Likewise, the grossest errors have been
committed through the assumption that particular passages in Hawthorne's
writings apply directly and unqualifiedly to himself. There is so much
imagination interfused with them, that only a reverent and careful
imagination can apply them aright. Nor are private letters to be
interpreted in any other way than as the talk of the hour, very
inadequately representative, and often--unless read in many
lights--positively untrue, to the writer. It gives an entirely false
notion, for example, to accept as a trait of character this modest
covering up of a noble sentiment, which occurs in a letter refusing to
withdraw the dedication of "Our Old Home" to Pierce, in the time of the
latter's unpopularity:--
"Nevertheless, I have no fancy for making myself a martyr when it is
honorably and conscientiously possible to avoid it; and I always measure
out my heroism very accurately according to the exigencies of the
occasion, and should be the last man in the world to throw away a bit of
it needlessly."
Such a passage ought never to have been printed without some modifying
word; for it has been execrably misused. "I have often felt," Hawthorne
says, "that words may be a thick and darksome veil of mystery between
the soul and the truth which it seeks." What injustice, then, that he
should be judged by a literal construction of words quickly chosen for
the transient embodiment of a mood!
The first and most common opinion about the man Hawthorne is, that he
must have been extremely gloomy, because his mind nourished so many
grave thoughts and solemn fancies.
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