of a deep necessity of his genius, and not as a mere
acquirement of art, is a quality that has not been enough noticed in
him; doubtless because it is not enough looked for anywhere by the
majority of critics and readers, in these days of adulteration and of
rapid manufacture out of shoddy and short-fibred stuffs. We demand a
given measure of reading, good or bad, and producers of it are in great
part paid for length: so that with much using of thin and shapeless
literature, we have forgotten how good is that which is solid and has
form. But, having attained this perfection in the short story, Hawthorne
thereafter abandoned it for a larger mould.
The "Mosses," as I have said, gained him many admirers. In them he for
the first time touched somewhat upon the tendencies of the current
epoch, and took an entirely independent stand among the philosophers of
New England. Yet, for a while, there was the oddest misconception of his
attitude by those at a distance. A Whig magazine, pleased by his manly
and open conservatism, felt convinced that he must be a Whig, though he
was, at the moment of the announcement, taking office under a Democratic
President.
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