There is one gift of Irving's which won him an easier as well
as a wider triumph than that which awaited Hawthorne; and this is his
ability to take the simple story-teller's tone, devoid of double
meanings. Poe, also, had the passion for narrative in and for itself,
but in him it was disturbed by a diseased mind, and resulted in a horrid
fascination instead of cheerful attraction. Hawthorne, to be sure,
possessed the gift of the _raconteur_; but in general he was at
once seer and teller, and the higher exertions of his imagination were
always in the peculiarly symbolic atmosphere we are wont to associate
with him. Irving's contented disposition in this regard is certainly
very charming; there are often moods in which it is a great relief to
turn to it; and he has in so far the advantage over the other two. He
pitches for us the tone of average cultured minds in his time and
locality; and in reading him we have a comfortable sense of reality,
than which nothing in fiction is more reassuring. This is almost
entirely absent from the spell with which Hawthorne holds us; and here,
indeed, we touch the latter's most decided limitation as a writer of
fiction; for although his magnificently portrayed characters do not want
reality, an atmosphere of ghostliness surrounds them, warning us that we
must not look to find life there as we see it elsewhere. There is a
Northern legend of a man who lay down to sleep, and a thin smoke was
seen to issue from his nostrils, traverse the ground, cross a rivulet,
and journey on, finally returning to the place whence it came.
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