It is rather a manner than a style. On the other
hand, it would be hard to find a style growing so naturally and strongly
out of elemental attributes as Hawthorne's, so deftly waiting upon the
slightest movement of idea, at once disclosing and lightly veiling the
informing thought,--like the most delicate sculptured marble drapery.
The radical differences of the two men were also obscured in the
beginning by the fact that Hawthorne did not for some time exhibit that
massive power of hewing out individual character which afterward had
full swing in his romances, and by a certain kinship of fancy in his
lighter efforts, with Irving's. "The Art of Book-Making" and "The
Mutability of Literature" are not far removed from some of Hawthorne's
conceits. And "The Vision of the Fountain" and "The Village Uncle" might
have issued in their soft meditativeness from Geoffrey Crayon's own
repertory, except that they are moulded with a so much more subtile art
than his, and with an instinct of proportion so much more sure. But even
in the earlier tales, taken all together, Hawthorne ranks higher than
Irving in the heraldry of genius: he has more quarterings in his shield.
Not only does he excel the other in brief essay, depending only on
endogenous forces, whereas Irving is always adorning his paragraphs with
that herb-o'-grace, quotation, but he also greatly surpasses him in the
construction of his stories; and finally, his psychological analysis and
symbolic imagination place him beyond rivalry.
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