Hawthorne have in common that tranquil and subdued manner
which we have chosen to denominate repose; but in the case of the
two former, this repose is attained rather by the absence of novel
combination, or of originality, than otherwise, and consists chiefly
in the calm, quiet, unostentatious expression of commonplace thoughts,
in an unambitious unadulterated Saxon. In them, by strong effort, we
are made to conceive the absence of all. In the essays before us the
absence of effort is too obvious to be mistaken, and a strong
under-current of suggestion runs continuously beneath the upper stream
of the tranquil thesis. In short, these effusions of Mr. Hawthorne are
the product of a truly imaginative intellect, restrained, and in
some measure repressed, by fastidiousness of taste, by
constitutional melancholy and by indolence.
But it is of his tales that we desire principally to speak. The tale
proper, in our opinion, affords unquestionably the fairest field for
the exercise of the loftiest talent, which can be afforded by the wide
domains of mere prose. Were we bidden to say how the highest genius
could be most advantageously employed for the best display of its
own powers, we should answer, without hesitation- in the composition
of a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length what might be perused in
an hour.
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