But this merely proves that, as he
himself says, when people think he is pouring himself out in a tale or
an essay, he is merely telling what is common to human nature, not what
is peculiar to himself. "I sympathize with them, not they with me." He
sympathizes in the special direction of our darker side. A creative mind
of the higher order holds the thread which guides it surely through
life's labyrinths; but all the more on this account its attention is
called to the erratic movement of other travellers around it. The genius
who has the clew begins, therefore, to study these errors and to
describe them for our behoof. It is a great mistake to suppose that the
abnormal or preposterous phases which he describes are the fruit of
_self_-study,--personal traits disguised in fiction; yet this is
what has often been affirmed of Hawthorne. We don't think of attributing
to Dickens the multiform oddities which he pictures with such power, it
being manifestly absurd to do so. As Dickens raises the laugh against
them, we at once perceive that they are outside of himself. Hawthorne is
so serious, that we are absorbed in the sober earnest of the thing, and
forget to apply the rule in his case. Dickens's distinct aim is to
excite us with something uncommon; Hawthorne's, to show us that the
elements of all tragedies lie within our individual natures; therefore
we begin to attribute in undue measure to _his_ individual nature
all the abnormal conditions that he has shown to be potential in any of
us.
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