is my own impression. He is to a considerable degree ironical--this is
part of his charm--part even, one may say, of his brightness; but he
is neither bitter nor cynical--he is rarely even what I should call
tragical. There have certainly been story-tellers of a gayer and
lighter spirit; there have been observers more humorous, more
hilarious--though on the whole Hawthorne's observation has a smile in
it oftener than may at first appear; but there has rarely been an
observer more serene, less agitated by what he sees and less disposed
to call things deeply into question. As I have already intimated, his
Note-Books are full of this simple and almost child-like serenity.
That dusky pre-occupation with the misery of human life and the
wickedness of the human heart which such a critic as M. Emile Montégut
talks about, is totally absent from them; and if we may suppose a
person to have read these Diaries before looking into the tales, we
may be sure that such a reader would be greatly surprised to hear the
author described as a disappointed, disdainful genius. "This marked
love of cases of conscience," says M. Montégut, "this taciturn,
scornful cast of mind, this habit of seeing sin everywhere and hell
always gaping open, this dusky gaze bent always upon a damned world
and a nature draped in mourning, these lonely conversations of the
imagination with the conscience, this pitiless analysis resulting from
a perpetual examination of one's self, and from the tortures of a
heart closed before men and open to God--all these elements of the
Puritan character have passed into Mr. Hawthorne, or to speak more
justly, have _filtered_ into him, through a long succession of
generations." This is a very pretty and very vivid account of
Hawthorne, superficially considered; and it is just such a view of the
case as would commend itself most easily and most naturally to a hasty
critic. It is all true indeed, with a difference; Hawthorne was all
that M. Montégut says, _minus_ the conviction. The old Puritan moral